Rehearsal Progress
Newest ending skeleton
Form, which is highly important for the success of a dance work, is one aspect that I have been struggling with throughout the process of choreographing this final project. I couldn’t help but connect the idea of the tension of opposites with this struggle even though this probably wasn’t the intent in most prominent on Fraleigh’s mind when writing this section. The sentence that brought this into perspective for me was, “Heidegger turns our attention toward art as a “striving between opposites” within a final “coherence” or “repose” in the completed nature of the art work” (Fraleigh 83). This idea of the final coherence has been what I have been searching for. The sections of my choreography have been giving off a sense of separation and disconnection, and while I was reading this I had a sort of revalationary idea to bring my dance together. The way it is set now, my dancers start off stage during the beginning solo to come in out of nowhere with no precedent of connection amongst one another. Instead, I want to try having dancers going across that stage at different times with different movement from Maggie’s solo movement vocabulary traveling in sustainment. I feel like this will give my dance a better since of continuity that will in turn connect the first section to the second section. “Disconnection is only possible if connection is assumed” (Fraleigh 77). With this being said, I have to establish a holistic connection of dancers, movement, and sections in order to use the tension of opposition to my advantage.
Another realization I came across by reading Fraleigh’s text was the importance of every moment presented to the audience. “In dance every moment counts” (Fraleigh 88). This includes every movement, transition, moment of stillness, and anything in between. When I focus on embellishing my choreography with specific details I lose my focus on the dance as one whole piece of art. “The work stands out as meaningful only in its entire unfolding” (Fraleigh 89). The integrity of my piece relies on how I piece my movement together. Another idea I have for confirming continuity as well as strengthening the message is to have Maggie and Shannon partner by themselves toward the end where now there are two sets of two dancers (Shannon and Maggie, Lauren and Brittany) against the one (Terrynan). After Maggie would break free of Shannon’s control she would have to face Terrynan who would eventually leaver her for the other three to come back on causing her to writhe away in fear. This would be the final struggle before her complete submission into the world of the others. At this submission I could have all five dancers repeating a small section of the movement vocabulary from the very beginning in unison before the revised ending brings the piece to a sensible close. “The picture is only complete when the strivings of those precarious decisions toward the fully realized, aesthetic “saying” of movement are at repose in the work’s completion” (Fraleigh 90). I’ve found that being persistent with my cast on repeating movement to get the movement aesthetic I am looking for gives me that end result of communication through my movement. Instead of immediately giving up on a choreographic idea, I work with my cast until I get the look I want. I was having trouble with this at first, but now I know what my cast can do when I give them a chance to work on the movement a little before I cut it. This has opened up options within my choreography I had shut down previously.
During my choreographic process, starting even at the beginning, I have been asking myself, “What is it that makes my piece an individually made dance, but is considered as such: a dance work?” This question was resurfaced this week after watching Christina’s work. Her dance is full of movement that is easily seen as beautiful dancing by her dancers. I started to question my own work after seeing such organically made flow of clearly beautiful movement. Then I was reminded that, “beauty, for instance, exists only in the mind or the eye of the beholder” (Fraleigh 95). The movement in my work has beautiful moments brought about by the oppositional tension of quirky and awkward moments. Even further, my piece is sure enough put into the artistic category of dance because it holds the “historically recurring constants as grace, strength, agility, and skill” which I have kept “open to interpretation, culturally, and stylistically” (Fraleigh 96). As I have talked about in previous blogs, the aesthetic that I am working with is basically ugly so that I can find the beauty within this type of aesthetic. I know that I can produce movement that isn’t from this aesthetic, but I am working towards finding a different movement vocabulary that will surprise the audience and be different enough to spark an interest that will stay in their minds. One way that I feel can enhance this need for individual style is to embellish the skeleton of some parts of my piece with details that will make the movement even uglier so that it feeds into the holistic view of my intent. With all of this being said, I am not working to redefine dance because, “dance is not so open a concept that it is subject to redefinition; redefinition works in terms of definition” (Fraleigh 98). I am aware and have experienced the dance aesthetic I am trying to opposite, but I am not saying that the opposite isn’t valid or exciting. I can work against the opposite only because it has been historically set before me. On the same note, the idea of bringing an “ugly” aesthetic on to a stage production is not new either, but I hope to find my own interpretation of the definition with my personal style and “Jessy movement”.
Even though time is short in terms of the process of this project, creativity found through playing with different ideas is still important. “Thus it is not correct to say that modern dance has not achieved clear definitional stances. But neither should we ignore that it concentrates- as a point of definition- on constantly rediscovering dance” (Fraleigh 104). The difference between creating a modern dance piece as opposed to a ballet piece is that I’m not piecing together specific ballet positions as if piecing together a puzzle. Instead I’m using different defined modern movement and refreshing it with my own personal style. This piece still needs a lot of work in these terms, but I believe the ideas that have come after this week hold promise for giving my piece a better sense of connectedness, more interesting movement embellishments, and a more thought out approach to form.
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