April 7, 2011
As I continue my creative process for the final choreographic project, I have found many influencing factors presented in the book. As a choreographer, it is my job to provide aesthetically pleasing choreography in my work. I strive to create meaningful movement that touches the dancers as well as the audience. Being new to choreography for dance as an art, I’ve learned many different ideas to experiment with during my creative process. It is important for me to understand how I want my dancers to perceive the movement and feeling of the movement, so that hopefully the audience will feel the aesthetic intent that I’m going for. In order for my dancers to understand where I’m coming from or how I want them to do the movement, I have to be very clear in my body and explain the aesthetics. I have found this step of the process to be more challenging than expected, but the reading has encouraged me to dig deeper into the true aesthetics that I want to show through my work.
The third chapter of Sondra Horton Fraleigh’s Dance and the Lived Body introduced ideas and concepts about the role of aesthetics in dance. The author discusses that the purpose of dance is its aesthetic intent (Fraleigh 43). If the dancers aren’t feeling the qualities of the aesthetics of the movement through their sentient life, chances are that the audience isn’t going to understand the aesthetics of the piece, which to the choreographer, results in failure. Then author then makes a point that “the experience is valued when the aesthetic is realized” (Fraleigh 47). A goal that I have for myself through this choreographic process is to experience the aesthetics when creating movement for the piece. The following steps would then be to provide these qualities to my dancers so that they can hopefully complete this process by making these qualities clear to themselves and the audience.
To prepare myself for this process, I’ve been getting to my rehearsals about an hour early to do some improvising in the space to the music I’ve selected to work with. This brings my focus into myself and I concentrate on how I feel when my body is moving in certain ways. Through this step of the process, I then feel mentally and physically ready to work with my dancers when they arrive to rehearsal. This week I worked with two of my dancers, Sammi and Christina who I have doing a short duet in the piece. After meeting with my professor and showing her some rough footage, she suggested that I go with a different connection between the dancers that I originally. I changed up their intentions of effort, and it seems to be coming across as more aesthetically pleasing. As I watched the two dancers rehearsing the movement, that their aesthetics appear to be different than how I feel them in my body, therefore it doesn’t look how I imagined it would. To fix this, I need to find imagery that reflects what I’m feeling and give them the images to use when they move. Hopefully through imagery, I will see a difference in a positive way.
I spent some time in the studio with my solo dancer, Sammi. For her solo, I though it would be interesting to work together and see how she moves in a relating way to what I’m doing. “Often the choreographer and the dancer are one in the same, or the choreographer may constitute the dance as he makes the dance for someone else” (Fraleigh 50). As we were moving together in the space, I could feel that our energies were matching up and the aesthetics in each of our movements were connecting together on the same level. I feel as though she took on the aesthetics that were coming across in my movement and felt them in her own movement. I was very satisfied with this rehearsal time and know that with some cleaning and better imagery, the solo will provide the aesthetics I want the audience to feel.
The reading has opened up my mind to many approaches in my creative process and is providing hope that I will end up with a satisfying product that is aesthetically pleasing to my dancers, the audience, and myself.
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