electromagnetic pulse

Find Me in Here. changing gears... a little.

For the past several weeks I have been avoiding and being frustrated by this nagging that I am going about choreographing Find Me in Here in the wrong (for me) way. I set up a process for myself - to choreograph a group dance - a "dancey" dance, a "traditional" "just dance" dance, something I haven't done since college and am not sure I know how to do anymore. What I have learned in the past two months is that if I wanted to, I could create a "dancey" dance, but I don't want to. The things I find intriguing just don't fall into that category. The material isn't stimulating enough to stay with long enough to create a work of more than a minute or so. Recognizing this, I am liberated to work again with ideas and structures and organization.

So with this little breakthrough, I have been thinking and making notes upon notes to change course for the piece. I am transcribing some of them here straight from my notebook (to preserve my thought pattern sometimes at the expense of clarity).

Creating the Group
Premise: they each tell a story about navigating "alone" through a group
What brings them together?
Chelsea + Anna both have "story-like" sequences already.

Task: show the dancers a short segment of movement and have them learn it without verbal communication between us. They can help each other figure it out.

The movement sequences should be visually complex so that it is difficult to imitate.

Do this task and then have them perform the opening again to see how their connections are different.

What's the story of this group?
Story --> event --> experience --->

• Feeling smaller (small with its many associated meanings)


• Feeling smaller because of feeling bound


• Creating boundary - but a 360 degree, web-like boundary? Or in your face?

Red Rover
You have to play but it hurts. And you know it hurts. When do you just refuse? Or fight the expectation?
I don't want the dancers to play RR on stage, but what variation on it? Something that creates the same tension.

Two kinds of groups

• Being forced into a group


• Forming a group

Go back to A/B performance space? And then who is the individual in these settings? Within the group? What am I trying to show? Wait. Remember, process, exploring... Questions rather than answers.

What are the questions?

Who am I, in a group?

This question assumes that who I am is defined without the group, i.e. True identity exists in the individual and is lost/obscured/changed/

Labels: FMiH

posted by e m p @ 10:25 PM