Creating the improvised moment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.27169Keywords:
improvisation, care, dance, empathy, hospitalityAbstract
In the summer of 2023, a dancer, a saxophone player, and a bass player got into a room and recorded ‘Rega’—an improvised conversation on the concept of time. Now, several months after its publication, this article aims to reflect on the process of the planning, creation, and final publication of ‘Rega’ utilizing the perspective of care. Care, this article argues, is both a necessary ethical praxis, and one that creates unique improvisational conversations within the improvised moment. Bringing together in-depth descriptive accounts of the performance itself together with contemporary literature on improvisation, this article is intended as an invitation for others to consider care within their own improvisational endeavours, from initial planning to final execution.
References
Atkinson, Mitchell III. 2020. ‘Types, Styles, and Spaces of Possibility: Phenomenology and Musical Improvisation’. Gestalt Theory 42/3: 253–70. https://doi.org/10.2478/gth-2020-0022
Beato, Rick, dir. 2021. The Pat Metheny Interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEgalcH_-b4
Benson, Bruce Ellis. 2003. The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615924
Black Lives in Music. 2021. ‘Being Black in the UK Music Industry, Just the Data: Music Industry Professionals—Part 1’. London.
Black Lives in Music and Attitude is Everything. 2023. ‘Unseen Unheard: Race and Disability—Black Disabled Experience in the UK’s Music Industry’. London.
Coessens, Kathleen. 2013. ‘Humans, Heroes and Artists: (Re)Creating the Unexpected Situation’. Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études Critiques En Improvisation 8/2: 1–10. https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v8i2.2140
Csobod, Judit, and Yotam Ronen, dirs. 2022. Pedagogy in Sound: Mutual Learning in A Major/Minor Speculative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOVd5s7Jzjk
De Cleyre, Voltairine. 2005. ‘Secular Education’. In Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre: Feminist, Anarchist, Genius, ed. Sharon Presley and Crispin Sartwell, 179–87. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Delaney, David. 2005. Territory: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470773925
‘Flying Squads—Where Youth Rights Take Flight’. n.d. https://www.flyingsquads.org/ (accessed 11 October 2023).
Howell, Carlie. 2021. ‘Creating the Conditions to Create’. Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études Critiques En Improvisation 14/1: 1–4. https://doi.org/10.21083/csieci.v14i1.6326
Matthias, Sebastian. 2021. ‘Groove Fields: Understanding the Dance Floor from an Art-Based Research Perspective’. Geography Notebooks 4/1: 103–114. https://doi.org/10.7358/gn-2021-001-matt
Peters, Gary. 2017. Improvising Improvisation: From out of Philosophy, Music, Dance, and Literature. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.
Rocha, Samuel. 2012. ‘Erotic Study: Fortune, Baby-Talk, and Jazz’. Philosophy of Education 68: 63–71. https://doi.org/10.47925/2012.063
Ruitenberg, Claudia W. 2015. ‘Unlocking the World: Education in an Ethic of Hospitality’. London and New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315631349
:sæns, dir. 2023. :Sæns—Rega. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciVuVHWyzyU
‘School Revolt 2022’. 2022. https://anarchistpedagogies.net/school-revolt/school-revolt-2022/
Seabrook, Deborah. 2019. ‘Toward a Radical Practice: A Recuperative Critique of Improvisation in Music Therapy Using Intersectional Feminist Theory’. The Arts in Psychotherapy 63 (April): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2019.04.002
Smith, Julie Dawn. 2015. ‘Playing Like a Girl: The Queer Laughter of the Feminist Improvising Group’. In The Improvisation Studies Reader: Spontaneous Acts, ed. Rebecca Caines and Heble Ajay, 261–77. London: Routledge.
Williams, Brynn Marie. 2019. ‘Nuances of Touch: Embodying and Communicating Nonverbal Consent in Contact Improvisation’. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia. https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0386821
Williams, Katherine. 2022. ‘Without Making a Song and Dance about It…’. Jazz Research Journal 15/1–2: 10–24. https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.22819
