Week Five Notes
2/9, 2,11
-Read Bloom chapter 10 my style
-Personal style: write narrative, defining and articulating clearly who we are
Personal Dance Style
My personal movement style is heavily impacted by my training and personal experiences. As a result of my feelings towards the world, my personal movement style has evolved tremendously over time. Considering my training was heavily impacted by ballet, my personal movement style reflects concepts connected to the Vaganova ballet syllabus. Reflecting on my appearance, I consider myself a short dynamic mover. I prefer to travel through space in quickly paced movement. Because I am a short dancer, I enjoy traveling through space with dynamic movement to breakdown the stereotypes that small dancers move minutely. My idiosyncrasies are composed of cross lateral movement explorations with postural movements incorporated with gestural movement. My choreographic style is heavily inspired by what is going on in the world and my personal life, at the time I am choreographing. An emotional connection between the subject and myself is needed when creating. I prefer to create movement phrases alone before demonstrating to my dancers. However, in the moment I enjoy exploring choreographic forms through improvisation when creating movement. My choreographic style typically consists of using six dancers however, depending on the work, I am open to using more or less dancers to create the story I am telling.Although my personal movement style has been impacted by ballet, the Horton technique plays a significant role in my overall movement style. With specific focus to body conditioning, the Horton technique has inspired me as a dancer and choreographer tremendously. Considering my classical ballet training focused on precision and the execution of proper alignment, the Horton technique amplified and resurfaced the beauty of linear movement for me. The connection between ballet and the Horton technique has inspired my movement style to reflect that of contemporary ballet. To move through space as light as a feather yet maintain the dynamics by connecting to linear movements and polyrhythms is a primary focus of my personal dance style. My cultural background is evident in my personal movement style. I am a black millennial from the south, and that comes out in my work specifically through my music selection. Although I incorporate multiple genres of music in my work, I enjoy exploring music from the 1990’s music era. In making an artistic statement, my goal is for my culture to be represented in all of my work, whether that be by music or movement. I believe as an artist; one’s personality is vital when exploring movement or telling a story through movement. My personal movement style is spacious and dynamic, with specific focus on lateral movement with the fluidity of classical repertories. To incorporate similar yet very different qualities in my choreography creates a juxtaposition of elements that typically belong to different movement genres. This juxtaposition presents endless possibilities of movement and creates a space for further exploration for the artist and me.
Assignment: Opposite of my style: adjectives, antonyms for your style, observations from peers
Opposite of personal style
Technical- Modern
Asymmetrical- Symmetric
Fluid- Solid
Sweeping- Narrow
Fast-Slow
Unclear focus- Unclear focus
Reflection:
I really enjoyed this assignment. I’ve never been asked to think about my personal style. I know there are certain qualities that I naturally produce, but to investigate why those qualities are present was honestly mind blowing. Although I understand my experiences shape who I am, I didn’t realize how heavily ballet has stimulated my choices in movement. In finding a connection between ballet and its linear aesthetics, the Horton technique naturally excited me. In combining my training in the two techniques, my personal movement style is heavily based on a contemporary ballet lens. In teaching classes, I have been told I have a unique choice in music. This exercise helped me find why I make those choices. I love classes that make you feel good. It’s all about the vibe for me. Yes, it’s great to get a nice stretch or learn something new about your body. However, when the music makes you feel good the movement feels good. One goal I have for my classes is to help dancers feel good about themselves, and one way to do that is by playing non-traditional songs that create good vibes. In making this observation, I also want to challenge myself to explore music that doesn’t appeal to the ear and incorporate classical music in my classes. I love watching contemporary ballet to classical ballet, however sometimes I mute the audio and watch the work with an R&B soundtrack. Experimenting with chance creates excitement and creativity for me. The second part of the assignment was to analyze our personal movement style and create a phrase that is the opposite of our style. I found this to be more difficult than the personal movement style. To create my personal movement style, I improvised, and the phrase was done. When creating the opposite phrase, I found challenges in recognizing what that was. My peers helped with this frustration by providing descriptions of my personal movement style. They said my movement is gestural, fluid, fast yet light, grounded, and oppositional between head and body. They said my movement consists of turns, movement that is led with everything but the head and is centered with a clear focus. They also added that I don't like to play in the ugly. In hearing these observations from my peers, I was able to make some connections from my past training and experiences about why I move the way I do. The most interesting discovery was that I don't like to play in the ugly. I totally agree. In undergrad, I always wondered why I was never casted in the modern pieces. In observing my personal movement style, I believe that was because my movement style is not rooted in chance. I know where my body is at all times and I believe exploring without being in control of my movement, the execution can be lost. Considering my training in ballet is rooted in technique, the execution of movement is very important to me. When performing, my main focus is execution. However, in focusing solely on execution, I believe the opportunity to play in the ugly was lost. I believe the studio is the place to try new things and experiment with movement that is not natural to the body. I believe the stage is for execution. Having the desire to be perfect and technical, has rubbed off on my exploratory practices in the studio. This assignment provided the opportunity to recognize these things and strive to step outside of my comfort zone. Creating adjectives based on the observations from my peers helped with generating antonyms to help with creating the opposite phrase. I look forward to using this strategy when creating choreography in the future. I believe this strategy challenges the choreographer to keep things fresh, and it also helps create a repertoire of works that don’t all look the same.
