In The Blood (Unstoppable)

The way you move says a lot about you. Every movement pattern that you learn leaves an imprint in your body.... a map to your history. The movement and structure of In The Blood developed out of the diverse movement backgrounds and life stories of each Momentum dancer. The choreography is unashamedly a mashup of styles.

At one moment you might see the elegant form of classical ballet, in another the rhythms and movements of tap, Spanish dance or the fun of dribbling a basketball.

Dance is like a virus being passed on and growing in another person. Phillippa asked us to find movement to respond to all or some of the following words....

- Remember a fragment of a dance you performed as a younger person
- Trace the edges or a shadow of a movement memory
- Revisit the feelings or sensations of learning to dance
- Relive the movement of feeling inspired by someone dancing
- Recall a childhood memory...touch your body where the movement memory is stored and re-experience the quality of this memory
- Remember a time of joy.... show the movement of remembering, then perform the sensations of joy
- Mark out a section of choreography you once performed... rewind it
- Perform the movement of a domestic duty that feels like a dance
- Replay movement experienced in the middle of a game.... repeat it on the other side of your body

From the movement generated by the above words, we created solos and then compressed them to fit into 30 seconds. Phillippa chose movement from the solos and reconnected it to form phrases, which we all learnt.

Once we had everyone’s movement memories in our own bodies, she painted us across the space in different patterns. Remembering where to come in, when to leave, which foot to start on, who was our partner .... were great challenges to our part time dance brains. Luckily we have all been infected by the dance virus, and we forged ahead to find our path.