I’m not very good at the whole blogging thing, but my contemporary class was asked by our mentor, Dr. Ana Sanchez Colberg to create a solo. We were asked to create a solo about what we were “today.” Basically, our pieces were about how we felt on our very first day of class. The task was very simple; just dance how you were feeling from the moment you woke up to the present moment. Of course everyone’s days were different. It was my first day in a new dance space, with new dancers, and a new teacher. I am so used to my dance friends and teachers from my home Institution back in The Dance Center at Columbia College Chicago. So my day was filled with new experiences all together.Colberg had recorded all of our showings. From there, the next step in our dance making process was called “soft remembrance.” We were asked to recall back on some movements from our “this is me today” section. We tried to remember some movements from the previous class after a long weekend. Our bodies don’t usually forget that quickly because that is what we train them to do. The movements are usually moves that we do that feel good in our bodies. From that we can create small combinations and be able to recall on them when asked. The third step of the process in creating our solo was the simple task of using a single word and creating movement for it. Our solos are made up of layers from each class. Within each class we go more in depth of discovering our bodies and our movements. After we had created a phrase for our word, we each found a partner and gave them another word that was similar to our original word. We then came up with a new phrase for the other’s word and then showed them our own interpretation of it. We were able to view our word in another way, which was helpful for the next step in our solo making. The next class period was spent discovering our own movements as well as the ideas from our partners in the previous class. We were to not necessarily use their movements because that was their ideas, but we were allowed to make a separate interpretation from their interpretations.
OCTOBER 11, 2015
We were asked to do some research over the weekend on our original word. The research was not about a dictionary explanation. The research is your own personal research and how you connect to your word. I'm a little behind with my blogs, so here's a little recap of the past week. Last Tuesday, we worked on our solo pieces in the beginning of the class. We used the class time to discover our phrases more in depth. I felt that my original phrase was good enough for the time being, so I decided to add onto it with a new phrase that i've been working on with a different inspiration than before. My original inspiration was work from Heidi Latsky, who works with disabled people in her company. I watched a video called A Dancemakers Journey, in which she talks about her personal journey and what inspired her to be become the creator she is today. Her motto that she lives by is the simple, " why not?" These two small words have a bigger meaning to me because I agree with them. There are so many things that can be asked of these two words, like why not be a dancer, why not eat a jar of Nutella in a day, and the list goes on and on. But the main one for me was, why not study abroad and why not study abroad in Greece? So with this idea of "why not" I decided it could be a great exploration of myself as a dancer and as myself as a dancer in Greece. Along with the "why not" idea, I'm also highly inspired by her company as a whole. Her company includes dancers who are disabled as well as non-disabled people. I've actually had the chance to watch her company perform live at my college. It was one of the most beautiful and touching performances i've ever seen. I was in tears, not because these people didn't have hands or didn't have the mobility of non-disabled people, but because I was able to go on their journeys with them through their dancing. They showed their strengths and weaknesses, which showed the audience to not be sad for them but to celebrate what they've overcome with these obstacles that has been thrown in their way of life. So as far as my beginning phrase goes, I found the relationship between my "this is me today" task, my "word: journey" task, and my "artistic inspiration" task.
Heidi Latsky: A dancer maker's Journey video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuYJSJd31z0
October 20, 2015
My thoughts about class today
I came into class today feeling stuck about what to do next in my solo piece. I am very used to doing multiple solo pieces every other week back at my home institution. Whereas here at Deree, we’ve taken the majority of the first part of the semester to explore one solo piece. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve exhausted my movement vocabulary and then I get “dancer’s block.” I’m struggling quite a bit with the middle section of my solo. As a result, I got out my laptop and just started writing about what was going through my head about my dance. I’m a “lister” so, I wrote a list about possibilities to work on for the rest of my solo. I thought about exploring the syntax of short phrase within the piece. I feel that when you workshop a small phrase and explore all the different ways of doing one simple movement, it makes the dance richer and more relatable to the audience. They have already seen a particular move but seeing that move in a different position or speed can definitely make an impact on the dance as a whole. Anyways, on my list I also included texture, speed, and scales within my existing piece. I have a bunch of questions that I wrote about, which include asking myself what are my actual problems with my solo. The things I found were music, choreography, syntax, and spacial awareness. So over the next few classes I am planning to go more in depth about these four issues.
As i’ve mentioned before, my word for this piece is journey. So, I wrote a list of things that have impacted my journey:
- study abroad
- new places
- new faces
- new teachers
- change in body
- change in perception of the world
- change in friendships
- problems out side of the school
- boy problems
- girl problems
Along with this list, I wrote a few questions that could be explorable through dancing also.
> HOW DO THESE THINGS MAKE YOU FEEL?
> WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO ABOUT THEM?
As I move forward, I intend to keep these ideas in the back of my mind while creating the rest of my solo. For Thursday’s class, Korina gave me the task of just simply improvising. I told her that the way I usually create work is by repetition and from there making a structured outline in the form of random symbols. The random symbols are basically little drawings of the movement and how I perceive them in my head to paper. Instead of planning my solo out, she suggested I just improvise and play around with my improvisation and maybe I will find new movement to add to my movement vocabulary.
