Mary’s Writing about her Piece.

Articulating what my work is about has always been hard for me. It is always so clear in my head, in my body, translating it to words always seems to result in canned imagery and never encapsulates the greatness of what I feel when I think about a piece I have created. But putting the embarrassment aside – here I go to put into words what I am feeling about this piece.

I created the piece wanting it to eventually tie into the last work I did, “Into The Current.” It was set to a Vivaldi piece with nine dancers, all wearing blue. The conceptual spine of this short piece was based on the feeling I get when I am on the brink of moving into something big, something greater than me. Right before you take that step that carries you all the way. That closed throat feeling of anticipation, barreling through obstacles until you feel the cool wash of relief as you head in the chosen direction.

“Into The Current” featured one dancer (referred to as “Lydia” throughout this writing) as a figure fighting through eight other dancers, those representing the “obstacles.” I envision eventually tying these two pieces together by having Lydia from “into the current” being one of the three members of this trio, and being left on the stage while the other two exit. In fact, that is how I see this piece ending – Natalie, you are the Lydia character that would carry through. Leave the exit open right now, once I have seen video of what you all have done, I will make a clear decision on the exit, and try to pick out Natalie as a more forward figure throughout the piece.

I have been working a lot with water imagery – streams, currents, eddies. For this piece have been working with the idea of an eddy:

1.	a current at variance with the main current in a stream of liquid or gas, esp. one having a rotary or whirling motion.

2.	a small whirlpool.

3.	any similar current, as of air, dust, or fog.

4.	a current or trend, as of opinion or events, running counter to the main current.

The three of you are figuratively, “in an eddy.” Your movement takes you back and forth through the space, there are moments of speed, moments of attempted escape, only to get tossed back in. Natalie, you do lots of climbing up and over things, you get stopped by Aaron.

The new title I’m working with is “The Dark Stream,” taken from the Yeats poem “An Image of a Past Life” – part of which is below:

Never until this night have I been stirred.
The elaborate starlight throws a reflection
On the dark stream,
Till all the eddies gleam;
And thereupon there comes that scream
From terrified, invisible beast or bird:
Image of poignant recollection.

The idea here for me is this: the work that is done in the subconscious, the stream of mind, it’s necessary work. A stream is a direction of energy. An eddy refines that work, that direction, the intention – until it finds the path outwards, into the current, traveling to the conscious where dreams/thoughts/ideas can be actualized.

Eventually, in this whole suite of ‘water works,’ I will be adding a solo before ‘The Dark Stream” for the Natalie/Lydia character – one in which the decision is made to jump into this process - another Yeats poem that I have been rereading for years I just now realize is driving this whole suite of works

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, ‘O sea-starved, hungry sea.’

Natalie/Lydia is that crazed girl.

That is all I have for now – I will be sending more soon.

End of the Intensive Week

The intensive is over but the journey has just begun. Natalie and I have finished an intensive week and our now sitting at the airport on our way to our individual distinctions. I am headed back to to Phoenix and she back home to see her family for one last brief visit. Afterwards we will regroup in Phoenix and start our rehearsal process. We have a concert at the Herberger in September and have a lot of work to do to polish, teach and finish. We have gathered more video and that will be posted on the blog soon. Stay tuned to watch more of the process. 

-Laura Atwood

Terpsichore Is Smiling

Thrown into the Briar Patch

While there has not been as much activity on the blog that has not been the case for the Flux Dancers. Natalie and I have gotten up bright and early these past two mornings to drive an hour over the Blue Ridge Mountains to Sweet Briar College. SBC is where Natalie attended college and toned her dancing technique. There she met Mark and Ella Magruder as professors and has continued on as life long friends.

Mark agreed to set a duet on Natalie and myself. While this process has the same ingredients as the work with Mary: a generous choreographer, three days, and lots of hard work and dancing, the actual process has been different. For this piece Mark is working in a very linear thought process. As soon as we walked in and were ready to go he set us in our starting positions. Once a movement has been set – it is set. There is very little going back to change movement. I have found this piece to not be so heady. Because the work was created in order my mind can stop thinking about where it is going next and let my body just move there. This frees up my mind to focus more on the quality and intent of the movement.

