electromagnetic pulse

Find Me in Here. getting started.

I was lucky enough to have a stellar group of auditionees for Find Me in Here and so ended up with a great cast of dancers: Lydia Bell, Hsieh Hsiao-Wei, Hsieh Hsiao-Ting, Chelsea Retzloff, and Anna Wueller. (More about these ladies will be posted here in February.) I chose these five individuals for their dedicated and honest performances and for their potential group dynamic. It is a little scary making choices before knowing what the character of the piece will be, but these women showed me a willingness to be adventurous and bold, which leaves room for many possibilities. We will start our process with a day of improvisation - getting to know each other through movement (I will follow up with a short video clip from that rehearsal).

My process for this piece involves a great deal of play time. I will raise a question or concept and ask the dancers to respond with set phrases of movement (a "phrase" in dance refers to a sequence of movement shaped in body, time, and/or space, generally as a building block for further development - or just as a short-ish segment of choreography. The term shows up in dance class and the choreographic process alike, and so encompasses various specific examples). I will then work with those phrases somewhat like a palette of colors and paint a larger picture, so to speak. The build up and break down (and tweak and push and pull) process requires artistic trust between me and the dancers - and for them, between each other. A good way to build trust (or to identify where it is missing) is simply to dance together in an open format, which an improv jam provides.

1st rehearsal: improv session to explore each other's movement style

next rehearsal: we try exploring the question "Do I like my name? (Does it represent me? Is it me? Do I like myself?)"

Labels: FMiH

posted by e m p @ 12:24 PM