Today we made some final decisions about what stories to include and what to leave out. What an honor and responsibility to be trusted with all of these little pieces of people's lives.
I have a bunch of yung actors signed up to read for me so I will be recording all of the stories this week and working heavily with my sound designer and my trusty computer. Sound by Friday!
Today in dance:
Video one includes some silly thing I made my dancers do where they cover their mouths with their hands and a rough run through of the choreography (rearranged yet again) with the end and a chunk in the middle missing because iPhone storage is the worst:
Video two is a run through of everything we have up until this point without Phoebe:
P.S. apologies for the unrelenting bass and for standing in front of the camera
Tonight we worked more with stories to create solos and a duet for entrances.
Dancers enter the space dancing to a reading of their story. Set for the improv section, do that, do the choreography to "Home," continuing escalating stories until some sort of end.
This is essentially the format that I am into at the moment. Not sure yet about the exact movement.
I met with the sound designer to make a plan of attack for recording the stories. The goal is to have sound by Oct. 5th -- this will serve as my map.
Here is a video of what we accomplished today. Slow and steady progress! It's 3 minutes long....?
Today, I launched the online chapter of story collection using social media. I posted on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit (?!?!... honestly have no idea how that site works but i'll do anything for a hefty sample size)
If anyone out there has stumbled upon this blog... you are also welcome to contribute to the creative process by filling out or sharing this survey:
Today we consolidated and built on material from last week.
In choreography class, we did a short structured improvisation exercise. This inspired me to use a similar method to build movement onto the front end of our "Home"/keeping-a-story-inside phrase.
I asked the dancers to:
I then manipulated their movement a bit and asked them to interact with each other and the movement in specific ways. Here is the product of that exercise at 3 stages:
Next, everyone learned each other's story phrases:
We ended rehearsal with a little character development exercise that I hope to build upon in our next rehearsal.
{next steps: i hope to get a sound engineer soon and mix some vocal recordings of my collected stories into music}
I used the first rehearsal to familiarize three (out of five) of my dancers with my concept and share the stories that I have with them. They each picked five stories:
- one they could relate to
- one they did not relate to
- one they saw as "shallow" or "surface level"
- one they saw as "deep" or "vulnerable"
- one extra one of their choice
We played a bit with choreographing movement to the cards and reading them aloud to each other. I didn't take any video and probably will not end up using much of what happened in the first rehearsal but it was really helpful to speak with most of my dancers and get the ball rolling.
Rehearsal Two:
First rehearsal with my full cast! Yay!
And they are...
Phoebe Workman
Linda Ryan
Katie Banks
Hana Springer
Gabby Garruppo
All beautiful ladies, range of heights and movement styles- should be wonderful!
I taught them a phrase to "Home" by Nosaj Thing ( song here )
This phrase is based on the things that people do not want to share. When choreographing this phrase, I was driven by the image of a story trying to be told using it's own power and volition but the person who holds the story trying to keep it in. The movement is meant to be stilted and the dancer should look like she is struggling with herself.
I am also very music driven and the rhythm of this phrase is very specific to this song. I do not plan on setting it to different music.
Here is a video of myself doing the phrase and of my dancers doing it in a fun little sequence right after they learned it.
We THEN broke up into pairs and tandem choreographed some movement to three stories that my dancers selected. The video can speak for itself...
Overall, a good first week. I hope to set sound and music as soon as possible because I am realizing I don't work well without some driving sound/music/beat.
