I gave myself a break - 2 weeks off from thinking about my concert (mostly) and it was a great choice. I came back this semester refreshed and with some new ideas and a clear head.
Now is the time for decisions. I've had five or so months to allow myself to play and explore with my choreography, but now my concert is just around the corner and I'm making myself DECIDE on a number of things. For one, I decided to let go of one of my new dances - though I was fond of the rehearsals and process of the piece, it just wasn't finding a way that intrigued me to really see it through - at least in the amount of time that I have before my concert.
One of my committee members and former choreography professors suggested the duet I created at the end of the summer that was a variation off a longer and larger piece from last year, "Stay." as a replacement if I felt the need to add to the concert. After thinking about it for a while, I have decided to restage the duet - I'm bringing in a new cast member so that I don't have to worry about over-exhausting any of my current cast members and I am going to see how it goes if I take the other role!
With my "boys" piece (which just happens to have boys, but is not boy-inclusive) I have been all over the place - After realizing the complications of race, gender, and perception, I have decided to embrace the diversity of my cast but also shift my "aboutness." One thing I tend to do is stray away from the specific and dive into vagueness... I often make dances with a lot of texture and layers, but it is difficult to really draw focus. This was something I was trying to force onto this dance, making it very specifically focused, but after many tries, it just doesn't work for me. So today before rehearsal, I completely reformed the structure of the piece on paper and went in with a new idea. CONFLICT - The movement is well suited for this and now I'm creating three types of conflict relationships with my cast (controlling, pride, and abusive) and I am pleased with the energy the group brought to rehearsal in problem solving and moving forward. I think this piece is going to be much more dynamic!
I also needed to make decisions about my tap/contemporary projection duet with Megen. I have so much material, but it just never seems to get put together. I have a number of elements within this dance (projection, sound, form of the composition) and I kept finding myself saying "Well I'll just wait and do _____ once ______ is done," but it became a vicious circle - so I just needed to start. After trying to come up with my own sound score, I decided I really needed something melodic to keep the piece moving so I started listening to other music to get inspired and I actually found something interesting that is by the same artist as the other sections from the "Lights" piece - which is perfect. Once I really thought about the music and worked with it, I decided to keep it, which led me to spatial design and structure. I mapped out the entirety of the dance in space, including the relationship of space to music and when which projection is shining. Megen and I met on the MLK day off and got a good start on putting our large amount of movement to the structure and I worked on some editing distortion that night.
The other pieces are all coming along well - just minor changes, cleaning, and understudy business going on there.
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