November 23, 2015
I have a very interesting process for making dances. I like to make my dances with a certain structure. I’ve taken three different choreography classes and have learned so many different ways of being able to construct a dance. With my solo piece I came up with three different phrases from the tasks that was asked of us during lab time. From there I put all three phrases together even though the movement vocabulary differed from each other. After the compilation of the phrases, I was able to go through each movement throughly and make decisions about what will be best for the piece. I’ve also had quite a bit of “dancer’s block” while trying to create this solo. Whenever the block hits me, I lie on the ground on my back and let my legs and feet float up to the ceiling, just hanging there. My mind clears for the time being and allows me to just think about everything my body has just done. The bodies that we’ve been given are precious so taking the time to realize all the moving they do on a regular basis whether voluntary or involuntary needs to be appreciated. I mentioned my “dancer’s block” and Ana used a few class periods to workshop a few different ways to get out of the block. We started working with the concepts of “motif and development.” A motif is a movement or short movement phrase that forms the basis of the structure of a dance. There are many ways in which you can develop the phrase by using different techniques to manipulate your motif. We were asked to pick three different ways to take our movement to the next level of our solo as a whole. One of the three ways I choose to manipulate my last phrase that I made was tempo, where you play with the speed of a movement or movements. You can choose to do a move slow, fast, or completely stop movement all together. My second choice of manipulation was size. With size, you can either make the motif smaller or make the motif expand in size. The last choice was embellishment. Embellishment is also known as ornamentation in our article. The best way I can explain this last concept is taking the smallest movement and bringing attention to it. The way I did it in my piece was brining attention to my foot and even more attention to my toes. I walked my foot out by spreading my toes as if they were stuck on a sticky floor surface. The friction between my skin sliding on the floor of the Black Box Theater caused my toes to separate and make a subtle sound, which the audience really appreciated. Even though we were only asked to choose three ways to manipulate our dance, there were more concepts that I used without noticing I was doing so. There are a bunch of details that we overlook, but that is why we have our fellow classmates to point them out to us. From the handouts given in class, Valerie Preston-Dunlop wrote a book called Looking at Dancers. We were only given a section of the material, but from the section I found many things that interested me. One of the many quotes she said that I can certainly relate to idea of overlooked details is, “working with these kinds of subtleties in formal material is equivalent to working with imagination on dramatic material.” Making up formal material is completely different then just going into a studio and improvising. The imagination is what makes dramatic material. Dramatic material is what we all strive for. We also have to consider the fine lines between being overdramatic, but having formal material will help distinguish those lines with clearer intentions. Another quote that I would like to address that applies to creating work, whether it is a solo, duet, or ensemble of 10 + dancers. She said, “There are always options and choices to be made on what aspect of movement’s wealth should be shared with spectators.” I really appreciate this quote because as a dance maker the vocabulary of movement that one’s body can do is endless. But, in order to make a piece work there has to be many decisions made regarding movement, sound, space, time, and many more aesthetics of dance making The choreographer can make a phrase but will always keep revising it. A piece is never really finished because there are so many questions and concepts that can be discovered more in depth. The mind will constantly be changing so never think that your piece is completely finished.
December 8, 2015
Process Journal #1:
In our most recent handout, we were given some readings about space and place. These were given to us to help us prepare for the final project in which we will be collaborating with other dance makings from Kenyon College. It is unbelievably fortunate that we were given this opportunity. I am excited to work with my duet partner from across the ocean to the US. I will be Bridget Murdoch’s international but not so international duet partner. It will be exciting for me to work with her from a different timezone and a different place. From the reading, one of the opening sentences say, “ You are in constant co-creation with the places you inhabit.” I would consider this statement the thesis of our final project because the idea of “constant co-creation” is always in our existence whether pay attention to it or not. As dancers we tend to explore this idea physically, emotionally, and mentally more so than others. Dancers make their own decisions about where to be in time and space with a different mindset. In the reading, it also says that “space becomes place when you inhabit it with attention.” Which correlates with my idea of the dancers mindset and place.
There are many maps that we as humans use. For example, when we go to a new country that is one of the only ways to get around in an unfamiliar place. But, it is not the only map
we tend to overlook the map that we were given… our body map. From the reading, ‘Space and Place’ it states, “ As you explore new places in the body, you broaden your body maps. As you investigate new landscapes and cultural contexts, you can guide other into unfamiliar terrain.” This especially stood out to me in more ways than one. Human beings don’t take the time to explore the small parts of a city and surely don’t spend time in the smaller parts of the body. Which as dancers, that is what we spend our time perfecting. It is the small things that we would rather see first because then the bigger parts of our body maps are sure to follow. Once you’ve learned to investigate new places within one’s body, you open your range for more possibilities to supersede. When you have clear knowledge of that, from there you can take others on your journey as well.
