Monday, February 21, 2011

Fighting the End

                I found it difficult to develop an intent when starting this assignment.  Thinking so much about the requirements for the project took away from my artistic thought.  In order to get some inspiration for an intent I began listening to several different musical choices in an exploration for what I truly wanted.  The first piece of music I came across that gave me the inspiration to choreograph was Agnus Dei by Samuel Barber.  Upon listening to this piece of music I felt a sense of Angelic presence with the encapsulating vocals.  The only problem I had with this beautiful music was that I didn’t know how to use such a popular piece.  I also did not want to produce cliché works in class since this music brought about the idea of angels swooping in and out of our lives on earth.  When I found Hindemith’s “Viola De Arco” I could hear that the music was slightly less dramatic than Agnus Dei, but it still held dramatic qualities and depth.  Even though this musical choice is beautiful, I didn’t want to develop beautiful movement.  I was really hoping to develop a different way of moving with an awkward yet satisfying manner.
                The picture, “Physical Disorientation,” by Ashley Dcrouse gave me the idea of thinking that the body is broken into separate fragments that can be manipulated with those different kinds of body initiations we were supposed to be working with.  With the visualization of my body being in that situation I began to use improvisation as a tool to find movement motifs that could be used throughout the piece.  As I improvised I came across the development of a walk initiated by the pelvis, a hand initiated turn leading to an odd shape, and a running back and forth initiated by the head.  Knowing that I wanted to stay away from movement that is obviously pretty in nature, I continued to search for inspiration leading to a unique intent.  When looking into my musical choice I found that the composer had lived and created within a world of Hitler and the Nazi regime.   I read somewhere that the composer wrote the viola de Arco as a funeral piece.  This gave me the idea to work with the idea of the fear of death.
                The use of mixed meter was one of the hardest tools I’ve used in choreography since this class started.  The complexity of having to use different quantities of measure than that of the music was hard to grasp.  A clear example of this difficulty was the part in my dance in which Christina and I were on the floor in front of Isis.  The hand motion of swooping to the left, right, down, and up in a cannon was supposed to have different lengths for each person.  I was meant to do this in a four, Christina in a seven, and Isis in a nine.  After watching the video of my piece I realized that this wasn’t clear because my group and I were having trouble counting the music.  This was found throughout the piece.  I would have set counts for the movement, yet they wouldn’t be clearly presented because of the lack of being able to count against the music.
                As the class gave their feedback I was pleased to hear so much positive feedback and ideas for making the piece better.  One outlook on my work that I was happy to hear of was Katy’s story to what my dance was about.  She felt like Isis and I were making the shapes of individual vultures throughout the entirety of the work.   To bring this idea into more depth Ellie elaborated by stating that Isis developed a character with immediate audience response as she breathed heavily, and with a fearful gaze.   Being that vultures are creatures that eat animals or carcasses that are already dead, this gave the intense feeling that Isis was going to “die.”
                I wanted to have a logical development of my piece, and I felt like I was successful in doing so.  “Logical development becomes apparent by virtue of repetition, climax, transition, contrast and variety in the dance (Smith-Autard 78).  I feel as if the main focus I would have if reworking my piece would be on variety.  “Without variation and contrast, repetition of the motifs would be dull if presented ad lib in their original form” (Smith-Autard 73).  Although I didn’t always repeat the motifs with their complete original form, I felt like I could have developed more variety after watching my showing from the class.  Between the lack of time and my slow start to finding an intent I lost the means of developing a strong variety in and among the dancers.  Hearing the feedback from others in the class I was able to hear that the contrast between the dancers from a two dancer to one perspective was clear.
                When I was working with unity in my piece I found that I didn’t want to use this tool too much simply because I was working with the contrast between Isis and Christina and I.  However, “the final shape that emerges when the dance is over is realized through unity” (Smith-Autard 79).  One idea that Ellie had was to use unity as the three of us creating shapes within each other yet being separated in a way by that difference in shape.  Looking back I had done this a few times within my piece, but I definitely could have done this more as a way of developing that relationship of the two dancers against one in a different, less obvious way.
                All in all I felt like I learned a lot from this assignment.  Even learning two other people’s choreography and seeing their style of development was very enlightening.  I was impressed with my group’s variety within the group, meaning that each of our pieces were completely different.   We all three had different interpretations of what the assignment was looking for, and found different ways of showing that throughout our own pieces.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Inevitable Connections

