Final thoughts

Choreography is so much harder than what I expected it to be, but it’s also very very fun!

There is many aspects to think about:

Movement

Light

Costume

Music

Anudience

Focus

Expression

Well, I could go on and on..

But what I have learned during this chourse is to be aware of all of these aspects while working with choreography. What I also learned is that it makes a big difference how you choose to work with these aspects. The whole experience of a choreography will be effected by how you decide to place the audience, wich costume you wear or placements of the dancers on stage and so on.. I feel like I have learned a lot during this chourse, and I also feel that we have been given room to explore a lot, (eaven though the time has been short for the assessments).

It’s during education you are supposed to try your ideas. It’s in school you can make mistakes and lear from it. But still I have a need that’s followed me since I was little girl. A need to please the teacher and to get good marks when focus should be on exploring and trying all your ideas. It’s an interesting reflection and I will take that with me in my work as a teacher..

I leave The Resoursful Choreographer with lots of inspiration and new knowledge in how to work with creating choreography, and I am looking forward of using them in my continuous work with dance.

Assesment reflections

Reflections on the assessments.

Assessment 1

During this assessment I worked with Allison, Emma-Louise and Rigmor, and we created a choreography inside the showers in the dressing room.

Our theme was communication, and the situation of wanting to communicate but to not be heard or noticed. We worked with sounds, light, movement and voice as assistance for this communication.

This choreography all started with the showers. We found this space and decided to create something out of it. I think that the room inspired us to do this theme. Because of it’s isolated, cold and a bit sterile feeling we was inpired to create something that included the feelings of loneliness, frustration and the social need. I feel that our choice of performing space helped to reinforce the sense and atmosphere of isolation, seperation and our theme.

After doing this performance I feel that we could have explored more within the use of light and movement, in order to create this feeling of isolation and lack of communication. It is interesting to reflect I also feel that we got a bit carried away with our theme, and our focus become more about this than the work with light, wich was suposed to be our main focus.

Assessment 2

During this assessment I worked with Laura D and Emma-Louise. For this choreography work wich was suposed to be more about the movements, we wanted to create something wich showed the physical effort of dance, but in a minimalistic way of performing it. The idea of the choreography came partly from inspiration of Butho dance. I had a memory of a Butho performance I once saw where the dancer moved from lying, up to standing and down to lying again. The whole preformance took one hour and you could really see the heavy effort of moving that slow during the long period of time. You could see the dancers muscles tensing, her body was shaking from the effort and it looked in a way very painful. This inspired me to put the muscle work in focus, and to work with detalis and breathing.

We worked carefully with our choice of movements in order to achive what we wanted. We also worked a lot on how the movements should be executed in order to create a feeling of effort and hard work. The breathing was a big part of the choreography since this also is a proof of exhaustion and hard physical work.

I feel very satisfied with this choreography and would really like to work more on it, and if so I would make it longer. Then we could work more with the slow bits wich really puts parts of the body in focus. Like the bit when Laura is lying on the floor and pushes herself up by only using her fingers. There are moments like this I wich would be longer to create a sense of tension in the atmosphere and in the dancers own body. To create a hard physical work where you really could see the muscles working and tensing.

Assessmen 3

During this assessment I worked with Bick and Corall. We had an idea of giving the audience the experience of us trying to achieve height in different ways. We had focused on three problems with achieving height:

Strenght, fear and gravity. And this was our inspiration during the process of creating this choreography.

Thoughts on:

Music:

Since Corall knows how to play the piano we decided to use this in our choreography. Corall designed the music to the movements, she watched and then played. So every bit of music is carefully made to suite the movements. I really liked the fact that we used our own music wich created just the atmosphere we wanted. To choose music that’s already recorded by someone elese is hard, it’s difficult to find soemthing that you feel satisfied with and that’s representative for your choreography.

Movements:

After watching the performance I would like to do some of the movements more slowly. For example the first bit where me and Bick is lying on the floor and slowly moving up to standing. Maybe the audience should just see us laying there for a while and then slowly, slowly we would start to move. I feel satisfied with the way we have explored with working in pairs or in threes in order to get eac hother higher. If we would have more time I would like to explore more within assisting each other in order to get higher, more contact work. And also working more with small details of height

Light:

In the beginning I was afraid that we would have to many light changes and that it would take the focus away from the movements. So we talked a lot about wich light we should choose and to keep the light changes down. After watching the choreography on video I feel that the light represented our choreography and the atmosphere of the movements, expression and music in a nice way.

