{"id":209,"date":"2021-03-04T10:22:29","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T15:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/?page_id=209"},"modified":"2021-05-24T10:56:04","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T14:56:04","slug":"1-5-cd-progress-log","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/catherine-home\/1-5-cd-progress-log\/","title":{"rendered":"1.5 Casting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Audition Process 3.3.2021<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve known since I first started preparing for my thesis that I was interested in working with a fairly large cast of dancers. In other years this may have looked like seven or eight, but I&#8217;ve scaled down to four or five in order to minimize the issues with campus safety restrictions.<\/p>\n<p>Large casts appeal to me because I feel it allows more opportunities to play with spatial patterning and asymmetry, things that appeal to the &#8220;math&#8221; side of my brain. When trying to write the equation that fits a set of points, the equation is more accurate the more data points are available, they call this the &#8220;curve of best fit&#8221;. I think in some ways that&#8217;s how I see bodies in space, they contribute more information and allow me to find a clearer curve.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the audition process has been hanging over my head since the start of the semester, as I knew it would be necessary and would need to happen fast. I&#8217;ve never held an audition before and in the hours leading up to it I was just as nervous as I might be if I was one of the dancers being auditioned. Sharing choreography is a really intimate process for me, and I didn&#8217;t feel like I had anything &#8220;worthy&#8221; of teaching in that moment. Of course, I have many weeks to refine and rearrange and create new material, but presenting something as the first impression of my making style to dancers was scary.<\/p>\n<p>Ten dancers showed up to the rather impromptu audition, and all of them were really fun to watch and work with. It&#8217;s been difficult to narrow down my cast list and determine who I most want to spend the semester with, especially since so many of them are strangers to me. It&#8217;s tempting to only cast friends and dancers I know but I think my piece will be more interesting and this process will be more enriching if I open myself to new people.<\/p>\n<p>One thing I found surprising was how helpful it was to watch Auxenia&#8217;s movement on the dancers. Her section of the audition really gave me a chance to sit and watch them work without the anxiety of my own teaching or choreography factoring into the equation. I think that was where I gained most of my opinions and insight on the dancers. When it was my turn to teach, it was hard to play both teacher and watcher, and I&#8217;m finding that watching the recording after the fact is giving me a lot more information than the audition did right in the moment.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-210 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/643\/2021\/03\/auditionstill-300x169.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"413\" height=\"237\" \/><\/p>\n<p>My final cast list is: Emma Frank, Naomi Carpenter, Helen Danielson, Mara Kelley, and Ella Ammann-Bianciardi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Audition Process 3.3.2021 I&#8217;ve known since I first started preparing for my thesis that I was interested in working with a fairly large cast of dancers. In other years this may have looked like seven or eight, but I&#8217;ve scaled &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/catherine-home\/1-5-cd-progress-log\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2017,"featured_media":744,"parent":36,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-209","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2017"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":596,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/209\/revisions\/596"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/36"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/dan399-sp21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}