So for lab today, Bridget and I face-timed to discuss our next steps for our duet/ dialogue. To sum up our conversation this is what we discussed. We’ve exchanged videos of what we would like work on for this project. Our videos consist of short phrases that deal with camera angles, stillness, and disappearances. Bridget had showed all the videos to her peers and got some pretty good feedback on all the videos including mine. From what I understand, Bridget’s classmates think it would be a good idea to play with the different angles in her space. Her first video was shot from one angle, aerial view of the staircase, while she danced in and out of the space. Whereas, my video was shot from a circular angle. So our next step is to create a new phrase in a new space that is similar to each others first video. We also discussed our music choices and agreed on a few songs for the inspiration of our dialog as well. In the meantime, we will continue working and keeping in contact about our duet. Bridget will be the one putting the whole video together so I will be sending her all my videos and ideas! We are so excited to be working together… we’re a great pair! Yay, for working across the seas!
December 13, 2015
Process journal #2:
Bridget and I have been working our duet with the central idea focusing on an all video project instead of using live components. This is mainly due to the time crunch with it being the last week of the semester. If we had started the project a few weeks back, adding a live component to our piece would’ve been amazing. As of now, we are working on the middle section our duet. Since my video footage from Hero’s Square is different from Bridget’s phrase and camera angles, we are going to use that as our introduction to our piece. Then the dialogue between Bridget and I will be similar, but clearly different due to space, lighting, and movement vocabulary.
Aside from our duet, I would like to bring some material in that I found really helpful while creating some of the work for this project from the reading that Ana gave to us before starting.
- Context shapes content. Performing a solo, for example, as a duet or quartet begins to address how the content is affected when the environment changes Similarly, when a dance is performed in a different place, new dimensions are revealed.
- Making site- specific work requires informed choices. You can engage nature or the built landscape as a backdrop, as a partner in the dance (with awareness of environmental impact),or as the focus of a rehabilitation project (reviving the integrity of the place). Architecture, sculptural sets, landscapes, and gardens offer distinctive perspectives.
- Place has history; a studio full of yesterday’s rehearsal energies feels different than an abandoned building. For those who must change rehearsal spaces daly or weekly, context can be something you block out or ignore, guarding a fresh palette in relation to the eventual performance venue. Relationship to place can be supportive of your process of a complication, depending on circumstance. If you have a place, but no space, creative work is limited.
December 18, 2015
First off, I would like thank Bridget for being a great partner. I too, agree with her in the sense that the nature of our dialogue was about compromise. I believe anything that involves more than one person will always end in compromise. Each person has their own ideas and values, it would be a shame to always agree with someone if you didn’t truly feel that way. Although, we had some challenges and different ideas, we we’re able to overcome them in the short period of time that we had to work on this project. Sometimes it was difficult to express our thoughts and ideas through Skype and Facebook messenger, which were our two main ways of communication. We were able to talk more in depth over our FaceTime chat, which allowed us to tie up some of the loose ends we were having with the beginning of the piece. The time change was another factor that made things a little difficult but, it wasn’t as bad for me because I have my friends and family back home in the same zone. I wonder if it was difficult for the rest of my classmates here in Greece, not having any other obligations in the states like I did. On another note, it was really nice to be able to fully understand each other without the language barrier. I’m sure she would have loved to have a greek partner but, I think we made a good relationship for when I return to the states!
Anyways, back to our piece, the themes of our project consisted of time, place, and space to one motif (our music choice) that tied both of our phrases together to create one piece all together. My original space had been in Hero’s Square in Budapest, Hungary. The start of our project was around Thanksgiving time and that was where my friends and I were going to celebrate the holiday. The idea had come to me when were walking around, sightseeing during the off season. There weren’t many people in this historic square, so I had asked one of my friends to take a video of me recreating a section of my previous solo piece, but in a different space. While I was dancing, I had asked him to film me walking around in a circle to get me in action, but also capture that background as well. After I had finished my phrase, I had him keep walking around while I stood in complete stillness. So for our piece, Bridget and I had more than one theme apart from the other three I had previously mentioned, which dealt with circularity and one’s entrance and exit to the space.
Bridget’s choice of space corresponded with the camera angle of my rough draft video. From there, we would talk about where we wanted to go from there. We had came to conclusion that my original video would be the inspiration for our whole project. There were many reasons why we couldn’t use the video, but we had decided that I use an open space with steps. I decided that my space would be the Amphitheatre on our own campus space. It’s such a peaceful place to walk through on your way from the Communications building that overlook the soccer fields and the some of Agia Paraskevi (one of my many favourite views in Greece) and finally to the other side of the campus. It is one of my highlights walking to and from choreography class every Tuesday and Thursday!
I think that if we had more time we would find new spaces to weave both personalities in. Also, taking more time to work on the video would probably be the next step in taking our work farther. I have learned quite a bit from this experience about technology alone. The biggest lesson that i’ve learned from working across the sea is communication. Communication is key, when it comes to working with another individual. Don’t be afraid to tell them your visions because that’s what will make the piece great. I would like to end my blog with a quote by George Bernard Shaw, “ The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that has taken place.”
Scoping out my space.
