Broken creature

• angular 

• broken

• creature 

• pushing away 

• punching 

• pulling 

1. Repetition: repeat exactly the same

2. Retrograde: perform it backward, start at the end and follow it back through space-like a movie run backward.

3. Inversion: upside-down ( v become ^) or lateral ( / becomes \ ). For upside-down inversion, you may have to lie onthe floor or stand on your head. (This can be tricky and often impossible but don’t dismiss it on those grounds)

4. Size: Condense/expand. Take the motif and do it as small as you can. Try even smaller. Now take the movement and make it bigger, as big as you can.

5. Tempo: for example: fast, slow, stop. Take the motif and do it as fast as possible. Try again, even faster. Be careful not to let it get smaller. Do it as slowly as you can. Remember to keep the space constant, the same size it was originally. Find places for stillness in it.

6. Rhythm: vary the rhythm but not the tempo. The variety and pattern of the beats should be altered, not the speed or the length of time it takes to accomplish. If, for example, the original rhythm was I I try doing it I I I I.

7. Quality: vary the movement quality. For examply try the same movement quivery, drifting, with erratic tension.

8. Instrumentation: perform the movement with a different body part; try several different parts of the body. Let another performer do it. Have a whole group do it.

9. Force: vary the amount of force you use in producing the movement. Do it with a great deal of strength, from beginning to end. Now repeat it again, with very little force, gently, weakly. Carefully try to keep the change in the force only.

10. Background: change the design of the rest of the body from its original position and repeat the motif. Let the rest of the body be doing something while the motif is going on. Sit instead of stand. Try perhaps twisting all the rest of you into a knot while still performing the regular motif. Add another person (maybe have them wrap around you). Add to or change the set or lighting.

11. Staging: perform it at a different place on the stage and/or with a different facing to the audience, sideways or in a diagonal.

12. Embellishment (ornamentation): the movement itself can have embellishment (for example, little loops or zig zagsoccurring along the path of the movement), or a part of the body can be embellished as it is involved in the movement (as the arm moves, wiggle the fingers or make a fist). Try to embellish both the body and the path of movement at the same time.

13. Change of planes/levels: change the motif to a different plane: the horizontal, the vertical, the sagittal plane, or any other slice of space. do it on a different level. Trace the path of the gesture and use it as a floor pattern. Move along that.

14. Addictive/incorporative: additive: While doing the original motif, simultaneously execute any kind of jump, turn, or locomotor pattern (triplet, run, slide). Incorporative: Make the original motif into a jump, turn or locomotor pattern. Although this can be tough or impossible with some motifs, approach it with a sense of 'how can x (original motif) be jumped, turned, moved from place to place?' A series of chassés would be an example of the way an arc could be realised as a locomotor pattern.

15. Fragmentation: use only a part of the motif, any part. Use it as an entity on itself. Use it to attend to a detail, a part worth isolating that might otherwise be overlooked. Or use several parts of it, but not the while things-such as the beginning third, a tiny piece of halfway through, and the very, very end.

16. Combination: Combine any of the above so that they happen at the same time. This lets you combine affinities (faster with smaller) or antagonists (faster with larger) for choreographic interest and technical challenge. Fragmentation is particularly effective when combined with others. You may combine 3 or 4 manipulations at the same time (fragmentation, inversion and embellishment, or inversion,retrograde, slower and different background). Variety and complexity grows as you combine more and more manipulations.

Adapted from: Blom, L. &. (1982). Sixteen Ways to Manipulate a Motif. In L. &. Blom, The Intimate Act of Choreography (pp. 102-104). University of Pittsberg Press.