So yesterday I worked with Sarah Buckingham another fellow dance student, it was a completely different experience from working with Jess. This was mainly because the process was so different, and much more difficult than I had anticipated!
I put a lot more planning into how we were going to create the movement and so when we got into the studio I had a list of different choreographic tools and exercises. The exercises I chose were from a book on Piná Baush by Climenhaga. I chose these particular exercises because my artistic inspiration comes from the work of Baush, you can’t define her work, it’s not linier or narrative, she makes her audience work, you get an emotional connection to it that is completely individual to the spectator. And this pretty much sums up what I’m trying to achieve with this piece of movement.
So we began by thinking of a vivid memory of a relationship problem, one that caused us great anxiety. We then wrote this memory down, we read it to each other, and then read each other’s out loud. This was very strange for both of us, having someone else read out your personal story was quite uncomfortable and we both found it difficult.
The next step was to map out that story in movement on our own and perform it to each other. When I watched Sarah’s movement I found it really moving and emotional; I knew her story, she was so connected to what she was doing it really translated, I could feel her pain and heartbreak. Both of our sequences were choreographed but still very gestural with a really natural quality to the movement. Then we taught each other our movement; what really stood out for me was that the way we taught each other instinctively was throughout thought behind the movement rather that describing what we were physically doing. For example I told Sarah; “it’s that feeling when the emotion and feeling really hits you and it gets you strait in the stomach and you just crumble” instead of “do a roll down with the movement lead from a contraction of the centre” which would have been the same movement, but without any emotion behind it. Watching Sarah performing my story made me want to cry, yes it was partly because of my connection to it, but she completely embodied the emotion and made it her own as did I when I did her phrase. Every movement meant something, we didn’t focus on placing or ascetic, we remained true to the emotion. The next step was to mix the two together and it was only at this point did we begin thinking about how we could make this work in the show. I put the music on and we were able to create a very loose structure for I1.
After lunch we did a few different exercises; one working in contact and then recreating the duet as a solo. This also worked really well and when we taught each other our solos we again taught through our emotion and thought process rather than the action we were doing.
What we were able to achieve by the end of the day was a bank of gestures and movements that I/we have a strong emotional connection to. However this is nowhere near complete so I defiantly have learnt a lot about choreographing in this way from today. Firstly working in this was talks a lot out of you and because of this and the importance of staying true to the process and connected to the movement you have to take it slowly. Whenever we started to charge ahead we would have to pull back as we were beginning to make decisions based on aesthetic rather that emotion. So after creating lots of lovely fragments we called it a day!
All of what we did was captured on film and we are going to keep on working on it over the next few weeks. The main things we need to do are develop what we have done, growing it from gesture into something bigger, but keeping that connection. Threading all of the movement together and putting it into the two sections. And we will probably still need some more movement so I need to keep looking for exercises.
I can’t believe that I thought I could do this in a day! It just shows the different in creating work in this way. Last week Jess and I did the whole lot in 5 hours it was so easy and I loved what we did. This week it was so different, it was slow, emotional and made my head spin a bit. I’m excited to keep working with Sarah on it and see where it goes because right now I have no idea what the finished pieces are going to look like!
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