Since it was decided to focus mainly on the dancer within connecting the world of the dancers with the world of the audience, a toolkit has to be developed for the dancers to express themselves.

Earlier it was discovered that the signature exercise elicited authentic stories about how the dancer truly experienced a phrase in the performance. This session was used to explore how this signature could be improved.

During this session the dancers were first asked to draw out a phrase. This time more pencils and paper space was available. The dancers were requested to think-out loud to promote their choice of performance phrase, pencil sort and drawing style. Afterwards the dancers had to explain what they’ve drawn and annotate this with words or small sentences.

To move from physical drawings to digital ones, the dancers were asked to pinpoint their preferred style of digital drawings. Afterwards a pencil in illustrator was selected and the dancer was requested to draw the same phrase but now digitally.

Although some dancers were a little hesitant with the digital drawings, all succeeded in creating their signature in a digital form. Some were positively surprised by the end-result since the illustrator pencils showed some correcting behaviour, resulting in a surprising end-result.

With this session, which all dancers really enjoyed, I learned the signature was still a very strong tool to elicit open, honest and free storytelling. Furthermore the first steps were made into translating this into a system. Though the actual storytelling could be enhanced a little more.