Final Project Blog#5 - Rehearsals Begin

March 31, 2011

After finishing our in class composition studies, we have now begun our final project for the class.  We are each choreographing our own piece for the Jr. Choreography Concert and I’m very interested to see how this process will turn out.  From doing our previous studies I’ve learned how I go about rehearsing, choreographing, and researching for my work.  This has helped me to prepare for how I want to work on this final project and what I can do to make this process successful.  I’ve also taken into consideration the rehearsals that I’m currently in, and how my choreographer’s go about their own processes.

For my piece, I have a simple concept that I’m working with.  I’m interested in choreographing movement that contains different levels of energy.  Through the energy given, I want to explore the effects of the movement that is caused by different amount of energy being used.  Based on my previous studies, I know I want to play around with more stillness and simplicity, and I want to experiment with my use of space, facings, and levels on a deeper level. I have five dancers in my piece and one understudy.  My goal during my first few rehearsals is to play around with the idea of having either one main dancer that interacts with the four other dancers, or having multiple groupings within the piece. 

When I met with my professor for my first one on one meeting, I had not yet held a rehearsal with my cast.  I was able to show her two short phrases that I’m planning on expanding on and to gather some feedback and ideas that would help me as I begin my process.  She pointed out a couple of areas in my choreography that appeared random.  There wasn’t a clear initiation and impulse to get to these points in the movement, which caused an interruption to the flow.  Everything she suggested was very enlightening to my creative process and will definitely help me as I’m creating more movement for the piece. 

Our class began reading another book called Dance and the Lived Body by Sandra Horton Fraleigh to guide us through this process of choreography and creating a piece for an audience.  The first chapter of the book discusses existentialism into great detail.  As I was reading over this, I kept getting really lost in her writing.  It was hard for me to understand some of the concepts she went into detail about and I found myself getting frustrated in trying to relate this to my creative process.   Towards the end of the chapter, I was able to relate the concept of my piece to her words.  “Grace, freedom, and mastery appear as willfulness disappears and as effortless ease is achieved…movement may also be performed with effortless ease when such movement is intended and fulfilled with the right fit of effort – that is, effort in perfect proportion to intention” (Fraleigh 20).  As Fraleigh speaks of effort and ease in movement and how it relates to whether or not the dancer is moving freely, I was able to gather a connection of the writing and the concept that I’m working with.  I’m going to explore the relationship of effort I use in the movement to the effects of the different results I end up with.  I want to experience the different outcomes myself so that I can describe to my dancers the effort and energy I would like them to use in order to create the effect I’m looking for.  I hope to find myself using a process Fraleigh mentioned by “solving the problems of dance, learning its forms, and creating its feeling” (Fraleigh 21).

So far I’ve only had one rehearsal with my cast.  I was very nervous to see what all was going to happen during the time I had with them, and to see if any creative thoughts would come about.  I started the rehearsal off by going straight into teaching a phrase.  I wanted to see how they moved into comparison to how I move.  After going over the phrase a few times, I decided to watch them and then move them around in the space.  I was pleased with how fast they were able to pick up the choreography and how they were able to adapt to their surroundings when I changed some of their facings.  We learned another phrase then I played around with the spacing just as I did with the previous one.  As I watched them do the movement, I had an idea of a transition that I wanted to try.  It was right on the spot but I felt in my mind that it could work.  We tried a few different ways to get up off of the ground and I had two of my dancers initiating the movement of the other dancers.  After trying out a few ideas, I ended up deciding on one that I felt was pleasing to watch and kept the transition fluid, yet exciting.  This happens near the end of the video where the dancers are all on their right knee facing the stage left back corner with the left arm straight up in the air.  Everyone rolls back and two hold a position to then rock back up to standing, while three are rolling backwards over their shoulder. I had one dancer suspend that roll to create different timing.  Two dancers then walk in a direct pathway to initiate the other dancers’ handstands to then rock back and walk off the stage.  The dancer that suspended the roll then meets up with the other dancer that is running back the other direction to start a new section. I enjoyed everyone being pulled in different directions and it feels like a smooth entrance into the next part.

I surprisingly felt good about what had happened during the first rehearsal. My dancers were very cooperative and willing to try what I had for them.  I feel that I made a decent start and that I can now dig into how I want to clearly create the beginning, middle, and end.  I want to explore the different focuses that could be used, and what types of relationships I want my dancers to have with each other during the piece. “While a dance usually has an objective, repeatable structure, it is subject to individual interpretation and dependent upon the individual body aesthetic of the articular dancer” (Fraleigh 36).  I’m looking forward to seeing what each dancer brings to the piece and to work from their strengths as movers and performers.  What I did learn from the reading is that there are many approaches to finding a mind body connection when creating the intended movement I want to show, and that it is important to know myself as a choreographer, mover, and person and to let that out when putting the pieces together.