After the first day at Sweet Briar I felt solid with what I had learned and what my body could do. As the 2nd day started, the dynamic of the piece changed slightly and my confidence swung with the change. It is a lot. We have over 7 1/2 mins of strong and innovative choreograph in two days. We even have some of the kinks worked out that you always run into when you are first learning a piece.

Even though this process may be a bit different the Mary’s there still is a strong Common Thread. Mary and Mark do not know each other or where even born in the same decade but both put strong lifts and weight sharing ideas into their choreography. The pieces are completely different but at the same time will both showcase some great partnering work.

On that note, my arms are tired, my legs are sore and I have blisters on the bottom of both feet. I need a shower and in the morning we have to get up and do it all over again. With all of those complaints, I am doing what I love, working hard, and learning a whole lot – I have been thrown in to the sweet sweet briar patch.

-Laura Atwood

Video

Check out the Video page for more Videos. We will try to post some every night.

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

Just Melt Up

Today was our first day of dancing. For the first part of this journey we are meeting in Lexington, Virginia with choreographer, Mary Lane.

Travel Day – Friday

Today is our travel day. My day started at about 3am in Phoenix. I am traveling through Charlotte, NC as is Natalie. From there we will board smaller plans and fly into the small Roanoke, Virginia airport arriving at the same time, if not on the same plane. My dad is picking us up from the airport and then we drive an hour north to Broadview Ranch, our home for the week and where I grew up.  After a nice family meal at farms pond, we will settle in and prepare for our early start in the morning.

This whole process, including the blog, is going to be an experience. It is going to be interesting working with Mary Lane again. I know her through her mother who was my high school dance teacher. Mary has gone on to study and explore the dance world in her own right and currently resides in Washington, DC. I will find out more of her experience later.

Flux Blog

Two of the members of Flux Dance Project are about to embark on a week lone choreographic intensive in Virginia. FLux is made up of dancers from all over the US and has it roots in Phoenix, Arizona. Graduate Students from Arizona State University gathered and decided to use thier multi-talents and energy to create a company which is able to be flexible and focus on any project any memeber wants to be part of. This give Flux Dance Project a real free, open structure. Flux feeds off of the many talents of it’s memebers and guest artist.

One project we are starting is called Common Threads. Because Flux memebers are spread out, we thought it would be interesting to have some choreography from all over. I am orginally from Virginia and still have many contacts there. We thought that having an intensive week of having work set on us would be idea.  So we set it up.

We have Mary Louisa Lane, from Lexington Virginia, but now in DC traveling back for a three day intensive to set a trio on us. While only two members were able to fly to Virginia, we are using interns and will record the work and set it on the third Flux member once we get back to Phoenix. Another great thing about this work is the music  might be from a local artist whose band is now starting to be seen all over the world. (Baroness) To have everyone come back to thier roots, with thier craft toned, and to share with fellow friends / artist is going to be an amazing experience.

The next three days is going to be spent in Lynchburg, Virginia at Sweet Briar College with Mark and Ella Megruder, professors at SBC. They are going to set work on Flux although, in true Flux fashion, no plans have been made until we get into the studio  and use the momentum of the moment to create the work.

The BLOG – Our goal is to keep a blog of our experiences, photos, and videos to keep anyone interested informed as well as to showcase the actaul process of creating work. As a dancer and performer I get many questions about the “process” of how dance is created. The process varies greatly depending on the choreographer, dancers, and time frame. However, since Flux is going through such an intense process, three pieces in one week (yes that is alot) I wanted to show how we create this work, from the dancers view, from the choreographer view, from the interns etc.

It is my goal it up date the blog everynight. Stay tuned and let us know your thoughts.
–Laura Atwood, Co-Director, Flux Dance Project