Image of Kat Brown

Habit and repetition. Habit and repetition are important to understand somatically when working with improvisation. Repetition can create space for deepening, through each repetition the movement becomes embodied with greater ease and less conscious awareness. This can serve to break the patterns of time’s hold, but habit can also be detrimental to the process because it keeps the body in a prescribed place that feels simply stuck. In the studio I consciously worked with repetition. I began with simple repeated movement, I repeated the same movement over and over until my body organically broke from the repetition. I began with my head in a simple head roll, this would then lead organically to other movements. This exercise in repetition helped me to understand the threshold of improvisation. There is always a point after I have repeated a movement long enough that it becomes unconscious, at that point my body will automatically break free from the repetition into a new movement. This is useful because it helps me to feel in myself when the threshold of consciousness is crossed and habit breaks down. I experience this as the moment that “movement” becomes “dance”.