A Day in the Life

March 6, 2011

Assignment #4 Chance Dance

“A Day in the Life”

            There were many things to consider when creating this last study before our final project.  We had to compose a piece for five dancers with four different phrases using Laban dynamics, and incorporate ten random props all by chance.  We were to also think about using group facings and levels differently then before, and create a strong climax in the piece.  For the four phrases, we were to simply come up with movement for movement’s sake and not necessarily have a meaning behind it, just as Merce Cunningham composed his works.  I was looking forward to creating movement this way because I usually have a hard time coming up with concepts for my works, and then choreographing for that specific concept.  I also wanted to make sure that I wasn’t cheating this assignment, so I had my dancers help me randomly choose the orders of the phrases as well as the order of props.  This was also our first time to choreograph a study and not perform in it, and this experience I believe helped prepare myself for the final project.

            We briefly discussed the creative process of Abbs in class before working on our previous assignment, the trios.  Smith-Autard’s Section 4 The Creative Process of Dance goes into far more detail of the five steps and even provides a detailed description of Carly Annable’s personal experience working with this process during her choreographic study of Spaceometry.  For this assignment, I didn’t spend much time in phase 1: the impulse to create, unlike Annable, who did much research for her project beforehand.  She did, however, have a year to work on this study, and not just a week.  Instead, I found myself mostly working in phase 2: working with the medium, by coming up with movement and ideas for the piece.  Out of the eight Laban dynamics, I chose to work with Fast, Slow, Heavy, and Light.  It didn’t take me much time at all to create each phrase, and I knew that once I saw each one done by my dancers, that I would probably do some adjusting and even come up with new ideas. 

During my first rehearsal, I ripped up a piece of paper into small pieces with the four different phrases on each one.  I then put them in a bucket, and had one of my dancers, Jake, reach into the bucket and pick the order of the phrases for me.  I wanted this to be completely chance, so I wanted my dancers to be a part of the choosing process of this study.  The order that we ended up with was Heavy, Slow, Fast, and then Light.  We then did the same process of selecting the props from the bucket to see which prop I was going to use with each phrase.  I would have my dancers, Jessy and Yuki, select from the bucket one at a time, and I would go down the list of my phrases and put a prop with each one until they were all chosen.  Being as this was done by chance, I was very surprised at how everything worked out accordingly.  For the Heavy phrase, the props chosen were the pink bucket and the pink small dog.  For the Slow phrase, the props chosen were the candle, the flower candle holder, the flower, and the green snuggie.  For the Fast phrase, the props chosen were the coffee mug and the book.  For the last phrase, the Light one, the props chosen were the scarf and the winter hat.

I appreciated the way Annable collaborated with her dancers and gave them some artistic freedom when introducing new ideas of her study.  “She determined to experiment and explore her visualized images by setting the dancers tasks – some fairly closed and others more open – in order to generate movement ideas from five dancer-creators whilst she selected, amended, and refined their outcomes to fit in her own imagined motifs and phrases for the composition” (Smith –Autard 143).  Reading about this process that Annable used inspired me to also see what ideas I could grasp by setting movement on some of my dancers and giving the others improvisational freedom and to watch the turn out of this experiment.  I used this process when working with my Heavy and Slow phrases and was very pleased with the way things turned out in each of these sections. 

I really wanted to focus on different facings and levels for this study because feedback that I had received on previous studies was that I needed to explore these choreographic areas more.  A part of this study where I was really satisfied was the beginning of the slow phrase.  I had my dancers standing in a close formation, with two facing the back and the other three facing the front.  Then when they started to do the slow phrase and lunge out in different directions it added more depth and was more pleasing to view. 

I was disappointed in the outcome of phase 4: presentation and performance.  All of us had to concentrate on trying to remember each of the six studies and I think due to lack of rehearsal time, we had some memory issues.  I was very pleased with the performances from my dancers during each phrase, and all of them displayed each different dynamic very well.  However, if we had a chance to rehearse more with the props and music, I believe that the study would’ve been stronger to the audience, especially the end.  A couple of props were forgotten during the performance and I’m sure this cause some confusion to some audience members but I thought to myself that “each onlooker will perceive something different” (Smith-Autard 161).  Although I wasn’t completely satisfied with the outcome of my study, I did receive some constructive and positive feedback from my peers and professor that made me feel a little better.  I wasn’t frustrated with my dancers, but I was frustrated with myself for not spending the right amount of rehearsal time and know that it could’ve been a stronger performance.  I will definitely learn from the mistakes I made from this process and will remember this during my creating process during my final project.