Working the Process

As a dancer and choreographer one of the main questions at a Q.A after a show is – How did you come up with that? The answer is always  different depending on who the choreographer is. Take an painter for example, they might start with a solid idea and sketch out their lines and then begin to fill in the color. Or the might just put some paint on their brush, touch it to the canvas and see where the paint brush takes them. There is not a right or wrong and the process can change from painting to painting. This is very similar to how a choreographer works. 

As it was mentioned in an earlier post, Mary (the choreographer) is a dreamer. While she is sleeping at night she concocts visions of movements. During this process she knew a few things before she began 1. She had many dream visions she wants to recreate. 2. She wanted lots of partnering, lifts and them to be unique. 3. The final product needs to be a trio.  

So where does one start. In this instance Mary started to experiment and play, in other words she put some paint on her brush and started to stroke the canvas. No outlines, no preconceived ideas of the end product. 

Yesterday we spent the majority of the day exploring with partnering and weight sharing with all three dancers. We climbed all over each other, hung on each other and really explored some interesting shapes that came out of that. Today, we took a slightly different approach and learned movement phrases. Then we connected those movement phrases with  the partnering and shapes we discovered yesterday. 

The dance became a bit more linear today, a rough draft if you will. The sequence will change, the quality of the movement will change, and perhaps even the intent. But we now have a solid base to keep building. And keep building we will regardless of what our bodies are trying to tell us.

-Laura Atwood