Audience:

If I would do this again, and if we had more time I would like to do something that makes the audience more participant of the performance. Now the audience really was spectators watching a choreography on a theatre stage. Is there anyway that they could achieve height while watching? Or could the placement of the audience help to strenghten the feeling of us trying to achieve height? This is things I would work on.

Music or no music?

Music or no music?

Only sounds?

Creating own sounds.

Singing, talking, moving and breathing…

This is something that’s quite crucial for a choreography. In what way you decide to use sound or music creates an atmosphere, expression and impression of the choreography.

After the lesson with Simon’s ”music medley” to Laura Duncan’s movements, and after watching the groups rehearsals I got to see different ways of using sounds, silence and music wich was very interesting and got me thinking.. Earlier I haven’t been so interested in music or sounds, I have been so focused on the choreography itself. But sounds/silence/music is actually a rally big part of the experience of a choreography..

One example is when I saw a dance piece on Youtube and accidentally switched off the sound. I watched a bit of the choreography and after half of it I turned the sound on again. The music that played along the dance piece was nothing what I expected, and it did in a way make me disappointed. Maybe it’s because I already had created an idea of what the dance and the movement where expressing, and when the music didn’t agree with that it made me confused. But to be honest I found the music ugly and improper to the choreography. Movements tells such a strong story and expression, and the music can strenghten this expression, or make it weaker as the Youtube choreography. Maybe it was a deliberatley choice to put a totally bizarre music to this choreography just to create this awkward feeling, and confusion within the spectator. Confusion that the movements and the music told completely differemt stories..

Music or no music? Only sounds? Creating own sounds, talking, moving, breathing is indeed a very big part of the choreography and it’s expression. It’s worth one or two extra thoughts before you decide what to go for… And to think about what I want the music/sounds/silence to mediate, and for wich purpose?

Thoughts on sound/silence/music

Music or no music?

Only sounds?

Creating own sounds. Singing, talking, moving, breathing...

This is something that’s quite crucial for a choreography. In what way you decide to use sound or music creates an atmosphere, expression and impression of the choreography. After the lesson with Simon’s “music medley” to Laura Duncan’s movements, and after watching the groups rehearsals I got to see different ways of using sounds, silence and music, wich was very interesting and got me thinking.. Earlier I haven’t been so interested in how to put music or sounds in a dance piece, I have been so focused on the choreography itself. But sounds/silence/music is actually a really big part of the experience of a choreography..

One example is when I saw a dance piece on Youtube and accidentally switched off the sound. I watched a bit of the choreography and after half of it I turned the sound on again. The music that played along the dance piece was nothing what I expected, and it did in a way make me disappointed. Maybe it’s because I already had created an idea of what the dance and the movement where expressing, and when the music didn’t agree with that it made me confused. Movements tells such a strong story or expression and the music can strenghten this expression. Maybe it was a deliberatley choise to put a totally bizarre music to this choreography just to create this awkward feeling, and confusion within the spectator. Confusion that the movements and the music told completely different stories.. While I was watching the performances today I especially noticed the silence. Sometimes the movements and the expressions are so strong on it's own that adding music just feels too much. Silence has a way of creating a sense of intimacy wich I like and also got to experience today. It's kind of like when you whisper and people get's really interested and start to listen more carefully. This feeling of curiosity and intense attention is something that I feel that silence can create in a choreography.

Music or no music? Only sounds? Creating own sounds. Singing, talking, moving, breathing is indeed a very big part of the choreography and it’s expression. It’s worth one or two extra thoughts before you decide what to go for.. And to think about what I want the music/sounds/silence to mediate, and for wich purpose?

Work in progress..

                                                              ...Jumping, reaching, climbing, lifting..

As I wrote in my previous posterous has Corall, Bick and me been working on how to achieve height in dance. We have focused on gravity, strenght and fear as problems or restraints, and this has also been our source of inspiration.

In the beginning I was a bit afraid, afraid that a theme like height could become too theatrical, but I feel that our dance piece hasn´t developed in that way. I feel like we have concentrated more on the movement itself and to keep them quite pure. We have also been focusing on the struggle of achiving height, a struggle against gravity, fear and your own strenght. We didn´t want to conceal this “struggle” in the choreography, we wanted to illustrate it.

                    ..To dare and to have the strenght..

