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.
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