MY PERSONAL STYLE OBSERVATION FROM PEERS
Gestural, turns, fluid and fast yet light
Grounded, oppositional quality between head and body
Lead with everything but head, combinational
Clear focus
Don’t play in the ugly
OBSERVATIONS OF MY PEERS
George: inverted and plays in the ugly, linear mixed chance
Derreck: hand and eye connection, special chugging, sensual, sounds(claps)
Extension of the fingers, in and out of the floor, linear, comes from upstage
Morgan: seductive yet ritualistic, plays with the and one count, likes the floor
Hair-ography and internal movement
Week 6 Notes
2/16, 2/18
-Using 15 ways to manipulate a motif
-Improvisational duet working with George
-Working around an idea, movement is internal
Assignment: Find a poem that encompasses your mood for the week
Poem:
Here’s the fucking truth. The reason why you can’t get over the person you never actually dated is because there's nothing to get over. Stop making mountains out of flat land. Love yourself and only give your emotional energy to someone willing to match it
By: R.H Sin
Assignment Part II: Take your text and redesign it to fit a compositional form
Compositional Equation: ABACADAE
A.there’s nothing to get over
B. Here’s the fucking truth
A. there’s nothing to get over
C. The reason why you can’t get over the person you never actually dated is because
A. there’s nothing to get over
D. stop making mountains out of flat land
A. there’s nothing to get over
E. love yourself and only give your emotional energy to someone willing to match it
Notes on Chapter 12:
-Develop trust of self in relation to the individual
-Multibody movement: design and structure: Extend your movement possibilities (pushing off of someone to extend higher jumps)
-Counterbalancing
-Active and passive movement possibilities
-Two or more bodies as one
-Single creatures by using multiple bodies
-Bodies as structures or designs
-True duet is that each performer is essential to the whole: shared focus and objective
-There are 15 possible combinations for a quartet
-Consider how the stage appears at any given moment
-Follow some dramatic or mathematical necessity
-In Cunningham dances no part of the space is more important than another, each dancer has his own center, leaves it up to the audience
Small groups:
-As you start working in groups give up your identity to the larger whole
-What happens to the group affects each member
-Trio: weaving of three people: various relationships: Internal substructures
-Chorus vs groups: In a chorus there are no individuals
-A choreographer’s main sources are self and the relationship of that self to people, feelings, things, and ideas.
-Doris Humphrey quote: “If he does not respond with enthusiasm to such adventure, he possibly does not have the temperament for a life of composing.”
-Relationship between dancers and choreographers
-Creativity individuality via their mutual creativity
-Choreographers teach movement: process of molding
-Dancer influences the creation by how she/he responds and has to allow herself to be molded
-Fit the movement to particular dancers and create an atmosphere within which they are willing to give their most subtle and passionate expression.
-Dance rides on its performers, don’t find a midpoint
-Compositional structures are enhanced when realized on groups
-Group formation: strength in action, louder it speaks
-Basso Ostinato: group theme in the background and a solo burst out
-Contrasting or complementary
-Essential thing is that movement is executed with clarity and precision and performed with strong drive and focus
Reflection:
In this weeks class reading, we were provided 15 ways to manipulate a motif. I struggle with creating movement that is outside of my normal movement vocabulary. The list that was provided was very helpful with dissecting an idea and layering in aspects that we typically don’t use often. In exploring the manipulations, I realized that retrograde was the hardest one to achieve. I found repetition to be the easiest manipulation out of the 15. Our assignment was to use five manipulations to explore the mother phrase that was given. In this exercise, I learned that just like compositional forms, the 15 manipulations can eliminate creating new movement material. These tools are helpful when taking a movement phrase and exploring it deeply rather than generating more material. I find this strategy extremely helpful because I struggle with patience and when creating choreography. By using compositional forms and manipulations, it allows the movement endless possibilities. In working with text, I learned that compositional forms can also be applied. I stray away from working with text typically because it produces a static quality in the movement in my opinion. My movement style is very fluid, and text doesn’t allow the fluidity that music does. The use of compositional forms eliminated the boredom and stationary qualities that text produces for me. Before this class, I never thought of dissecting a text the way we dissect movement phrases. Now, I look forward to deconstructing text to give my work more depth and authenticity. In reading chapter 12, I learned a great deal of information. The biggest take away from that chapter was understanding that a choreographer’s main sources are self and the relationship of that self to people, feelings, things, and ideas. I love working with groups when creating movement. The energy that is produced in group work is unmatched and allows the dancers to feed off of each other. Specifically, the relationship between the choreographer and the dancers is what stimulates the energy. In the future, I want to maintain an open relationship with my dancers to create synchronization of energy between them while performing. I believe the energy starts with the choreographer.
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