.................Moving in a New Direction

Now that this semester has officially ended, I am switching gears and beginning to prepare for my Honors Thesis which will be performed on February 27th, 2010. I have my cast of seven dancers which includes, Alyson Corbett, Nisha Kapur, Lydia Mokdessi, Tal Schapira, Julie Serow, Komal Thakkar, and Hannah Ziegler, with my ASM Debbie Hammett. This piece will be a 20-25 minute work that is based on a piece I had previously choreographed, Seventeen Seventy-Five plus one, e.d. This piece will be performed in 5 movements and will follow the life and the creative process of Emily Dickinson.

..........................Video From Dress Rehearsal

This was a video from a Dance Works dress rehearsal with an understudy in place.

We Levitated the Pentagon

I haven't posted in while as I was wrapped up in the hustle bustle of performance time. The performances of Dance Works Fall 2009 went better than I could have ever anticipated. My cast was gorgeous and my piece was everything I had hoped it would be. My final title "Levitating the Pentagon" seemed to be the right fit and embodied the themes and images I was trying to convey.

Looking ahead to next semester, I am preparing for my honors thesis that will be performed on Saturday February 27th. I will be posting my research and ideas as I try to plan and begin to choreograph this work over winter break. I will continue to use this blog as a tool to present my rehearsal videos and notes when I begin rehearsals in January.

---------------Facing a Raging Wind

After adjudication, I had a change of heart and decided to go with a more simplified music scheme. I am much happier with the new music and it allows the piece to flow much more easily. Two of the original pieces will be added later once the final sound design is completed. Thanks Tal for your help with the music editing! I was so pleased with this rehearsal because I am finally starting to see a continuous piece that transitions well from one idea or image to the next rather than a series of short vignettes strung together. All my dancers have been so helpful in contributing ideas, especially as we created transitions that felt natural for them and served the overall theme of the piece. My working title at this point is "Facing a Raging Wind" but I'm not completely sold on it. Hopefully it will develop further into something I can feel passionate about.

My Structure is Complete

My structure is now complete but I use the term 'complete' lightly. I have the bare bones of the story that I wanted to tell. I have finally narrowed the focus of this piece to examine various forms of protest through the cultural lens of the 1960s in America.

Although these videos are seperate, the work is one continuous piece. Due to a technical difficulty we had to stop in the middle of the run-through and resume in a seperate video. I already see changes that I would like to make, including a musical change on the opening phrase and a musical change on a new phrase in the middle of the piece. I also plan to incorporate gestures and movement that evoke specific images of protest.

Back to the Beginning

I have been working a lot on the second half of my piece so I decided I would spend some time tonight focusing on the beginning. I really like the idea of a phrase incorporating breathing and decided to structure this section in duets. I taught the dancers a short phrase and asked them to manipulate the movement to create duets and I really like the end result.



I went even further back to the beginning of the piece and created a syncopated phrase that each set of partners could manipulate at one time or another. This is all of the material that I have thus far and while it is in a very rough form, it is beginning to take shape.

Finally a Focus

After compiling a great deal of research on my topic, I realized that I would need to narrow my focus significantly. There was no was I could cover a whole decade and make any kind of statement, so I decided to focus on the different forms of rebellion that the hippies asserted in the 1960s. This portion of the piece focuses on unity, silent protesting, agressive protesting, and asserting one's individuality. We have been working with several of these phrases for a while but the transitions are new and a piece of choreographpy is now beginning to develop from what used to be simple movement phrases. Other forms of rebellion that I plan to explore in future rehearsals include fighting for the right to breathe clean air, unorthodox relationships, and of course, the fight against the war in Vietnam.