Lesson of the Week: Simplify

I've been thinking a lot this week about numbers. Number of people in my cast, number of dances, number of people in each dance, number of outside commitments, number of weeks left... It is all overwhelming. Now I'm getting to a point where things are starting to be more clear. I've had a few dancers drop out or make the decision not to be a part of the project, which is really fine with me, but its forced me to think more about the people I'm working with and what I'm expecting from them and I what I want as a whole from my cast. I made a decision to cut my "Habits" cast down from 13 to 11. Many of the dancers weren't being utilized as much as they could be and I could cover all the parts with fewer people than I was using. Same with the "Lights" piece - I have about 7 minutes of the dance set and I've only used about 7-8 people, but I have 15 to choose from. I made some trims from here as well and I feel less stressed out about how to use all the dancers now.

Thinking about the first 3 weeks

I'm officially three weeks in with rehearsals and I haven't been posting much here because it's been a lot of throwing material out there and seeing what comes out. I'm finding the most difficult thing right now is the fact that I am at the "starting line" with multiple dances and it is hard to switch gears so quickly from one rehearsal to the next. I am having thoughts about the entirety of my concert now that I have seen the beginnings of everything and I'm reminding myself everyday that I don't have to make HUGE decisions about my concert TODAY. I have a hard time with uncertainty and any issues that come up, I want to be fixed ASAP. This is completely unnecessary and I have found people to continue reminding me of this!

So, where am I on everything?

1. I have decided for the time being to treat the first half of my concert as one "piece" with various sections, rather than three separate dances. There are three elements I am playing with (lights, rhythm/tap, and musical interaction) but I've realized that these things don't need to be separate. I'm still working with the idea of memory and how a memory or memories exist/work/change/get remembered and I've found a way to connect this with the use of lights... but why can't the other elements be an extension of this? So, now I have one larger piece. Currently, I have completed a draft of what I'm calling section 1, or the introduction to my concert. I've expanded the idea of using flashlights to include lamps and other means of lighting beyond what the theater has to offer. The rough draft of section 1 currently is running about 6 minutes and has a transition leading into section 2, which will begin the work with the flashlights and multiple dancers. The sensors are still being worked out and I have met with my composer friend, Ned Emerson, to talk about this section a few times. We hope to have decided upon an interface by October 1st. There is a possibility that Ned will actually compose or at least compile the music for the entirety of the first half of the concert. With the tap/contemporary fused section, rehearsals are underway, but still building material. I have ideas for how it will fit in, but for now, I am just working on the movement content.
2. My "communication" duet is going fine - I had to replace a dancer, but I found someone already in the cast who was a good fit. I have two small movement sections that I am currently working on - they will be the first and last sections of the piece, so I am working from the bookends and coming inward. I have plans for the first section of this piece to be filmed outside as a dance for the camera to be projected, and then segue into the live dancing portion of the piece. I'm having a difficult time figuring out how I want this piece to appear, but again... this isn't a decision I have to make right now! I'm currently gathering old cell phones and other devices for use in this piece. There will definitely be a large number of props in use.
3. The re-working of "___ism" is proving difficult but I have decided to take the piece from a big-picture-survey of how humans organize themselves to change into a view into my own experiences as a human in this society. I'm not connecting to the larger-picture because I haven't lived it... but I certainly have plenty of my own experiences to choose from. I'm still teaching a lot of movement, but we have had the opportunity to start structuring some in rehearsals. I'm finding a few elements from the original piece surviving, but its in different context, which is exciting to me. I'm really enjoying seeing the male bodies move and the two women are holding their own - its 5 men & 2 women - definitely is speaking to me about the ways in which there are still inequalities for women.. even in dance! Men are rare enough in dance that it always seems like one step forward and two steps back for the girls... not that men don't have their own difficulties but they are often given more opportunities simply because of numbers (odds, ratios, etc.)
4. "Habits" is going well. We're still just learning and re-setting, but we've been adding in new gestures along the way. There isn't a lot to say here, except that I'm finding myself loving this dance more and more every day.

Thats all for now.

New thoughts - Personal thoughts

Something I've been struggling with in re-working my "____ism" piece is deciding what exactly I am trying to say. I told the dancers last week that I'm not particularly trying to voice a political stance saying "capitalism is good, communism is bad" or anything like that, but I'm genuinely interested in studying how groups of people organize themselves and how they function. This is proving to be a large and broad task for one 8-15 minute piece!

Something I've realized is that it is OK to let my personal feelings, experiences, and views in. After all, it IS my concert. The dancers have authority to tell me if they disagree with something I ask of them or if we don't share the same views or values. I'm going to try and reshape the reworked "____ism" piece (which may be renamed eventually) to allow my personal experiences and feelings to be reflected, instead of trying to cover all the angles of possibility. Tomorrow, in rehearsal, we will be diving into one feeling/experience I have repeatedly had, rather than trying to come up with all possible ways of organizing ourselves.

Thoughts on memory

Last night, I had my first rehearsal with my largest cast - the "piece" or "pieces" that I'm currently referring to as the Lights piece. Something that has been intriguing to me is the idea of how we remember. Why do we remember certain things more than others? Is it because we have a picture from a moment in time? How do we remember - are colors, relationships, situations, people driving those memories? How does one memory or thought lead us into another and where does it go from there? Often times more memorable memories can lead us into memories that we thought had been forgotten.

In rehearsal, I started by talking about my vision for the concert (fairly vaguely) and where this group of people fits in. I talked about the ways in which I like to work (providing movement, some writing prompts and movement invention from prompts, dancers' input in modification of movement, chance, etc.) and also some ways of working in which I haven't had much of a chance (or the guts, interest, or whathaveyou) to try. I gave the cast a choice to choose from my to-do list and everyone was excited to move together, so I taught a phrase that I came up with that was interesting to me and represents some elements from my memory of dances I have made in the past. It was really beautiful to see all of these bodies moving together - we also played around with flashlights just to see what the movement would look like if we were holding flashlights. It's MUCH more interesting with 15 people than it is with 2.

In the second part of rehearsal, I wanted to talk about memory and how we remember and do a writing exercise and movement study. This is an interesting group of dancers - I've worked with almost all of them in some intimate capacity with the exception of maybe 2 and those two are mature and were open to my process, making the whole experience much richer. I asked the dancers to take a moment to think about the first memory they can remember (either their oldest memory or the first one that comes up) and to begin writing about it and follow their train of thought on paper as best as they can. We took about 7 minutes to do this free-write memory train and then I asked those willing to share what they found. Many people found that each memory had a trigger point that led them to another memory - some spanning events ranging in 15 years, and some spanning just a few short days or weeks time. Some jumped all over the place and some moved linearly through time. One main idea that continued to come up is the question of whether the memory was "real" or whether it was a memory of a photograph or video and that was what was being remembered.

At this point, I asked the dancers to do a movement exploration in which they could physically move through the events that they recalled on paper in any way that felt right to them. They were given the freedom to do this literally or abstractly and also were able to allow their thoughts to divert from the original memories. My hopes for an end result weren't to come up with a phrase but to simply see what kinds of experiences would come out of this exercise. I only asked that the dancers do what they felt comfortable with and that they try not to overthink their movement or thoughts. Many of the dancers found that through movement, they were suppressing some hidden memories or deep emotions. Some dancers tried to move through the memories as exactly as they could in reliving and some found abstracted movement through emotional places that the memories took them. It was really fascinating to hear, see, and experience how the dancers were living through these memories. I'm really excited to try some of these things again and in different ways. I think this process can be really rich and I'm interested to see where it goes and if it will transfer into my choreography.