The difficulties during this work have been to not fall into what´s obvious. Movements like reaching or jumping can in a way seem simple or obvious for our theme. I still feel that it´s important to keep these movements in some form since they´re quite essential in oder to achivie height. I feel like we have been doing some compromises, we haven´t completely exluded these movements “obvious” movements, but we have tryed to explore withing them in order to find more unobvious ways of using and performing them.

“Height is the measurement of vertical distance, but has two meanings in common use.

It can either indicate how "tall" something is, or how "high up" it is.”

When you hear the word height you automatic think of something high up in the air, wich also can be interesting to work with in dance. But the word height does also contain small heights, and this is what I have found the most interesting to work with. Small details of height, such as a foot in relevé.. We have worked with these “small heights” in our choreography but also higher heights wich we have taking support from eachother in order to achive.  

The work has been going very well and we have quite a lot of material, so now we need to make the choreography more tidy, and maybe “kill some darlings”...

To be continued...

Height, out of reach?

There are a number of problems with having height in dance..

..Gravity..Strenght..Fear..

This is the inspiration for our dance piece, and also the problem that we have chosen to work with. The fact that humans always have been interested in height and how to achieve it, is fundamental..

We want to achieve height, explore it and feel it..

But first there are a number of things we have to fight to do so...

And this is what our group are working on right now..Trying to fight against all that´s keeping height out of reach..

Something new

The memory of a dancer shaking of muscular effort, tensing her whole body.

Sweat gleaming on her forehead and her exhaused breath penetratig the space..

This is a memory of a dance piece I once saw that really effected me, and this was also something that inspired me during this assesment. In our group we decided to work on parts of this.. We where interested in focusing on the effort and muscular work of dance, keeping the body and muscles in center of attention.

To create the choreography we used the method that we tryed during the lession. We wrote down bodyparts to focus on and also the different qualities that we wanted the piece to consist of. Then we let faith play it´s part as we randomly combined bodyparts with qualities. This way of working suited me very good, this actually made it easier for me to explore within the movements without going in to old patterns. Maybe it´s because I now got the chance to really think about what I am doing, focusing on one bodypart at a time. Usually when I choreograph I improvise and then I let the flow lead me, one movement goes into another. Moments are being created right there in this ”flow”. This is a way of choreographing that to me gets very organic and true to myself, my feelings and want I want to express just in that moment. But it is good for me to try another way of choreographing that forces me to challenge myself and to go deeper on the movements. What I´m actually doing? And in what way will these movements affect the spectators and the atmosphere of the choreography.

......

I really like the piece that we created in our group. I feel like we gave each movement time, effort and thought. Nothing was made ore chosen just because we needed movements. We rellay worked them trough and put thought into them in order to create movements and a choreography that would give the audience a sense and experience of the idea behind our piece.

Old patterns

Do something you never done before..

Challange yourself in choice of movements..

Try not to fall into old patterns..

With these words on my mind I started to move..

Have I done this movement before? Think of something new Rebecka! Be creative!

The thoughts runned trough my head while I was trying to improvise, and I felt like there didn´t come anything new ore creative out of me.. This is what happens when I start thinking to much. I get locked, paralyzed within my mind and body and it makes me so frustrated!

Should it be so hard to break ”old patterns”?

Me and my workpartner during the improvisation on fridays lession started to discuss this problem.

– I have to stop thinkng so much, she said. After that you could actually notice a change in her movements when she was improvising. The more comfortable she was getting with improvising and the more she could let go of all that thinking, her movements began to be more and more exploring and challanging.

Old patterns?

To not fall into old patterns is really difficult I think. There is so much about your movements that is you, my movements are me, and I doubt that you will be able to take all that away. But that is not what we are looking for either.. You still want a dancer that´s original, with personality and their own style..

But a dancer that is stuck in old patterns, and just does what they already know without exploring is not very interseting I think.. I really want to challenge myself within my creativity, I want to explore, challenge and grow as a dancer. I don´t want to get stuck in "the same old", "what I already know" story..

So it´s really good for me to work on this, because I have a tendency of getting stuck in old patterns, in particular during improvisation. 

Personally I think that I  have to stop analyzing so much, I need to just do instead and then see where the body in work with gravity may lead me. I also need to be more acceptance of the fact that I have bad days with lack of ideas and creativity, maybe I should try to accept this situation and see where that may take me..

Motivation.. 

I like when we use the word explore, that makes me excited and curious. So that´s what I am going to do..

