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.