on Not Knowing....Yet

Recently, in rehearsals, in conversations with colleagues, in my own thinking and planning, I've noticed myself saying frequently, "I don't know what happens next yet," or "I'm not sure why this happens here, but let's see what happens."  I probably wouldn't have noticed so much if comments from a few others hadn't suggested that not everybody works this way (or says it out loud, anyway).  It feels so natural to me that I forget that I haven't always worked this way, either. 

At the beginning of the semester, one of my committee members said something to the effect that he hadn't expected me to be so comfortable with uncertainty, with holding that uncertainty and still going forward.  At the time, I wondered about this, too.  In everyday life (not just choreography-land) I certainly have known myself to want to KNOW things, know what I thought about something, even if what I thought I knew changed later.  I wanted to be certain about myself, my positions on things, at least for the moment.  I don't know when that started to change, but I don't think that's true for me anymore.  I do feel more comfortable with uncertainty, with not knowing, with trusting that clarity will come...sometime.  Not that this attitude is always easy.  The uncertainty facing me next year certainly gives me a fair amount of anxiety!  

In my choreographic approach in the past, I also wanted to know.  If I didn't know what happened next, I worked hard to figure it out right away.  I think I came in to rehearsal knowing.  Not that things didn't change in rehearsal, but I began with a very clear sense of what I wanted to happen.  Again, I'm not sure when that started to change, but in the last few years, that certainty has generally loosened into trust.  I hold a great deal of questions about each dance like a bunch of balloons, trusting that as we continue, the answers will start to come clear.  I trust that the dancers will make choices, will show through their embodiment of our ideas, what the dance is turning into.  I trust that when I see or sense the/a right answer to one of the questions, I'll recognize it.  I have a very clear sense this year of discovering the dance and its meaning(s), not necessarily creating it.  Or maybe it's more accurate to say, discovering what the dance is and what it does, rather than creating those things.  There is definitely creation and shaping going on constantly in the process, by me and by the dancers.

This weekend, as I plan for my Sunday rehearsal, I'll be sharing some of the questions floating around for that dance at the moment.

Progress!

After a period of stagnation, I finally feel like the new version of Every Falling Thing is moving forward. For this dance in particular, it seemed important to find just the right music, with just the right emotional tenor, just the right amount of instrumentation. I hoped that finding the music would jump-start the process of structuring the large amount of material we had created. It was quite an ordeal to find something that felt just right (or at least, right enough...). Finally, success! Instead of one track, I've found 4 separate pieces that I've arranged in a way that seems promising. I like the music quite a lot, and it has, in some ways, prompted a jumping into the next phase of the choreography. The music itself, while not really serving as a rhythmic structure for the dance, does have some distinctive moments, and I'm having a bit of a struggle with the musical side of myself. One of my aims for this piece was to loosen the relationship of the dance and the music; the first version seemed too tightly bound to the rhythmic nuance of the music. I haven't created the movement to this music (or any music, for that matter). But how much do I let the music shape the movement, now? Can I (how?), should I ignore the musical cues that are tempting me to highlight them with movement? In many senses, this becomes a philosophical question, surrounded by considerations of modern and post-modern dance, the relative values of dance and music, tradition, innovation, change for the sake of change, comfort of the audience. But it's clearly also an aesthetic question, as I decide what relationship between dance and music makes a stronger dance in this case (stronger how? stronger for whom?). I imagine I'll be wrestling with this one for a while...

Here's a tiny clip of a recent rehearsal for this dance (sans music), and just a glimpse of some of the movement we're putting together. The dancers are Kristen Lucas, Chelsea Flanagan, Lindsey Archer, Denise Murphy, Morgan Carroll, (and Jessi Tilden, not captured by the camera's reach).