So I spent the day in the studio on my own, I found this incredibly difficult. It is the first time I have really created something completely on my own since being at uni...street dance not included! So there were defiantly confidence issues plus it takes a lot more self motivation to stick at it when you’re not really 'feeling it'!
So to try and overcome these potential issues I had a plan. Basically I jotted down a load of exercises from my good old Piná Bausch book and some great ones from Lorna Marshal. The plan being to warm up then to set up my video camera and go through Marshals exercises that get you to embody emotions I did four; anger, loneliness, anxiety and ….
So basically I stood facing the wall in neutral and then thought about the emotion and what it does to my body etc then once I had it turn into the space and begin to explore moving in this emotional state. So once I had been through all of them and found several gestures and characteristics for each state I jotted them down noting how my body felt.
Next I did some free writing, I put myself into my characters place and began writing how I would feel and what I would do. From this I was able to come up with a strong narrative for the piece. I then mapped out spatially my journey whilst speaking out loud the words I have written also adding in how I felt in that moment eg anger abandonment... I continued to work in this way gradually removing the text and layering movement in gradually being careful not to move to fast losing the connection.
By the end of the day (6 hours) I had created 2.5 mins worth of movement, just the first section. The second section I found really difficult, mainly as I couldn't really relate to why my character would have a panic attack in the same room as her partner and not either seek help from him or for him not to offer it...After hitting a brick wall for a hour I called it a day!
By his point I was very stressed! Because of Christmas and bad weather I only ended up getting into the studio for 1 day instead of the planned 3 so I was very behind with my choreography. Plus I really needed an outside eye!
I let my friend watch what I had done...this was quite a big deal for me as up until now I hadn’t shown anyone, nor had I ever done anything like this before and I already have no confidence at all so getting a negative response would really not be good for this! I think I probably realised that it still wasn’t anywhere near finished as to create in this way takes a very long time and can’t be rushed. But she didn’t hate it which was good! She could see a stark difference in the two pieces although be both agreed that more ‘Dance’ needed to be put into this one as it was perhaps too pedestrian and too close to an actual panic attack. So confidence was still low but relatively safe...for now.
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