Feeling of Relief!

Last night, I officially "finished" a dance! Granted, it was the one piece that was actually previously choreographed, but I have been making some slight (and more severe) changes along the way. It feels great to be able to spend the next couple of weeks cleaning, tweaking, and refining before my committee sees my work on December 6th. Then, I can spend the next three months dealing with the feedback I get (or just maintaining, depending).

I have been thinking heavily about the relationship between music and dance, especially with a piece like "Habit of Change," because the music and the dance are so intertwined. When reflecting on my process of both intially creating the piece and in reconstructing, I have done two things: some times, I relied heavily on the music to inform where I was going, but other times, I allowed myself to find the dance first and then fit it into the music. Something I'm spending more time with now that the dance is "complete" is seeing how those two things affect the energy and flow of the piece. For example, in the original ending of the dance, I had the entire cast in the upstage left corner in unison and then from there, it suddenly disinegrated into different movement and spread out to a diagonal (opposite from the opening formation) and then the dancers turned their heads and looked upstage to the soloist. In watching the piece on video and trying different things with the cast, I realized that the music is still really powerful at that moment, so there was a sudden drop in energy and interest level as the piece drew to a close. So, I decided to come back to a powerful moment that happens before the solo in the middle of the piece to more gradually fall back from a group of eleven in unison to two opposing groups of five and six, to four opposing groups of three, three, three, and two, to finishing at a chaotic individual level, ending in a pose that eventually took them to the opening image, rather than just turning their heads. This seemed to give more contrast and attention to the soloist than before. The energy also mimics the music differently and it seems more exciting.