Reaching Resolution

February 22, 2011

Assignment #3 Trio

“Reaching Resolution”

For this assignment, we went from co-collaborating a duet with a partner, to choreographing a trio with three dancers.  The requirements of this assignment were to have mixed meter phrasing, body part initiation, and a breath phrase.  Although I was really looking forward to creating this trio, I was very nervous about completing the requirements asked.  In class, I learned that it is important to make sure the counts of the meter are fitting my movement, and that I shouldn’t try to come up with counts then force movement into the mixed meter.  I was worried that jumping around to different meters was going to make my movement less organic and I feel as though I was challenged with this part of the assignment. I

When I began working on my mixed meter, I simply wrote out my telephone number and visually saw what my mixed meter could very well look like.  It wasn’t until I began creating movement when I realized it this particular set of number was going to work.  I had to first decide was tempo was, and that usually is found out by the first weight shift.  I knew that I wanted to have some sort of running happening at the beginning of the piece, so I knew that I didn’t want the tempo to be very slow.  I had to keep in mind though that if I was going to start out at a brisker tempo, I was going to have to stay consistent with it throughout the piece. I had to decide if it was going to work out, and overall I think the tempo I chose to work with was pleasing.  To make a clear change between the mixed meters, we were to have the count one accented.  I could tell by the response from my peers after performing this trio, that the accents weren’t as clear as I thought I had made them.

Another important part of this assignment was to have body initiations throughout the entire piece.  In class, we did an improvisational exercise in where we were to work with different parts of our body to initiate movement that lead into unusual and interesting movement.  To feel that initiation, we were to imagine that a rope pulling through space.  After doing this exercise, I discovered that I enjoy initiating movement through parts of my body such as the head, the shoulders, the hips, and even the shoulder blades.  These felt the best in my body so I knew I wanted to make sure and incorporate each of them into the piece.   I found it interesting that I enjoyed initiating from my shoulders because I hold so much tension in them and didn’t think that would be a strong part of my body to initiate from.  Surprisingly though, I ended up using my shoulders as movement initiators the most.  With this task, I felt very restricted when creating movement.  I was worried about this part of this assignment because I couldn’t grasp the thought of the entire piece being done with just initiations, and I didn’t feel as though I was getting creative enough in the process.  It took me many tries and a long time in the studio to really get creative with movement flowing from a body initiation. 

In the piece, we were to break away from the mixed meter and have a breath phrase as our timing.  After having a hard time working with the mixed meter, I was looking forward to using our breath to move.  This part didn’t take me long to create, but after putting in on the other two dancers and in the piece, I ended up enjoying it the most.  Not only to do in my body, but to see from the video as well.  Using my breath helped me to tune into my body and feel the initiations rippling throughout and causing other movement to happen.  I decided to have each of us dance in a very tight triangle so that we could hear and feel each other’s breath and move very organically with each other.  Some feedback that I received from the class was that the tight triangular formation wasn’t visually pleasing to watch, and cause awkward moments to happen between the dancers.  Many parts of the piece were done in a flat on, triangle formation.  I think because we didn’t have that much time to prepare the piece, I didn’t pay as close attention to our relationship to each other in space as I should have.  During feedback, I learned from my peers and professor, that parts of the piece seemed flat, and that I should experiment with different facings.  I completely agree with this idea and will definitely put more thought into this element of construction on future pieces. 

The music I chose for this piece was an early 20^th century composer, Claude Debussy.  His piece had a strong, steady tempo to begin with, and was the closest match to how fast I had been counting my movement.  Although I had to have my mixed meter timing over his tempo, I felt that it still enhanced the piece.  I especially enjoyed the musical change that happened as we began our breath phrase.  It transitioned into a lighter, more flowing feel and helped me, and hopefully my other two dancers to really tune in to our breath and have it support the movement. 

One of the questions I asked the viewers was if they saw a climax in the piece, or if there were multiple parts of excitement.  My professor then informed me that a climax doesn’t necessarily have to be exciting, but that it should be a clear difference in the movement.  I believe that gathering in the clump for the breath phrase was our climactic part of the piece.  In the Table 4 of Methods of Construction 5 – Elements of Construction in Smith’s writing, it displayed different ways in which a climax can be achieved.  I believe that our climax fell under a change in quality, a change in our relationship with each other, our space, although that aspect didn’t seem to work, and even our action.  Smith discusses how the climax of the piece is just one part of eight elements that a piece should to properly create a dance piece.  All of them should unify the piece, which is overall the aim in any art (Smith 65).  Watching the video, I feel that I there were parts of the piece, that wish further rehearsing, I could enhance to create more unity.  There were spacing issues, several moments of unison, not enough variation and balance.  Be having these tools to follow from the book, and the choreographic tools I receive in class, I will be able to put my creative work to the test to hopefully create more unified pieces and fit that are visually pleasing.

