8 - Uncertainty in Medicine: Precision in Motion with Chris Aiken
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I think people don't understand that you can prepare for improvise. На час байпровизнь, баки. With known things. Like, I have a hundred and one ways to fall down. I have uh many ways to balance, many ways to resolve certain situations. So that I'm not worried about my safety.
This is the Nocturnus, Uncertainty in Medicine. I'm Emily Silverman. Today we're talking to improvisational dance artist Chris Aiken. Although uncertainty is everywhere in medicine, most of us do our best to avoid it. Chris, on the other hand, seeks uncertainty out. He teaches at Smith College in Western Massachusetts, and his life's work is about getting on stage without a plan, responding to the unknown in real time, literally moving through uncertainty. So we rang up Chris to see if he might have any wisdom to impart to the medical community. I learned a lot from this conversation, but before we dive in, I want to hand the mic over to Molly Rose Williams, our head of story development here at The Nocturnist.
Molly is a dancer herself and first took a class with Chris several years ago. As part of our uncertainty research, she was lucky enough to be invited backstage to one of his rehearsals at Smith. A sort of uncertainty incubator for dancers. So without further ado, here's Molly.
I just wanna start by saying that if you've never seen or done improvisational dance, it's probably not what you think. Yes, you might encounter some meaningful sighs as people twist themselves into odd positions, or a little off-rhythm dancing to absolute silence. But what these tropes don't capture is the potential rigor of the form. This rigor is something I first came across with Chris. When I was twenty five, I took a three week intensive with him at the Bates Dance Festival. A training program for professional and pre professional dancers. And his class rocked my world. Not only was the dancing energetic, muscular, full of delight, but And truly, watching Chris articulate his liquid spine is delightful.
But as you'll hear Every one of the physical explorations Chris offers unfolds into a world of philosophical inquiry. Chris and I have stayed in touch since that first workshop and continue to dance together. So it was with great pleasure that I visited a rehearsal for one of his most recent creative processes this last November.
The studio is a big room next door to the basketball court, but once the doors close, we're surprisingly insulated from the squeaking shoes and shouts from the gym. Three sides of the room are lined with big windows, and the afternoon sun is streaming in, casting square shadows on the grey marley floor. We start in an opening circle eleven dancers, Chris, the musical collaborator Jake, who's also a professor at Smith, and myself. After a check in, Chris introduces the focus for today's rehearsal.
conceptual level, could you bring forward that continual sense of beginning. To to continually begin again. Begin again.
Well at first, Chris says, his main work was to get them more comfortable with the unknown.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–8:06
2
What is the purpose of bringing an improvisational dancer into a medical uncertainty conversation?
8:06–11:04
3
How does Molly Rose Williams describe her first experience with Chris Aiken’s rehearsal?
11:04–23:07
4
What techniques does Chris use to keep dancers from getting too comfortable with the unknown?
23:07–26:27
5
How does the ‘continuous beginning’ prompt help maintain precision without a set plan?
26:27–29:11