These prompts are modified from “You Are An Artist”
If you want to share #iamadancerchallenge
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There are  no time limits – make this easy for yourself.  It can be short.
All levels and styles are warmly welcomed.  
Do all of them.  Do 1 of them.  Do 1 of them a week.  Do them next month.
These prompts are jumping off points.  You can allow your imagination to be wild.
Film with or without music.  Share publicly or share here in the comment.
No apologies.  No critiques (unless the artist asks for them).
Tues Sept 1 LOOK DOWN
Make a whole piece that reflects the ground you walk on – the texture, the lines, the grandness, the temperature, the comfort, etc.  
Are you in a temple? In quicksand? In your kitchen?
Maybe dance the whole thing on the ground.  
Or maybe dance the whole thing looking down – did you sleep the wrong way, are you injured, do you have a compulsion or fear that forces you to always watch where you step?
Do you see something interesting there? A snake? A portal to another dimension?
Wed Sept 2  BE SOMEONE ELSE
Are you a famous bellydancer? Nejla Ates? Dina? Zoe Jakes?
Are you a famous character? Charlie Chaplin? Darkwing Duck? Shuri? Wonder Woman?
Are you someone in your family?  Are you wearing some of their clothes? Are you someone you saw at the grocery store?
Will you play this character at home or take them out in to the world?
How does this person move? Are they confident? Shy? Open? Angry? Curious?
Thurs Sept 3 BLINDFOLD
Put on a blindfold in a safe space.  
Dance a combination, a feeling, an improvisation, a colour, trace the alphabet, etc or just explore your environment.
Optional: Repeat the combination with no blindfold.
What do you experience? If you do both which is more expressive? What different qualities do they have?
Fri Sept 4 NEVER SEEN
What is something you’ve never seen and probably won’t see in your lifetime?
It can be something inaccessible, invisible, distant, mythical or otherworldly.
What do you know about this something? You can research if that makes you happy.
Maybe a relative of yours you’ve never met? An extinct animal? A mythological creature?
Dance it out.  

Mon Sept 7th OH SO QUIET
Go to a quiet place.  Absorb the silence.
Or just turn off all music and move.  How does your body want to move? Maybe it doesn’t?
What do you discover?
You can be silent with a buddy if you have one.  Is it quiet where you are? If you’re outside is nature making sounds you can play with?  Are people?
Tues Sept 8th CAPTION THIS
Create a piece & invite others to create the caption.
Collaborate.  
Wed Sept 9th LOOK AT THIS STUFF, ISN’T IT NEAT?
Find something common, or mass produced.  Incorporate it in your dance.  Use it the wrong way.  
Make it significant.  Make it sacred.  Ritualize it’s use.  Make it interesting.  Make it werid. Be terrified of it. Or obsessed by it.  Interrogate it. Disassemble it.
Use anything – a chair, a comb, a toaster, a box of tissues, a houseplant, etc.
Use more than 1 object if you like.   Use 2 things together in the wrong way.   See the dramatic potential in your object(s).  Consider giving them special lighting. Be ridiculous.
Thurs Sept 10th SHAPE OF YOU
Find a picture or a portrait with an interesting shape.    
Recreate it. And move from it. Where is the effort? Where is the rest?
Is it a banana? A portrait of Samia Gamal?
Maybe you want to include a few poses and make pathways between them?
Fri Sept 11th WAR, WAR, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
Declare your cause.  What are you fighting for? It can be whimsical or serious, universal or intimate.  Maybe you are the anti-army?  Maybe you are fighting for body hair acceptance?
Create your uniform from materials you have at hand.  It can be as simple as a colour or jogging pants.  How do you style your hair? How do you stand?
Assemble your militia from housemates or pets or “march” alone.  
Mon Sept 14th ART OF LOOKING
Stare into your screen.  Assume what you see is as beautiful as the night sky or as captivating as a painting.
What do you reveal? What do you obscure?
What details do you see?
What frame do you work with? Can you see your whole body? Only the upper body? Just your eyes? Just your hands?  Will you move or just stare back at yourself? All of your instincts are right.  
Maybe today will be 30 seconds of you staring at yourself, unmoving?  Create space for boredom.  What do you discover?    
Tues Sept 15th MAKE IT DANCE
Film yourself doing something mundane – brushing your teeth, cooking, doing laundry, but make it dance.
Stir your cereal with flare. Make laundry angels.  Tear off your rubber gloves and twirl them in style.  Scrub the floor or drum on a table to elicit sound.  Put on a jam and shimmy or slither or sprint.
