3.14.2021
Pi day finds myself and two of my dancers back in the studio following our feedback from the Friday showing. I’m excited about the process of deconstructing my existing choreography and have been listening to a lot of Steve Reich’s discography as inspiration. Using one of his sincopated quick tempo’d songs, we began experimenting with the “wishy-washy” phrase, exaggerating it, changing it’s rhythm, and disconnecting it from the regimented counting we’ve used previously.
I was really excited by the results and think that it creates a much more interesting pallette for the “drone” sections of the dance.
We also began editing some aspects of the “pinwheel” phrase to add some variation and interest to the even movements.
After those sections had been modified, I spent the second hour working with Helen and Ella on a duet, largely improvised, using some of the freer flightier concepts in the piece. I’m interested in movement that speaks of momentum, off balance/off kilter risk taking, huge arms and legs, turns and disorientation. It’s a little difficult to pull this from the dancers as they are reluctant to really push themselves to their limit
Still, I’m excited by the beginnings of this duet and what it might become in time. I’m encouraging that they use this type of movement to dance for each other, as if they’re trying to tell something to a loved one they haven’t been able to talk to in a long time. I’d like their relationship to be clear and intimate, joyful but still longing.
3.18.2021
The arc of the piece is slowly starting to solidify in my mind, but there’s still so much to do. I haven’t figured out transitions or an ending, and I know that those are the things that will really define the piece and pull it all together. I’m trying to tell myself that there’s plenty of time, but the calendar is really staring me down.
I also need to start brainstorming ways for us all to meet in the same space together, it’s getting progressively more difficult to put things together when I can only have two dancers in the studio at a time. If the weather stays nice I may try using one of the school’s lawns–but the floorwork and the jumps in the piece will be hard without a good dance floor, I don’t want anyone getting injured. Will there be opportunities to start rehearsing in Hallie before tech? I desperately need to play with spacing.
Anyway, this week the focus was on altering our existing phrases and creating the new “sweeping” section which has less to do with household chores and more to do with flight and freedom. This section has been haunting me– the antithesis to everything else I’ve created, something I’ve been looking forward to. But I couldn’t set movement for the life of me. So after a lot of improvisation I ended up going into Thursday’s rehearsal and working with the dancers to create the phrase. I felt guilty for not being more prepared but I think the work I had done ahead of time allowed us to get at the heart of what I wanted this section to feel like, and we made some good progress. I’m excited by the section we came up with. (See video).
Unfortunately Thursday’s rehearsal we were missing three dancers, as they needed to attend a lecture for their composition class, so while I’ve created a lot of new material, only two of my dancers know it so far- there’s going to need to be a fair bit of catch up before Sunday. I plan on filming myself going through the phrases so that the missing dancers can do some learning on their own time before our next rehearsal.