Through It All

February 13, 2011

Assignment #2 Duet

"Through It All"

            For our second assignment in class, we were to co-choreograph a duet with a peer.  The guidelines for our duet consisted of symmetry in shape and space, asymmetry in shape and space, contact, focus, and simple transitions.  Although this may sound very simple, it was a bit of a challenge for my partner and me.  To help us understand symmetrical and asymmetrical forms visually, we brought in objects of nature from outside into the classroom and set them out on the floor in a pattern to observe.  We were to gather things that were symmetrical and things that were asymmetrical.  Some of the objects that were brought into class were leaves, branches, grass, berries, and more.  We made a line of all the symmetrical objects and a line of all the asymmetrical objects.  Once this was done, we rearranged them to create some unique and beautiful symmetrical and asymmetrical pairings.  When we were done with this, everyone took a few steps back and observed what we had created.  It was simply beautiful.  Within a matter of minutes, we, as a class, created this incredible piece of art.  From this in-class task, I learned that it doesn’t take a lot of time and over analyzing to create art with contrasting shapes.  As a choreographer, I tend to spend much more time that is needed to come up with material, because I’m always over thinking and analyzing my every move.  Working this way can be stressful, unproductive, and not get you very far in your ideas.  I was looking forward to working on simplifying my process of composition, and collaborating with a partner.

We drew names in class to see who we would be working with and I chose Christina.  I was looking forward to working with her because I thought that we would have similar ideas in choreographing.  Once we all had our partners, we did an in-class improvisation with them to get comfortable working and moving together.  Because I know Christina well, it didn’t take me long to get comfortable with her at all.  We first tuned into each other’s breath and then began moving slowly and first.  We stayed in contact for a while, discovering new ways to move together and create shapes.  We then shifted into focusing on each other, first, by making eye contact.  I’m not the best at keeping my composer when making eye contact with someone, so it took us a little time to get used to that feeling.  I then felt comfortable doing this, and we began moving in the space again, but keeping our eyes on each other.  Then we discovered different ways of focusing, for instance, focusing on parts of our own bodies and focusing on parts of each other’s bodies, and constantly switching from each option.  Once we finished moving, I felt a deeper connection to Christina.  We had connected to each other’s breath, bodies, and focus and I found it very comfortable doing so.  After discussing with her, we were exciting to begin choreographing together, now that we had these new ideas and tools to work with.   

For our music, we were to choose from a composer from the Classical period; Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert to name a few.  In the music analysis class I had taken a couple of years ago, I did a study on Schubert’s work.  Because I was comfortable with this composer, I knew that I most likely wanted to choose one of his works for our duet.  Christina and I browsed through all four of these composers’ works and both agreed to narrow our choices down to some of Schubert’s works.  We came across one and immediately fell in love with the idea of working with it.  The music selection we chose was performed by Vladimir Horowitz and was the collaboration and Liszt and Schubert titled “Soirees de Vienne: Valse-Caprice No. 6.” We enjoyed the dramatic tone of the piano and thought it would be an interested process to choreograph to this piece of music, so we went for it!

When Christina and I started our process of choreographing, we were over thinking and not coming up with a lot of material to work with.  We were frustrated with the guidelines, because we weren’t coming up with very creative ways to by symmetrical, and weren’t sure how to make the shapes appear organic instead of just thrown in the piece.  We worked in front of the mirror mostly to make sure the shapes that we did design looked aesthetically pleasing to us.  I read in our book Dance Composition that the “relationship of lines and shapes in space should make the dance a pleasure to view – an aesthetic experience. It is like standing back to view a beautiful cathedral” (Smith-Autard 54).  We asked our professor to watch our beginning to see if we were off to a good start, and she gave us some feedback as well as suggestions on how to make to more unique, and pleasing to watch.  Once we stopped questioning ourselves and just kept on throwing ideas out there, we began to get the hang of it and were working together greatly.  We decided to add eye focus to walks around each other throughout the piece to feel a connection with each other when we were dancing.  We were playing around with asymmetrical shapes and came up with some interesting counterbalances and shapes to work with.  We played off the music and planned on accenting different parts with our shapes. “The dancer’s feeling of shape through kinesthetic sensation of the movement is a very important aspect of presentation of the dance to an audience” (Smith-Autard 42).  We reworked some of the shapes and how we moved into them to make sure they had meaning and purpose.

 

Because our schedules were different, we didn’t have as much time as we would’ve liked to rehearse our duet.  On the day of showing, we were a little nervous as to how it was going to turn out when we performed it.  Although we had a few memory and timing issues when we were performing, we received some surprising feedback.  Some things that were said were that they really enjoyed the shapes we made, our relationship with each other, and our connection to the movement.  Although we were unsure of our piece, we seemed to have pleased our audience, which than pleased us! I really enjoyed collaborating with a partner and I look forward to working on duets in the future now that I’ve worked on my choreographic process in a different way.