Catherine McGonagle

Introduction
Hi! My name is Catie! I'm a Junior History major, Dance minor from Los Angeles, California. I'm a captain of the Cheerleading team and the Equestrian team here at Kenyon. I've been a cheerleader for almost all of my life, except for three years when I took a break from cheer to go to high school in Dublin, Ireland. A lot of my dance moves are inspired by motions used during my time as a competitive cheerleader. Unfortunately I'm still recovering from a concussion right now, so I don't have a strength movement study piece. I'm still learning who I am as a dancer and I look forward to working with you guys!

Collaboration Study

I haven't gotten the chance to speak to my partner very much so I don’t know her opinion on my ideas, but this is what I think I want our dance to look like. I took a virtual tour of the Greek college and saw an outdoor theatre that has a shape similar to the lecture hall that I want to work in. It think it could be interesting if we both work in places that have similar shapes but very different functions. I also really like the idea of working with the various levels of each step. We could both move up and down in unison or contrast and it could look very dynamic. The only problem I’ve run into with my idea so far is that as I was working on some phrase work last night, I found myself tempted to want to use behind each layer of desk as a way to disappear, however Korina would not be able to do that if she danced in the outdoor theatre. But, again, I still don’t know if she even likes that idea, so everything could change when we get the chance to talk.


These are my final thoughts on the project.

Catie Mcgonagle, Choreography, Global Connections

Korina and I were lucky to be paired up since it seemed as if we were always on the same page. We started without any grand ideas so that we had a blank template that we could both help to built on. I knew where I wanted to dance and she knew what she wanted our theme to be. Luckily, they both worked well together. Even though “pain” was meant to be our main theme for the dance, we both slowly started to turn away from a strong focus on this theme and instead shifted our focus towards the spaces we were in. I started with the idea that each level of the lecture hall could be a different stage of grief or pain. As I played with that, I developed some interesting movement. However, this idea didn’t stay in the final project since it didn’t seem to translate well on film.

One of the biggest challenges for us was not knowing the other dancer’s style. Korina had no idea how I moved since I did not have any movement videos up on the blog. So the first step for us was sending each other videos of us exploring movement in our spaces. This sharing of movement rather than words helped greatly to push this project further. I knew from the start that her movement style would be very different from mine. We both were taught different styles of dance and were coming from different classroom backgrounds. Instead of letting this challenge get in the way, we decided to embrace it. In our dance, we are like two parts of one person. Not only is the movement not the same in both our videos, but one is dark and one is light. This helps to show our contrasting differences.
If we were given more time and more resources, I would have loved to team up more closely with the Film department to help with the production. It is clear from our filming and editing that we are both amateur film makers and I believe that if we were given the time to film these properly, they could grow into much more professional pieces of art. I also think that if given more time, we could have possibly developed a story line or perhaps better connected our dances choreographically.

This project taught me a lot about diving into a dance with confidence. I was able to see on the film when I watched it back how bad it looked when I second guessed myself. It also taught me that to get a good shot or make a good move, it took ten bad shots or really awkward looking moves. Also, going into filming with a plan or story board saves an immense amount of time in the editing studio later. Overall, I would love to do this project again while paired up with a film student who could help draft a story board and add a more artistic and professional approach to the filming aspect of this project.