CYCLES
In developing a community ritual like Circle the Earth, we are asking people to share very personal, deep-seated concerns and emotions; we are asking them to expose themselves. So it is critical to have a process that feels safe and clear. An integral component of this process is a method of collective creativity called the RSVP Cycles, which my husband, Lawrence Halprin, developed and which I began using with dancers in the early 1970s.5 This method welcomes and incorporates the personal stories of each participant. The core of the RSVP Cycles lies in the separation of the four elements of creativity.
R stands for Resources. These are the basic materials we have at our disposal, including not only physical resources but also human ones, encompassing movement possibilities, mental imagery, emotions, motivations, aims, and more.
Drawing of RSVP Cycle by Lawrence Halprin. Courtesy of Anna Halprin.
S stands for Scores. The word “score” is derived from music and refers to a visual and/or verbal plan that instructs a group of people to carry out prescribed activities to fulfill a particular intention. In addition to the activities, a score delineates place, time, space, and the cast of people, as well as sound and other related elements. It guides performers in what to do, who does it, when to do it, and where to do it. To varying degrees, it may indicate how to do the activities, but this can range from being very closed (with all the actions precisely defined, leaving little room for improvisation) to being very open (emphasizing improvisation and exploration).
V stands for Valuaction. This coined term is short for “the value of the action” and allows for analysis, appreciation, feedback, value-building, and decision-making to accompany the process of creation.
P stands for Performance. This is, quite simply, the enactment of the score.
These four component parts of the RSVP Cycles are not connected in a linear way. Once a cycle begins, the development of a dance might move from performance to valuaction to a new score to valuaction to gathering resources and so on, back and forth. My method is to use a workshop setting to provide opportunities for participants to discover their own resources, thereby ensuring that the performance that evolves will be both a personal and a collective one. The RSVP Cycles are a highly responsive structure encouraging creative participation at all levels. Exploring resources can help performers discover greater personal meaning in the activities they do in performance. If our concern is how to connect movement to emotion, we might try a contractive movement and explore how it makes us feel emotionally. We might try that movement with a lot of intensity and see what arises. Fear? Anxiety? When we then move with less intensity, we have a different experience. Using our sensations, we can expand our resources in movement. As a workshop leader, if you want your participants to be able to express a range of emotions through movement, you need to help them develop a vocabulary they can draw from by experimenting with different values, intensity, and duration in movement.
One of my “tests” for a good score is: Does it generate creativity in the performers? A simple score might be: “Everyone go to the other side of the space now.” It tells who (everybody), what (go), where (other side), and when (now). But in this score, “how” is completely undefined. The movement options open to performers are endless—walk, run, crawl, spin, go quickly or slowly. Other choices include going across directly, on a diagonal, and so on. If I wanted to make a score extremely open, I might say: “Do whatever you want whenever and however you want.” This kind of score encourages improvisational spontaneity, but too much freedom can be as paralyzing to creativity as too little. A very closed score might be the choreography for a ballet, where there are precise models for the performance of each step. My scores generally fall in between these two extremes.
The scores for the community rituals detailed in this book are open enough to allow different individuals and groups to embody them in unique ways, so the culminating performance will never be exactly the same. The diversity of the performers, the dynamics of the group, and any cultural differences that exist will all affect how a score is performed. Although the score provides an overall framework, it does not exclude new input and change. Instead, it promotes creativity and growth. A score is like a living thing, constantly shaped by our experience. The image of a tree comes to mind: it remains a tree in essence even as it responds to such forces as wind, rain, and sun.
People sometimes ask how closely participants need to follow the score, how committed to it they need to be. What happens if they “break” the score, if they take an element of the score that’s closed and open it? If you feel that an important aspect of the score is being lost, you may want to step in and gently remind participants of the score by modeling the activity it calls for, as I sometimes do when participants stray from a unifying drumbeat. At times people break a score because they don’t understand it or aren’t clear about its purpose. Some people may break a score because they’re feeling rebellious or bored. Still others may believe that, because the score doesn’t match their emotions, they can’t do it. Part of one’s role in presenting a score is to understand the score well enough to communicate it to others, to help them embody it.
The score for the Planetary Dance (see chapter 4) calls on participants to declare what they are dancing for in relation to peace among peoples and with the earth. Someone once said to me that she needed to dance for her own needs. This might be a fine intent for a different score, but the Planetary Dance score instructs people to dance for the needs of others. One challenge for Planetary Dance leaders is how to help people hone their focus within the score. Often people say they intend to dance for “love.” My response to this is always to ask for more specificity. What do you love? Take the mirror away from yourself and show it to the world around you.
In workshops like the one detailed in chapter 3, we don’t do scores because they match our emotions. We do scores to see what emotions they will evoke. If you come to one of my workshops, I would ask you to commit to the scores of the workshop, to give yourself to the scores without preconceptions of how they will make you feel. At one point we may be doing a score of celebration, and you may feel angry, sad, tired, or depressed. You may not want to have anything to do with anyone. The challenge, then, is to find a way to follow the score and see what emotions it brings up. What is it like to stay within a score when your mood is in a completely different place from everyone else’s? That’s the challenge—to stay within the score, not to break it. Really committing to a score is one way to get the most out of it.
Another thing that can interfere with getting the most out of a score is closing a previously open element. Especially in the beginning of a workshop, I use scores in which the intention is to explore, research, find out different possibilities, so closing parts of the score that are open will close down innovation and avenues of discovery. A simple score might ask you to investigate rising and falling movements. If you start out with a strong idea of what rising and falling are about, you will limit yourself. There could be more than a hundred different ways of rising and falling, so if you restrict yourself to one idea in the beginning, you’re closing a part of the score that’s open and you won’t get the most value from it. So when a score is open, be mindful about making choices that close it down.
Open scores give us a chance to express our differences, while closed scores help us express our commonalities. Most scores have both open and closed elements. When you have a sequence of scores over the course of a workshop or a dance, it’s important to have a balance, with some scores more open and some more closed. In our culture we place a high value on individualism, so we often need to express our differences first, to know that we are honored and recognized for who we are. As modern people tempered in the forge of individuality, we seem to need to find our own personal
