Fer González Morales

TRAINING FOR SURPRISE

The type of movement practice I developed through this research was informed not only by my background as a dancer and the kinetic knowledge that comes from this field  —awareness, timing, coordination, strength, resistance, mobility— but also and most importantly through the intention behind it.  Dance practice in ‘professional’ contexts tends to focus too much on creating bodies that adhere perfectly to specific canons, whether that is a technique, aesthetic, or a trend. Instead, I wanted to explore movement with a clear intention behind it: that of becoming radically tender. But in concrete terms what does becoming radically tender means?

One day during a session with my colleagues from the masters, we were presenting an experiment and giving each other feedback, a regular practice in our program. One of us presented an idea and as this experiment unfolded the first thought that came to my mind was that I already knew what was going to happen. Of course, I had reasons to read or expect what they would do, we had been working very closely for the past two years, but still, I was amazed by how quickly my brain formed an expectation, an assumption, and quite possibly a judgment. I then tried to listen to them from a different position, one that did not know but was curious with them, willing to question from the inside, to think along. I realized I had to fight my internal judgment, that I had to push the mechanisms inside my process of thought to allow myself to be surprised even by the things I think ‘I know’.

Later in my own research I tried to search for ways to unlock the preconceptions I had about movement and about dance, so I shifted my attention from trying to ‘perfect’ a style of movement to use movement practice in order to discover new ways of attending a situation. So I developed the idea of training for the surprise, train in order to allow myself to be surprised by things instead of approaching them from a ‘knowledgable’ perspective. Playing, imagination, and improvisation, made sense as beginning points from where to ‘train’ in order to be surprised.