Yes, we have finished learning two magnificent works that will be performed at the Herberger Theater in Phoenix, Az on September 6. We owe choreographers Mark Magruder and Mary Lane many thanks for helping us accomplish this feat. Although the creative process is finished, there is still alot of work that remains. We now have to rehearse the pieces and make them absolutely perfect. Stay tuned for all the sordid details about this process and wish us luck.
Natalie King
Natalie King has returned home to Sweet Briar and brought her friend Laura along with her. Together we created a piece for the Flux Dance Company repertoire. I have enjoyed the process and my time with these dancers even they have been bruised and blistered throughout the experience. The piece is a duet about nine minutes long. It begins with a very morphic quality as the dancers slowly roll in from opposite sides of the stage only to meet in the center. Some would call it celestial. A learning experience was had by all. I learned to use GarageBand in order to create the score for the piece. Yes I know this may not seem like great feat. However, I am 55 years old. And yes I can hear the virtual snickers of the young now. Natalie and Laura have promised to work very hard on the piece for their performance. I hope you all will be able to see them perform it live at the Flux dance concert September 6.
Happy Trails,
Mark Magruder
Nostalgia is the sweetest stomach ache I have ever experienced. Recently I returned back to my dancing queen roots: Sweet Briar College. There, Laura and I are learning a new dance piece set by choreographer Mark Magruder. Mark and consequently his wife Ella were my dance professors in undergrad. The past two days I have had a chance to baske in the familiarity of what I once considered to be home. Unfortunately, I have noticed that despite my absence the place has changed quite a bit. Not that I expected the institution to collapse completely without me, but it certainly reminded me of how that old adage rings all too true. You can never really go home again because your home is more than a physical entity. Rather it is made of individuals, who like their surroundings, evoke change and continue evolving regardless of your presence. The memory of what you cling too as home no longer exists in the the present reality. Nevertheless, I have really enjoyed spending quality time with my dancing parents better known as the Magruders. They live and eat and breath dance. More to the point, they live and eat and breath art. They make a living by actualizing their passions as artists. Just being in the same room is certainly inspiring and motivational to admit the least. The Magruders always know how to stay the uneasy, less traveled course. From their example, I learned how to carve out my niche as dancer. For me, this choreographic experience is not at all about physical innovation as I had previously thought it would be. Now do not be mistaken. I am not saying my body does not scream with blisters, floor burns, muscle aches and so much more. I am simply explaining that it is over shadowed by the memory of not only home but of how much I had forgotten who and what I wanted to be until this project.
This was our last rehearsal with Mary Lane in Lexington, Va. It was certainly bittersweet to be finishing the piece. We still have a lot of work to do in order for the piece to be truly complete. We will concentrate on making the transitions from phrase to phrase more cohesive, on capturing the movement qualities Mary has so brilliantly described and on executing the choreography with the proper technical precision. Unfortunately, we will only have about a month to whip us and the piece into shape. The experience as a whole was challenging, and in turn all the more enjoyable. The Flux Dance Company needed Mary’s vision as a source of innovation. Once you have worked with a dance company for an extended amount of time, you develop preconceived notions about how to work with them. In other words, you know or rather think you know how they are capable of performing. This is the case with Flux; it is such a tight knit community of dancers. We have all been choreographing and performing so much together that we have developed creative rituals. Mary’s vision helped to break the monotony of our own creative habits as a company. She has given us a new movement path to explore. And for that we are most grateful.
Have you ever flexed every muscle in your body all at once? Well, I am pretty sure I came close to that today. More to the point, my body is definitely in rebellion, protesting and warring against even the smallest attempts to move through space. And there is always that one person (usually me) who suggests that it is better to work through the pain and in essence push through it as if the promise of some great eternal reward lies just within your reach. So I, like a good little dancing cadet, soldier on and begin reviewing sequence after sequence. It is about an hour or so into the process that I realize this advice is not only unfounded but cruel because there is no working through the pain. There is only more pain, particularly after six hours of reworking phrases. It does not take long before I recollect that I am now experiencing the “no pain, no gain” philosophy I have been so cheerfully endorsing the past few years as a high school dance teacher. Sweet charity! I do not know whether to be the pot or the kettle here. All my moaning and groaning through rehearsal today has given me a new appreciation and perspective for the expectations I place upon my students. More importantly, I have assumed the challenging role of being the “student” once again, discovering that I need to reconnect with what it is like to push the limits and boundaries of my body. Focusing so much of my career on pedagogy has caused me to forget the thrill of this pursuit; the excitement of competing with myself to achieve much more than my body believed me to be capable of accomplishing. I cannot teach this. I can only exemplify it and relate my experiences to the students I teach. This whole process has reconnected me to my humble beginnings as a dancer, and provoked the awareness that it is a connection I have sorely missed.
-Natalie King
We had our first dance rehearsal today. There were a total of six participants, one of course being the choreographer Mary. It was quite the experience to say the least. Mary is extremely athletic and therefore expects her dancers to be so as well. She relies heavily upon the physical prowess of the dancers to actualize her vision, which came to her through a series of dreams. While she managed to rule out walking in mid air, her dreams definitely lead us all down and up an unconventional path or two. Mary’s creative process centers primarily upon loosely structured contact improvisation. Her only rule negates “dead” lifts (partnering lifts that require brute force). This rule became my arch nemesis along with the floor of course. For the first time, I was responsible for my own weight when being lifted. Normally I could rely the on the person lifting me to actually lift me! Instead I found myself body climbing from one limb to the other as if they were tree branches. My hands, arms and legs were all simultaneously and without a doubt gracefully gripping for dear life to avoid that inevitable crash onto floor. I found that I did not mind grasping or being grasped in those oh so sensitive areas of the body as long as that meant I was going to defeat gravity. I found that I liked the challenge because it gave me a sense of power and satisfaction that I as a petitely statured dancer had never experienced before during partnering. I found that I was not just a prop being tossed around for aesthetic pleasure, but rather an equal partner in the design of a moving image.
Natalie King
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