I created an order for the piece based on material we had created and this week we tried it out (and got to do so in style! the dancers are wearing Emily's process costumes).
Well, it was informative at least. So I spent the rest of the day rethinking how I got to where I'm at with this piece. More on that later this week, but for now I'll share from the opening of the piece in which Hsiao-Wei and Sarah perform their solos.
ps. I’m not sure why the video is so small –I will fix it this week!
And here are the solos from Hsiao-Wei and Chelsea.
Hsiao-wei added a gestural narrative to her solo, and I suggested she go deeper into the movements in between looking for the narrative motivation that takes her from one place to the next (I seemed to suggest to everyone to look more seriously at the why behind their movements and transitions). I think she's still working on applying this comment, but on repeat viewings, I'm not sure it's the correct one. Well, time will tell.
Early in our rehearsal, I looked at Chelsea's solo and asked her to consider her motivations in and out of movements -why was she moving from this dramatic or gestural moment to that leg kick? How does it all connect. She started working through those considerations and what's recorded here already shows improvement, with the solo having a tighter flow and more interesting performance quality.
Enjoy!
Today we continued working on the solos, this clip includes Anna's and Hsiao-Ting's progress.
I am giving the dancers a lot of room to create from their own inspiration, hopefully so that they'll end up with personal solos that they enjoy dancing. At this stage, the solos are still pretty young, so I'm keeping my comments broad and constructive.
I asked Anna to rehearse her solo, which has a lovely free-flinging energy, with an eye to upping the frenzy or calming it down. We'll see next time which direction she decides to go.
Hsiao-Ting shifted her intense footwork upright (see last week's videos) and really captivated me with this searching yet calming "journey." It's clear she's exploring and to watch is a meditation. This week, she added some jumps to add some variation in height and dynamics. I think we both agree this needs some more investigation – why is she freeing herself so abruptly? Is it really freeing to hurl herself through the air to the ground or is the control of her carefully padding feet, never fully on the floor, more liberating?
The previous post shows Emily’s thought process in sketches. Last week when I had the dancers rehearse in skirts, we all agreed they were a bad idea –but the problem was how they obscured the legs rather than their inherent skirt-ness. Emily probably never saw the girls in long dresses, I just asked them to wear whatever they had, but still it was good to confirm what would have been a poor direction to go.
Instead, Emily has clearly been working with the idea of tent (waistless) dresses for a while and this time suggested a design connected more directly to our focus on process. She’ll create basic muslin tent dresses for the girls to wear in rehearsal and at the parks when we perform this summer. These are meant to be subjected to normal wear and tear, the signs of which Emily will then use to inform her final designs that are unique for each dancer.
Practical considerations such as quick turn-around between final the park performance and the concert performance (aug 29-30) and the fact that dancers aren’t exactly a messy bunch, led to Emily creating some preliminary designs to work from in the end –which we’ll keep playing with for a while.
I love this design concept because it addresses the individuality of each dancer within a “uniform” or “group” style and, more importantly, because it relates directly to my creative methodology. Yay Emily!
Emily joined us for some rehearsals and just shared these sketches with me:
Here I ask Chelsea to talk briefly about what it's been like to go through our process over the past few months.
I totally agree with her!