Jake Bone and Jessica Holt

                Once again, I found myself over thinking the process for this assignment.  It wasn’t helpful that my partner and I shared the same avenue of intellect.  Both he and I were trying our hardest to create simple transitions, but what we forgot to consider was whether the transitions were effective.  This led to our piece being bland with simplicity everywhere but the transitions.  It wasn’t until our professor pointed this out that we realized our problems to overcome.  At first it was disappointing to hear the corrective criticism in that I felt like we should have known better, but then I realized that having a third person perspective with much more experience was part of the learning process. 
                At beginning of this process, Jake and I had the idea that our relationship toward one another within the piece would be a gravitational pull that caused us to orbit one another.  Instead of using any kind stimuli to develop this idea, we pretty much just came up with a concept.  This was a bad start for us.  After hearing the advice from Ellie we decided to take a break from the movement in order to listen to different music to find some inspiration.  “The music not only dictates the kind of dance, but also its mood, style, length, phrasing, intensities and overall form” (Smith-Autard 29).  Before even changing the movement we tried our movement to Sinfonia Concertante, Allegro maestro by Mozart.  After trying this just once, we were able to see so many ideas for change. 
                As we began to alter the dance we started to develop a relationship within the movement.  The idea of sibling rivalry and the path to contentment in that relationship came to be our new intent.  This opened up new ways to connect with one another and made it easier to work on creating shapes that were more intertwined and exciting.  As I was looking for more inspiration to help develop my character I came across this quote, “I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers.  It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage.  Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at,” by Maya Angelou.  I couldn’t help but picture all of the irritating moments and frustration I had with my siblings while growing up.  On the other end of the spectrum, there were also so many moments of love and companionship.  Sometimes being around my siblings would be comfortable and natural while other times it would be forced.  This concept turned our piece around completely.
                At the very beginning of our piece Jake and I decided to contrast each other.  While I stood in stillness creating a striking image of face-on vulnerability toward the audience Jake walked hastily around the open space in an asymmetric floor pathway.  “To make an asymmetric floor pattern the composer would not repeat particular lines or curves” (Smith-Autard 53).  Within this pattern there were many curves accompanied by lines of forward and backward motion.   
                Between the upbeat intensity of our music with its rising and falling quality, our facial expressions, and general movement with one another, Jake and I had created somewhat of a comical dance.  “Essentially original or unusual ways of moving and relating to the environment and other people can be comic” (Smith-Autard 35).  Even though I had read about comic dance before working on this piece, I didn’t realize that we were actually creating one.  Many times when I get into a character I don’t even notice when I intensify my facial expressions.  I feel like this had a lot to do with how the piece was perceived by the audience. 
                The form of our dance took shape as the common binary form.  “The first section A is contrasted by a new section B, but the two have a common thread which binds one to the other” (Smith-Autard 70).  With section A we played with strictly making shapes with minimal, simple transitions.  As Ellie said in class, “transitions should be invisible.”  For section B we decided to spice up the piece with more movement, and in doing so our section B became the climax.  Within the climax of our piece Jake and I decided to play with symmetrical and asymmetrical shapes moving through the space.  As we danced in unison, “the dance movement takes place at the same time in the group,” we played with mirroring our moving shapes in a rapid pace and playing with separation into the foreground and background space (Smith-Autard 56).  With the reaction of the audience I would say this was an effective climax.  During this climax, I felt like the speed created a haphazard mood that was followed by stillness held in awkward shapes.  This only added to the idea of this piece becoming a comic dance.
                I was excited to see how the other half of class was going to do with their assignment of creating a dance piece from a haiku or piece of poetry.  There was one group that really stood out with this assignment.  They used their musical elements, eye focus, and movement to set an emotional mood.  I couldn’t even really describe the way it made me feel with words.  I was happy and sad with the bitter sweet message being sent.  The use of cannon, unison with contrasting movement, and gestures in which they supported one another created a movement phrase with much intensity.  The two would go back and forth between who was the support and who was taking the support so that no gender specificity took hold.  One of the most intriguing parts of this piece took place toward the beginning when the duet took their eye focus from one another in close proximity to both looking at a diagonal corner in the distance.  This was one of the simplest transitions I had seen all day, yet it was the most effective. 
                After learning so much from creating a solo movement during the first assignment, I wasn’t sure that there was much more to learn.  On the contrary, not only have I gained even more useful knowledge I also have the future assignments to look forward to learning even more.

Notes and Realizations Week Four

Feelings/Shapes:

Symmetrical                                        Asymmetrical

  • Content                                   Apprehensive
  • Order                                      Unevenness
  • Calm                                       Grieving
  • Balanced                                 Anger
  • Relaxed                                   Chaos
  • Equal                                      Hostility
  • Unity                                      Unstable
  • Wholeness                              Uneasy
  • Ease                                        Broken
  • Circle                                      Unbalanced
  • Square                                    Rhombus
  • Equilateral Triangle                Scalene Triangle
Body:

Symmetrical                                   Asymmetrical
  • Bones                                    Organs
  • Muscles                                 Muscles
  • Skin
Choreography wise (but not always) modern art/dance tends to be more asymmetrical, and ballet tends to be more symmetrical.
Three kinds of shapes:  Curved (both), twisted (easiest asymmetrical), straight (easiest symmetrical)
Strange space design- subverting etiquette 
How to make a blank stage into strange space?
For assignment 2
  • Foreground and background
  • Depth and width
  • Simple transitions (they should be invisible)