What is “free play” and why is it so essential for artists?

I’m currently taking a dance class at Concordia. No, not recreational ballet, but a dance class for credit. (Which means I have to do some actual thinking work outside of body work!) The class focuses mainly on contact dance and improvisation, and while I’ve certainly improvised lyrical pieces before, contact dance was (and still is!) totally new to me.

Our first written assignment was a response to an excerpt from Stephen Nachmanovitch’s Free Play. You know you like an assignment when you rushed out to buy (fine, order online) the book after the first read-through of the assigned and photocopied excerpt!

Because I had so much fun with this and really enjoyed the reading, and because I think there’s some relevance for all of us here — myself so fully included — I’ve shared my response below. And in the spirit of what I’ve written (you’ll understand when you read it), the text below is not the “final” version but the first draft. Whoa whoa!

I say “final” in quotation marks because I’ve got a project based on this writing in mind…

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When Stephen Nachmanovitch writes of “free play,” he describes an activity—be it dance, music, or visual art—done with complete abandonment of worries, fears, and self-conscious concerns. Free play is an intuitive act, and while the player may have an end goal, such as finding inspiration for her next choreography, to play freely this goal must be swept aside and the player must play “for its own pure joy” (43).

The free play Nachmanovitch describes is a spiritual experience, where the player listens to both her inner child and the archetypal muse(s) of her choice. Nachmanovitch indeed considers the inner child a muse, one inseparable from free play: “The child muse is the allegorical figure of play” (36). Many artists express sentiments highlighting the importance of childhood to their work. British musician Kate Bush, known for her innovative use of dance in video and live performance, spoke of her memories of dancing to music on television:

It was completely unselfconscious and I wasn’t aware of people looking at me. One day some people came into the room, saw me, and laughed, and from that moment on I stopped doing it. I think maybe I’ve been trying to get back there ever since. Inhibitions start coming in as you get older.

Bush’s experience is only one of many, and I as an artist certainly identify with her emerging self-consciousness as she grew older. Though my main activities are writing and mixed-media visual art, coming to contact dance and improvisation brought out such nervous feelings. For me, rehearsal and practice has always been sacred, a private world where I, alone or with peers, could play with different journeys to a final product. As a teenager I worked with a community theatre troupe and sometimes took dance roles. During rehearsals we dancers would take a separate room to learn the choreography, remaining without an audience until we invited the director to see our progress, and later joined the rest of the cast for full run-throughs. Our tiny dance rehearsals were private and safe.

In this class, I feel the same phenomenon of needing “safe space” to fully express myself. The first classes were difficult in the sense that we students were still meeting each other. Several times I caught myself glancing around the room to gauge whether or not my movements were “acceptable.” Now in mid-February, this is no longer the case.

Nachmanovitch discusses the need for safe space in the chapter “Mind at Play,” recognizing that acts of free play often deserve or require special consideration. “Often we establish a protected setting or play-space, though if we feel free enough we may play even in the face of great danger” (43). His addition is crucial to the artist—and to the human being in general—for if we allow ourselves to become so entrenched in free play and end the need for permission to play, we will develop stronger skills and stronger selves.

If the ability to play freely is the most important quality an artist can develop, there are reasons why and lessons in how. As artists, we want to reach our full potential. But how do we achieve this goal, and how do we ensure that “full potential” becomes a continuous state rather than a fleeting moment? In daily life—and this includes artistic endeavors—we must recognize that our bodies are our instruments, and we must keep them finely tuned. Guitar strings left alone and not strummed for months on end become stiff, rusty, and out of tune. Our bodies are the same. If we play for a period of time every day, we keep our muscles, our bones, our entire bodies tuned and ready to go at a moment’s notice. “A creature that plays is more readily adaptable to changing contexts and conditions” (45).

But it is not just play that keeps our bodies well; it is free play. If we spend our play time anxious about appearances and tense with worries about form, we will not benefit as much from play. To play is to develop art—or one’s self—“coming from a place of joy, self-discovery, inner knowing” (45). The late Sri Swami Nirmalananda, guru to New York-based yogis Sharon Gannon and David Life, once said that “the ending of knowledge is the beginning of wisdom.”

In this class, what I have found myself developing most is free play. I am often self-conscious, evident in the fact that public speaking has often resulted in my fainting mid-speech. I never had a problem with being on stage as an actor or a dancer, or playing shows with my high school bands, but when I must face an audience as myself, fear emerges. I have endless lists of projects to start or complete but fear that they might not be “good enough.” I ask myself, “what is good enough?” My greatest lesson from this class—aside from dance techniques—will be to develop a value for what Nachmanovitch calls “means rather than ends” (44). From my post-class journal writings, I see that I am already developing a greater sense of freedom. On 15 January, when we worked with specifically the back-to-back lift, I wrote: “The feeling of letting go on someone else’s back is such a release! This is joy, ecstasy, fun. Oddly enough I have no worries or issues about trust.” By continuing to break through trust issues and letting myself dance with reckless abandon—by engaging in free play—I know I will emerge in April wiser and better equipped to finish my hidden projects.
I am excited to see this quality grow in my daily life: in my yoga practice, in my writing, and in collaborations with others. How many times have I remained silent in groups of artists fearing that I had little to contribute? I know that the only way to learn collaboratively is to let go of the fear of making mistakes and let myself be heard, but this knowledge will do me no good unless I put it into practice.

Nachmanovitch likens the emotional state of free play to samadhi (52), which among much else is the eighth limb of Ashtanga Yoga. Samadhi, in Hindu and Buddhist terms, refers to the end of the cycle of death and rebirth. In artistic terms, samadhi could refer to the end of frustration towards projects that “don’t work out.” We can reach artistic samadhi by enjoying our practices, playing with our media, and placing value on the artistic process rather than the final product.

One of my goals for 2008 is to learn the full Ashtanga Primary Series in hatha yoga practice. The series is, by nature, always the same. But while my love for the Ashtanga practice created this goal, and I hold it dear, I continue to offer equal practice time to both the Primary Series and free-flowing vinyasa yoga. A “vinyasa flow” practice is never the same. When I attend a class, I don’t know what the teacher has in mind from one pose to the next. When I practice at home, I allow my body to tell me what I need and spontaneously choose the poses based on second-to-second “feedback.”

I began this class by introducing myself as a yoga student and since then have found innumerable links between dance and yoga. Reading Free Play strengthened these connections, especially since Nachmanovitch is so conspicuous in tying free play to spiritual traditions. Improvisation, when treated as free play, is a wholly human practice. What could be a better lesson than blossoming as a full human being?

References

“Cloudbusting: Kate Bush in Her Own Words.” Gaffaweb. Compiled by Ron Hill. Third ed., November 2005. Accessed 9 February 2008. <http://gaffa.org/cloud/story/early_life_ 1958_1968.html>.

Nachmanovitch, Stephen. Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1990.

What is Yoga?. Writ. and prod. Sharon Gannon and David Life. DVD. Acacia, 2007.