Ethos of Practice - Improvisation
Natalie Hardy’s movement practice revolves around the utilisation of musicality and performativity in improvisation. Natalie’s works merge sections of genuine musical response improvisation to choreographed movement constructed through improvisational scores and imagery. Through constructing a unique improvisation methodology (seen in the below images), Natalie investigates the juxtaposition between internal and external modes of attention. Through this research, they aim to bring attention to kinaesthetic sensitivity, collaboration, and professional attitudes while sequentially directing an understanding of how a strong performative presence is advanced.
​Natalie’s improvisation methodology revolves around response to music and sound. Even if the improvisation is completed in silence, they bring attention to the inner sounds and workings of the body, alongside the small sounds of the natural world. Therefore, in Natalie’s improvisation prompt images, the drawings are based around music notation and the relationship between organic and geometric forms in written music and dance.
In contact improvisational practices, Natalie focuses on how the individual internal kinaesthetic awareness of a dancer can silently communicate their ideas to a group through flexible external sensitivity. By being open and flexible to changes in the group dynamic by using external sensitivity, Natalie believes that the group can access a collective flow experience and merge internal kinaesthetic experiences with each body in the space. ​
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Photo credit - Asrin Sastradipradja
In a choreographic sense, Natalie shows interest in how a dancer can become a cohesive element inside of a dramaturgical arrangement of set, lighting, materials, and bodies in space. They are also interested in how design-driven concepts provide dancers with minimal or single pointed approaches to performing a task and how this performative state corresponds to robotic intelligence and the developing technology in the world. Through this interest in Interdisciplinary practices, Natalie aims to witness each dancer work collaboratively in their natural ways even though they work with miscellaneous materials, technology, sound, or lighting.
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​Overall, Natalie’s practice revolves around researching the relationship and reactions dancers experience towards external factors. These external factors include using materials inside choreography or merging planned choreographic elements with real-time improvised reactions to music.
Photo credit: Tilly Parsons (2025)
Photo drawn by Natalie Hardy, 2025
1) When working with the score of organic shapes, both the movement direction and kinaesthetic sensitivity is flexible and in a state of constant movement/activation. Flexible kinaesthetic sensitivity includes, but is not limited to, external awareness, attentive gaze that constantly moves/not fixated on one point, and seeing/actively looking at all areas of the space surrounding the dancer.
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2) Geometric shapes is a score that asks a dancer to respond to music by “cutting the space” and focusing on the linear qualities of all extremities. The kinaesthetic sensitivity is internal and fixated on one point in space or watching the body move.
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3) After a dancer becomes clear on the seperate tones and sensitivities of the improvisation scores, amalgamation of internal and external attention can occur. A dancer is asked to constantly shift between organic and constant movements to linear movements with rigid dynamic qualities
Natalie Hardy’s contact improvisation practice involves the relationship between two or more dancers and their internal and external sensitivities. Individually, each dancer has a unique internal sensitivity and understanding of an improvisational score/prompt/task, however by using external sensitivity, those unique ideas merge together to generate a collective flow experience.
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Note: both improvisational score/explanation images were designed and drawn in 2025 by Natalie Hardy using Microsoft Word
