It probably goes without saying that putting a dance concert together is essentially one big problem-solving session. Or maybe endless smaller problems to solve. I've certainly had my share of creative problems in this process, questions and puzzles I've racked my brain about, stayed up late thinking about, solutions that just don't seem to fit, no matter how much I turn them around.
Lately, though, I've been battling a couple of seemingly mundane problems--not as creatively weighty as putting choreography together, perhaps. And yet, in their way, they bring up many of the same questions.
First, I've been frustrated, week after week, by a technical component in one of my dances: how to maneuver multiple long lengths of rope while maintaining the tension in all of them at all times, never letting them lie slack on the floor. We tried looping the ropes, we tried tying them to different body parts, we tried bungee cords. No luck. Finally, picking other people's brains in desperation, we arrived at a retractable mechanism (like one of those dog leashes that pulls out and winds itself back in). I ordered them, they arrived right away, we tried them out in rehearsal... Success! Whew. Although it may seem peripheral to the choreography itself, the problem was really mired in fulfilling my vision for the piece. If I couldn't find a solution, I would have to compromise the image I wanted to create, and I wasn't ready to give up on that image! Not so peripheral, I guess.
Next up, titles. In many ways, I love titles. I love the extra layer of meaning they can add to an artwork, and the ways they offer me to enter a dance. But choosing just the right title can be an agonizing process, for me, anyway. I'm generally pretty particular about how much I want a title to reveal (answer: just the right amount...whatever that means), and I like the words to be significant and true. It's kind of like writing a poem. And I do think I like a poetic sort of connection to exist between the title and a dance--suggestive, subtle, sensory, imagistic. Sometimes I get annoyed at myself for worrying too much about the title, since I don't usually feel that knowing the title is necessary for understanding the dance in some way. Anyway, I've been titling my dances this week and last, and finally settled on a title for the concert a couple of weeks ago. So far, all of the titles of the dances, except for one of them, are sitting well with me. They feel right.
Finally, I've been writing up the press release for the concert. This might seem straightforward, even easy for a writer who loves to write about dance, who has written numerous press releases before. But I've never written one about my OWN work, and that seems to make all the difference. First of all, what do you say about your own work? Do you talk about it the way you perceive it or the way others describe it? How do you refer to yourself in the third person without feeling ridiculous while doing so? ("Throughout the creation of this concert, Morris has been...") And then, there's the "just enough, not too much" problem like with the titles. What is the balance between giving enough information about the concert that people are interested in coming to see it, without telling them what the dances are "about"? I have been really resistant to put forward any interpretations about the dances, or even qualitative words, descriptive words that might overly influence a reader into seeing the dance a certain way. I want them to make their own meaning, find their own words to describe the dances. I opted to write mostly about my process in approaching the project, with just a very little bit about each of the dances. I didn't expect a press release to help me express my artistic philosophy! But it was actually quite helpful for me to write a bit about what the concert as a whole has become, not just what my ideas were going into it.
Wish me luck in finding solutions to the host of creative and production problems I'll be up against in the next month, as I get my dances performance-ready and deal with the logistics of the concert!
Oh, and here's the title I settled on for the concert: REcollection: anchor. drift. filter. frame.