Is your dance subtle or obvious? Can you stir a cup of coffee & catch the accents in Alf Leyla W Leyla?
Wed Sept 16th  SOUL LIBRARY
Pick 3 of your favorite books.  Don’t think too hard about it (unless you want to).  It can also be the last 3 books you read.  Or the 3 books closest to you.
Can you combine the titles to make an interesting thought or mantra?
Do you want to look up page 56 in all 3 books & create a Frankenstein narrative?
Does Alice get chased by Dracula in Oz?
Maybe you dance out the most defining character traits of the most interesting person in each book?
Do you want to hold the books? Read them under a blanket? Use a flashlight? Maybe that leads you to creating shadow puppets? Follow your curiosity.
Thurs Sept 17th  MAKE YOUR OWN ORCHESTRA
Manipulate your mouth to make different sounds & physically embody them.
Or do a spoken word piece.
Build an instrument out of materials you have at home.  Play it yourself or get a housemate to do it for you.
Make a recording of a walk around your neighbourhood & move to that.
Turn on a fan, or washing machine, or boil pasta & respond to the sounds.
Are you annoyed? Intrigued? Distracted? Enchanted?
Fri Sept 18th  LANDSCAPE
Create a landscape. Gather & arrange materials. It can be as simple as a blanket over 2 chairs.  Do you want to add lighting or be near a window?
Or explore an existing landscape.   Maybe you want to research the land you are on & its indigenous history.
Move around, under, through, over your landscape.  Discover it.  
Be mindful not to harm or alter nature.
Perhaps there is a location that is visible to you but invisible to others? Maybe you want to celebrate graffiti art work? Maybe you want to show reverence for your own front door?
Mon Sept 21st  BAD TO THE BONE
Write the rules down for a particular style – break all of them.  
Make the worst dance possible.   
Reflect a painful or uncomfortable moment in your life.
Create something embarrassing.  Share something that scares you.  
What are you afraid of? How do you feel after sharing it?
Tues Sept 22nd IMPRACTICAL ADVERTISEMENT
Create a video advertisement for an impractical service or product or event.  Perhaps speed dating for rabbits, or a shampoo made of peanut butter, a car that turns into a submarine, or someone who will pick your nose for you.  Make it weird or wonderful.
Unleash your imagination.  
You can also recreate a poster or flyer you’ve seen.
You can talk or not.
You can make it as abstract as you like.
Wed Sept 23rd CYBORG
Design a science fiction character for yourself.
Create some kind of hardware that attaches to you body.
This can be as simple as tinfoil, or spoons taped to your fingers.
Your hardware will enhance your abilities.  As you wear it you transform into your character.
Do they have special powers?  Are they a hero or a villain?
What technological gaps do they satisfy?
Thurs Sept 24th SHADOWS
Play with your shadow on the sidewalk or create a shadow with a flashlight on a wall.
What shapes can you create?
Do they feel soft or scary?
Can you play with scale?
Fri Sept 25th GRAPHIC SCORE
Get a piece of paper & a writing tool.
Play a song.  It can be an old favorite or one you’ve never heard before.  Instrumental may be easier.
You can play with a phrase rather than the entire song.
Capture the notes with dots, long lines, squiggles, loops, zig zags, dashes, etc.  You can create a set of symbols or shapes to denote certain sounds.
Record a video of you sketching the song. Or take a picture of it afterwards.
Mon Sept 28th BOUNDARIES
Consider all the spaces around you that have boundaries.  Doors, windows, fences, cliffs, rivers, etc.
Seek out places that might have tension.  Or imagine the space is contested.
Act out hopping over the border of your lawn for a fight.  
Express wilderness as a colonizer’s concept.  Or nature and civilization, order and chaos, fish and terrestrial beings, childhood and adulthood, private and public, etc.
A skipping rope in a circle might denote a safe zone and anything outside of that space is dangerous – move in & out of that space.
Highlight the relationship or the tension.  Alter the relationship or reconfigure the space.
Tues Sept 29th  5 GESTURES
Think of 5 ways of being, or 5 things you did today or 5 wishes you have.
Create 5 gestures to express those things.
String them together in a pattern or pepper them in a movement exploration.
They can be as simple, subtle, grand or as complex as you like.
Wed Sept 30th I AM A DANCER
Create a video recording of you saying “I am a dancer” unapologetically.
Bonus: You can also share anything you learned or felt.  
Then take a rest! You did amazing!