_thinkMake Week-11-:reading -07 (The RSVP Cycle)
•The RSVP score makes elements of the creative process visible and seeks to aid communication within artistic collaborations.
•Scores are symbolizations of processes that extend over time, and they are used in various fields of human endeavor, such as dance and theater.
•The book explores street scores, ecological scoring, city scores, and community scores, focusing on the importance of scoring in understanding creative processes and enabling participation.
•The author concludes that the two RSVP cycles are necessary to encompass all human and creative processes.
•The inner cycle is the separate self, while the outer cycle is the collective self: individual and community.
•The RSVP Cycles is a concept that focuses on the process of scoring and the outcomes of the scores.
•The concept of the RSVP Cycles is significant for ecological designers, who view the earth and its life processes as a model for the creative process.
•Goal-oriented thinking is a dangerous tendency that can lead to chaos, confusion, and a lack of focus on real problems.
•Scores, which describe process, are not goal-oriented but hope-oriented.
•Scoring is the key link in the RSVP cycles, a balance scheme that allows for constant communication and ensures diversity and pluralism necessary for change and growth.
•In conclusion, goal-oriented thinking is a dangerous trap that can lead to chaos, confusion, and a lack of focus on real problems.
Practical Resources
Notes on RSVP Cycles for devising and theatre-making
A.Creating movement through task
In pairs make a sequence of movements, using simple instructions and tasks. Add a movement each which moves your partner. Repeat and then and two more and so on. This way you can build a sequence, clarifying, rehearsing and add to it as you go. The aim should be to not ‘dance’ it but to be practical and smooth over the transitions between each move and each of you leading and following. Some starting points you might try include:
- Look / Shift / Cover
- Wrap / Through / Around
-Leave / Retrieve
- Wash / Gather / Travel
This should create a sequence of natural and unexpected moves whilst the performer avoids any thought about meaning or context. Once the sequences are practiced and flowing you can then apply additional focuses to explore and observe the meaning by adding and changing music, pace, tension, a context, eye contact or focus, a piece of text to precede it, an action that you play; ‘I educate you’, ‘I repel you’, ‘I warm you’ etc
B. Applying Text to Movement Material
Sometimes we will add some written material to a piece of movement. The choice of text or movement might be due to a range of factors - a correlative association someone has made through observation, perhaps a specific aim to explore a theme or moment of narrative. In workshop it could simply be enough that both elements share a common link:.. water or drowning.
First read the text together as a group, draw out images and take time to imagine and connect with the feelings, locations, timeframe, images, atmospheres etc that the text conjures ...
Next, with another pair have one group read the text the other whilst they run their movement material alongside it.
look for ‘happy accidents’, moments that offer interesting meaning and then tighten / justify / adjust them accordingly - finding a way to draw the two performance languages together to create a piece that reads as we want it to. This approach offers lines of flight, and heightens the importance of the physical narrative (how one might read dance).
How does the choreography restrict you and what does it offer up to inform how you serve the text?
Go back to the text and interrogate what moments / intentions / subtext needs to be championed and honoured.
C. Scores
Another process we use in rehearsal for both devising visual / movement material or even rehearsing a more text-based scene is creating ‘scores’ for performance.
Try a warm up / movement score:
A group of 5-20 people start by walking in the space, balancing themselves across the room. Then with a piece of music playing each person can do any of the following at anytime from the following ‘score’ or list of guidelines:
People in the group can at any point: Walk, Run, Sit, Stand, Follow
It is interesting to note this is a reasonably ‘closed’ score as your actions are limited to five instructions but it can non-the-less create an huge variety of patterns. To make the score even more ‘closed’ one might say the whole group have to all do the same action at the same time. and the score might change to:
As a group you can: Walk | Run | Sit | Stand |
Notes and pointers:
- Focus on listening and responding to everyone working in the score.
- Rather than lead, respond boldly to impulses of observations
- look for patterns that emerge as a group
-Say yes to offer by either working with or against the offer (building upon what is offered)
- let events that happen follow their course and then look to respond to the next trigger or moment.
D. Using RSVP Cycles
This is a mode of working we use for process was inspired by Anna Halprin’s practice in creating dance pieces and community events. Combining it all using RSVP:
Next try creating a score for performance that might include a wider range of resources of be more specific to an area of investigation. For example you can include movement material you created previously. We often refer to the material we have already made as a ‘movement bank’ that can be drawn upon at anytime in more ‘open’ or improvised scores. We also run performance scores with people reading in text from outside that the performers respond to (avoiding literal illustration or mime). If memorised by performers the text can be included by performers in the performance. an instruction within the score might be “Tessa and Will will include their text at any point and speak it to any target” (See notes below on this).
Here’s an explanation of RSVP Cycles and an example of how you might try using them in your process:
R - RESOURCES: What we have available to us.: we have this room, these objects, three chairs, the text, this piece of music, 7 people.
S - SCORE: A set of guideline or instructions the group follow (can be very open to very closed) Our score was: There is a beginning and and end | A couple run their movement sequence and interact with someone reading the text | 4 people up-stage can walk in straight lines across space, pause and face the back, look over their shoulder towards the couple |Everyone should act in response to the text | The walkers should listen respond also to each other | everything else is up for grabs so listen, respond and make good offers.
V - VALUE-ACTION: Feeding back and developing the piece: At any point in process, usually after a performance stage, we can stop and take value - specifically what worked? What should we keep? - and then action accordingly (changing the score, opening or closing it down, and perhaps removing or adding resources each time.
P - PERFORMANCE: Using the Score and Resources we perform (either in rehearsals or as a performance to an audience) and no one interrupts our commitment to this act. When using the RSVP cycle in rehearsal a group may decide to perform several times in a row before value-action depending on what is useful. Each time, depending on the results of the value-action stage the group may choose to open or close the score, or edit the resources. Ultimately we think of this process as a spiral. It spirals up to a tightened and rehearsed version for a production - ideally closed enough that we feel safe, but still open enough that the performers still have freedom and the space to play and respond in the moment keeping the work fresh and exciting.
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