Impressions

The works are developing. In fits and starts, sometimes, but all of the works are going somewhere. The process is simultaneously thrilling and agonizing, as I watch the dances take shape and wonder whether I'm making good/interesting/useful/important choices.

My own impressions of the works--their character, their "aboutness," a sense of their arc-- are coalescing enough so that I can solicit impressions from others. I had my first observers in rehearsals last week; on Tuesday, a member of my thesis committee who was also my choreography teacher for two semesters, and on Sunday, the chair of my thesis committee, both supremely perceptive and skilled observers and interpreters of dance. Since hearing their impressions (not really feedback, in the way of improving, but more: "This is what I observed and this is what it meant to me."), I've been thinking a lot about how these impressions affect or intersect with mine, whether others share those impressions, and overall, what do I do with them? How do they go into the continued development of the work? My current course of action: invite others into the rehearsals, ask dancers for their impressions, collect information. I may end up with too many different interpretations, too much information. I hope that it won't stifle the process. I don't really expect it too, however. Right now, I feel like I'll be able to choose the information that seems most important, and not feel obligated to satisfy everyone's interests or interpretations.

Already, the comments I've gotten from my two committee members have been quite revealing about my own impressions about the work, what it is that I've been thinking about. And it's even brought up something of a contradiction for me in how I think about and "do" choreography. I've been saying and writing and thinking about how important it is to me that my dancers are really individuals, not just any body, but these people. I solicit movement contributions from the dancers, and foster an individualistic approach to performing the movement. I generally welcome variation. And ultimately, it is important to me to be working with these particular people; I know the work would not be developing in the same way if I were working with others. However, I realized that in developing most of these dances, I've been thinking about how the movement interacts. What is the character of the movement? What is the movement communicating? In contrast, one of my committee members posed this question to me: Who are these women? And why are they moving in this particular way? My committee chair wondered similar things--why that dancer with the other dancers? What does it mean that those three people are doing something different than the rest? What is the relationship of the big group to the small group? What does it mean that these dancers belong to one group in this section and a different group in the next section?

I realized that I had not thought about the continuity of character, or the implications of these particular dancers in this particular combination. I'd been making sure the movement was seen in particular ways, or at particular intervals, as if the movement was the only thing communicating.

Big questions now, about how this new consciousness affects the choreography...

I hope to post some more video soon, so stay tuned.

Pictures #2

Pictures and a request

In this post and the next (Pictures #2) are recent photos of the new work (all photos by Sinru Ku).  They represent different sections of the larger whole.  I'd love your input--what, if anything, do these photos tell you about the work?  Do they say anything to you about the movement, about the way the groups are arranged, anything about theme or story, or anything?  Although they are just selected moments--and out of context for most of you--I wonder how they read to others, and whether those impressions mean anything to or for the developing work.

Research

A lot of the early part of my process is research--real research, like the kind you do in a library, or online, or in a science lab.  I like to test the boundaries of the ideas, of the movement, to begin to understand what we're working with.  As part of this research process for my new choreography this year, I've been investigating the concept of "drift," or a gradual, incremental changing or shifting.  A few weeks ago, one of my casts helped with this research into the nature of drift.  Here's a reflection I wrote after that rehearsal; I'm still working on what it means for the dance, or how it affects the choreography itself.

What is the nature of drift?  How far can something drift before it becomes something new?

Last week, I asked my dancers to create phrases that were abstracted from the original phrases I taught a few weeks ago.  These abstracted phrases were to retain something of the flow/essence of the original.  This week, I asked my dancers to start with these abstracted phrases and see if they could “drift” the phrase back to the original.  The process of drifting back to the original from this place happened in different ways in with different degrees of difficulty for each dancer.  When we reflected on their experience afterward, we discovered something about drift. 

For one thing, it seemed clear that this drifting backwards depended in part on the choices one made to abstract the original phrase.  Dancers who chose to keep their abstraction fairly close to the original by maintaining the spatial pathway, for instance, or changing the level of or body part performing the movement, found that drifting backwards was a gradual process of reversing those decisions.  Each reversal brought them closer to the original phrase.  Another dancer, who had gone farther down the road of abstraction, described her experience of the relationship between the abstracted and original phrases as two parallel lines—in relationship with each other, but never actually intersecting.  For her, the process of trying to drift from one to the other put her in the space between them, a liminal space that was sometimes hard to navigate.

Although the idea of “drift” has an organic, flowing feel, we all found that this exercise required strategy.  (To be fair, they had not created the abstracted phrases by “drifting” the original, so to “drift” back was really not an organic matter.)  It seemed to be a process of addition, deletion, and substitution, as one dancer described it; an intentional process of change, rather than a gradual one—even if those intentional changes were gradual and incremental. 

