Brain Games

It's been said before -- dancing for Sinecdoche is just as challenging for the brains of the dancers as it is for their bodies.

I thought I'd give you a taste of what we mean by that.

In Work:Dance:Display, the piece we are working on for July, many of us play a particular and individual "game."

It all starts with a basic phrase, that each dancer knows. You can see us doing the basic phrase from the piece, on the very first day we learned it, here.

From there, we each made a variation of the phrase by changing the order of the steps, without changing the rhythm.
For example: If it started out hop. step. kick. turn, you could make it kick. hop. turn. step.

Then, our fellow dancers gave us arms to go with our newly re-ordered phrase.
For example: kick & shimmy. hop & swipe. Turn with jazz hands. Step & clap.

This variation, with a new order for the feet and arms to go with it, became our new phrase. We had to make sure that when each of us does our new phrase, we stay on time with whoever is doing the "basic" phrase -- no small task!

When we mastered that, we got something else to do with the new phrase. In my case, I had to take the phrase I made and put one arm on a one-count lag behind the other arm.
Using the example phrase, it looks like this: Kick & shimmy one side. Hop & swipe one side while shimmying the other. Turn with one jazz hand and one swiping hand. Step & clap one hand, jazz hand the other.

I then had to do the feet twice as fast as I did the arms.
For example: Kick-hop while you shimmy one side. Turn-step while you swipe & shimmy the other side. Kick-hop while you jazz hand and swipe. Turn-step while you clap and jazz hand.

Whew! That's a lot of rules. That's how we get from our beginning phrases to the variations you'll see in part one of July's show. You'll also see the basic dance phrase -- and if you look closely -- you can see that phrase in everything we do for the first half.

This is only one of many brain games we do. All our pieces involve a similar sort of splicing-movement logic.

Want to try it out?

Here's a relatively simple to follow game that uses many of the principles of the games we play in performance. Give it a try! Each time you master one step, add on the next. See how far you can go!

Step 1: Start out with jumping jacks.
Step 2: On every third jumping jack, turn to face behind you.
Step 3: While jumping, say your abc's backwards. Don't forget to turn around every third jump!
Step 4: Continue doing steps 1-3, but now do a full turn every time you say a vowel. Continue counting your jumping jacks and abc's from where you left off.

Bonus Round:
Step 5: With a partner, do steps 1-4. Place a cookie (or any treat) somewhere in the room. While continuing 1-4, race to the cookie. You can only move when you twirl (that is, when you hit a vowel). Remember not to lose count of those jumping jacks! Don't let the other person know you want the cookie as much as they do -- but get it first!

Does your brain feel like jelly? Did you have tons of fun? How far did you make it? Leave us a comment and tell us all about it! Bonus points for video footage :)