I am going to explore!

Thoughts on light..

“Experience the body moving in light, highlighting the different parts of the body, muscles working and expressionons beeing made. Creating shadows, reinforcing the experience of the movements and the body, creating an atmosphere...”

Ok, here is what´s going on in my head today..

What is it really that I find so interesting about the collaboration between dance and light?

Why can the use of light add something extra to a dance piece? And would the performance be as much interesting if it didn´t involve light?

I think that a dance piece can be interesting without any particular lighteningt, and that dance can work on it´s own without adding something extra to it such as light, spectacular costumes and settings and so on..Dance can absolutley be watched and appreciated in it´s purest form.. But I really enjoy watching a dance piece with a well done lightening, but why? What I like about the ”marridge” between dance and light are several things, and one is the way you can play with contrast of light and darkness. Making the stage dark creates stillness to the performance. This gives me the same feeling as when the dancer makes a pause in their movements, a moment of stillness wich is nice for the spectator to have as a contrast to the movements. The same feeling of stillness and contrast occures to me when you make a shift between light and darkness in a dance piece. And by working with contrasts between different strengths of the light this also gives it a variation to the dance piece. Shifting between bright light ore little light wich is just enough to see the siluette of the dancers body and movement is something that strenghten the performance visual experience.

With focusing the light in different ways  you can also create a sense of size, distance and space for the spectator wich can strenghten the idea for the choreograhy ore the experience for the spectator.. I also think that the light helps to strenghten an expression ore an atmosphere of a dance piece..

So what about light creating an atmosphere?..

When I see this picture I get a feeling of despair. The light is focused directley down on her wich makes me think of lonlieness, since she is surronded by this circle, ore maybe she´s trapt in it? Something that gives me almost a claustrophobic feeling. The very bright, white light also creates an intense and uncomfortable feeling for me. Now, would this picture be interesting without this light? In one way, yes. But I think that the light really strenghtenen the feeling and expression of this picture, and this expression wouldn´t be the same without it..  

Summerize..When dance and light are organized in a good way in a dance piece it can really work intimate together and create a powerful experience for the spectator. It also reinforce the performance by highlighting the movements and bring out the best of them. The light also helps to strenghten a feeling ore expression of the dance. And the collaboration between light and dance creates a strong visual experience for the spectator. I can get absolutley breathtaken by a really good light in a dance piece, and I think it´s this visual experience together with the  movements and choreography that affects me. Seeing the body moving in light, highlighting the different parts of the body, muscles working and expressionons beeing made. Creating shadows, reinforcing the experience of the movements and the body, creating an atmosphere...It can be like poetry..

First impression..

So now we have had our first lesson for The resourceful choreographer chourse and I left it very excited!

I have a great interest and curiosity about how to present a movement and the experience of it. And light is something that plays a big role in how movements gets experienced by the spectator and dancer. So to hear that we are going to work with light and dance made me very glad! This is something that I haven´t got the oppertunity to work so much with before so I am very excited!

I think we started off good with exploring what you can create with different lightsources and simple, unexpected lightsources such as a tv and a projector..

I really like the idea of using objects that is close to us i our daily life. These objects has a very clear role to us, what it is and what to use it for, something that made it very interesting to watch these objects trough a different point of view, taken from there "natural" surroundings. It made me thinking about other lightsources in my surronding that might could be used. My computer, the light of the microwave cooking, the streetlights ore the headlights of a car and so on.. Is this possible to use in a dance piece? And how? It would be interesting to explore that..

When we watched each others dance pieces and the use of the different lightsources was very interesting. For example the piece with the tv. The coulor of the it, the sound of it beeing switcht on and off, seeing the tv in an unexpected setting and way of use made me as a spectator interested and eager to see more. The experience of this daily life object beeing a part of an artistic act was in a way very fascinating..

The colour of the lightsources and the way they coloured the dacers skin, and the different moods the lightsources got me into was also interesting. Some lights, as from the tv gave me this cold, sterile feeling while the desk lamp gave me more of a warm, inviting feeling. And here I really can feel the importance in how we choose to use light, the colour and shape of it in our artistic work.. The light really creates an atmosphere and effects you as a spectator, and the whole experience of the dance piece it self..  But it also has an effect on me as a dancer. The light can actually effect me in my expression and the atmosphere that I am beeing a part of while I am dancing.. Very interesting I think..

Looking forward of the next lesson! / Rebecka