At the same time, the dancers described this process as making stronger the links between the abstracted and the original phrase.  The exercise required them to retrace their steps in a manner of speaking, to remember what they did—what choices they made—to abstract the phrase.  

The idea of memory came up again in our discussion of the second part of the exercise.  After they struggled with drifting back to the original for a while, I asked them to start with their abstracted phrases and let them drift—in the more organic sense.  I asked them to be aware in the back of their minds about when or whether there’s a point that what they are doing seems like a new thing—totally different from what they started from.  Many of them described thinking of the original phrase (or their abstracted phrase) as an anchor point—a point that allowed them to find their way back if they felt they were drifting too far or too fast.  Others talked about the way letting the phrase drift was different from improvising on a theme—drifting, one said, makes you set restrictions, since each version is still connected or related in some way to what came before it.  In terms of becoming a new phrase with enough drift, most dancers were clear that even when what they were doing felt very different from what they started from, as long as they knew what the original was—as long as they remembered the origin—then it was still related, still part of the same phenomenon.  However, all acknowledged that someone from “outside” might not recognize the threads of the original in the new.  One dancer let her phrase drift quite far from the original, first preserving the general spatial pathway but drifting the movement, and then letting herself drift the spatial element.  She described feeling that what she came to was, in fact, a different thing entirely—it felt unconnected.  Even though she could probably trace the pathway of the changes, the new movement required her to use her body in an entirely different way from the original and made her feel very different than what she started with.  Despite the tether of memory, the somatic experience of the movement had drifted significantly for her. 

So, how does one tell whether something has drifted to become a new thing or whether it still contains enough traces of the original to be related?  Visual perception does not seem to be enough.  In fact, it seems clear that this ascribing of meaning and identity to something seems entirely based on individual perception.  For the dancers inside this experience, the distance of drift could be much greater than for an outside observer.  Even if a visual similarity is established between one thing and its origin, the experience of the two things might be different enough (somatically) to push it over into the “new” category.

Conversation Piece

Finally, some video of rehearsal. This is an improvised trio from the Conversation Piece rehearsals. We work quite a bit with improvisation, to really inhabit the movement material, to discover how it interacts with other movement, to find the variety of movement qualities possible for the vocabulary. Everything we do is focused on coming into communication with another person (or people), developing and practicing this sort of non-verbal communication and awareness. I am in awe of my dancers' ability to open themselves to this kind of work. We have been learning and talking a lot recently about the different ways we each communicate and how that translates, or doesn't, into our movement style. We've done a lot of work in duets, but not much in trios, so this is an exploration from a few weeks ago, to see how each of the dancer's individual movement might work together.

I thought hard about whether to share video from this rehearsal in particular, because the atmosphere we create together seems almost sacred. I wasn't sure if I wanted to open it up to other people. But, ultimately, I'm thrilled with the kind of work we're doing here, and wanted to share it with you. The dancers are Melanie Greene, Ally Lloyd, and Morgan Carroll.

Process/Progress Report

Apparently, the six-week mark means something for my creative process...or maybe I've just internalized the academic calendar.

Six weeks is when I start to feel that the initial creating, researching, exploring period is drawing to a close and it's time to start putting things together.

Six weeks is when I start to feel that it's time to find the music I might want to use.

Six weeks is when I start to doubt myself, when I feel that however I start to organize the material we've created won't really do it justice.

I'm feeling these "deadlines" particularly in the two newest dances--my "Drift" piece and "Every Falling Thing" (or whatever it'll be called eventually). For "Conversation Piece" I don't feel quite the same pressure, although I did resolve last night, on the warning of one of my dancers, to take a break in the active research of the movement and see what we can do with what we have. Otherwise, as my dancer cautioned, I'll just have more and more information.

A year or two ago, I started to notice similarities between the way I choreograph and the way I write papers. In writing, I tend to construct small chunks of the paper at a time, often including phrases like "something more here..." when I know that I need to round out my idea but am not sure yet how to do that. I might write the parts I am sure about, leaving some holes to fill in, or rearranging the parts until they feel right. When I choreograph, I often do that too--putting together small pieces of choreography and moving them around, knowing where the holes are that need to be filled, sometimes even reaching the "end" of the dance before going back to fill them in. (This is in contrast to one of my colleagues who was thinking about this metaphor with me--in writing and dance-making, she tends to start at the beginning and work straight through, just get it all down, before going back to edit.)

This year, I'm reminded that when I write a research paper, I go a little overboard, usually, in the research phase, and have to really rein myself in to be able to start the actual writing part. So, maybe this is the time in my dance-making to start to wind down the research, and force myself to start "writing." I'll have to trust that, like the research paper, once I get going, it'll start to flow on its own momentum.