In Movement on Movement, I reproduce as precisely as possible sequences from the Improvisation Technologies by William Forsythe. They are short lectures where Forsythe presents different tools to generate and analyze movements. He does short improvisation and many gestures that comment on other movements by pointing, underlining, and foregrounding specific elements. These movements are not Forsythe’s choreography, they are what happens when he explains his approach to movement. By treating them as a dance material, I hope to give them another status: what was an explanation of the material becomes the material itself. I thus try to address the question: how can movement be about movement?

While performing these gestures, I develop a reflection on the ways movements are defined and the experiences of the body created by these modes of definition. One can define a movement geometrically, mechanically or by giving oneself a practical goal, the movement can be defined as a problem the performer has to solve or as model he must imitate, this definition can cover the whole body or only a specific body part, etc. All these differences will have a profound impact on the experiences of both the performer and the spectator. By analyzing them, I try to propose different ways of focusing one’s attention on a given movement. The spoken and the gestural text interact. Sometimes they seem to come together, at other times, they are clearly in contradiction and most often, they affect each other to create a third meaning.