FMiH. Thank you.
Many thanks to all who supported and participated in
Find Me in Here!
A work founded on the original contributions of several individuals, its public life was short lived, culminating with two “final” performances at the end of August, 2009. What I have learned from the experience continues to have its effect and I look forward to exploring further the questions of creative process and product that
Find Me in Here raised.
Similarly, I am always eager to engage with your comments and questions and look forward to many conversations about dance, performance, and creative work.
esther m palmer
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FMiH. A week later.
More than a week since
Find Me in Here came and went, and I still have yet to watch the videos from our final shows. I don’t actually want to watch the videos, since I got to see the performances, but at some point I need to put bits + pieces up here to share a small view on how vastly different the various shows were.
We loved dancing at Green Space –relishing the smooth wooden floor to turn and glide on, the emotionally framing lights, the palpable silence that made room for the rhythms of the piece.
Find Me in Here was meant to be seen in these intimate surroundings, meant to be casual and formal all at once. Taking it out to the parks was educationally disorienting –but also a thrill because for all that was missing in the “normal” of dance’s* context, I think viewers still found moments that drew them in with the same rapt focus, that saw the dance standing on its own two feet in the noise and bustle of public life. Wherever and however it’s meant to be seen as a production, the dance can convey wonders regardless of setting. Wonders, questions, moments of pause, confusion, delight, disgust –the same range of emotions, albeit easier to spend time with in the concert setting, are available anywhere. At least, so it seemed with
Find Me in Here.
*I use the term “dance” here in a very limited capacity, not intending to encompass all its diverse forms and understandings, barely even referring to all of concert dance, mostly just meaning to discuss my own work.
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FMiH. Athens Square Performance.
A few moments from our performance yesterday in Athens Square Park. Enjoy!
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FMiH. Astoria Park performance.
Here are a few brief excerpts from our first performance at Astoria Park.
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FMiH. Solos in the park.
Anna and Sarah also spent some time rehearsing their solos, working out the complexities of dancing in the grass.
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FMiH. Following
"Following" is the section after "Repeat + solo" (see previous post). Here we see it at Astoria Park with only 2 out of 5 dancers, but hey, it's always fun to experience something new in the work!
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FMiH. Repeat + solo.
Today we rehearsed at Astoria Park (site of our first public performance on July 19). We were down three dancers (yikes!) but made good use of the day rehearsing this section that focuses on Anna's solo.
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FMiH. Chelsea floor version.
I asked Chelsea to create a floor sequence inspired by my phrase and here's what she came up with. We've still got some work to do with this phrase, which you'll get to see in a few weeks!
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Find Me in Here. Notes from the break.
After a break from rehearsal and blogging, we're recharged and getting excited for our upcoming performances.
We're still working hard to polish and finish up the piece (I keep changing and adding things up to the last second), and posting video from our last few rehearsals.
I've also asked the dancers to share some of their thoughts about the process now that we're 2/3 of the way through it, and will put their words here soon. Their experiences have indeed varied from "normal" (though is any process still the norm these days? We're all doing a variety of things) and it's informative to hear what they work through to make sense of this piece.
For me...
Searching for answers and finding them where I didn't expect them. Creating something I don't know very well or even understand. Learning from my dancers, opening my idea of movement. Recognizing, again, that the ingenuity in choreographed movement usually comes from someone else's movement, which is the beauty behind bringing together different movement voices. Loving the moment when Emily told me that this piece is about process -it's brilliant when others can see that. So curious to have an audience be part of this -you change everything by just watching, and we do so by making something for you to see. I hope they will also want to dance!!
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Find Me in Here. Rough run thru, part II
Here's the second clip of our rough draft, which starts where part I leaves off. enjoy!
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Find Me in Here. Rough run thru, part I
I put together the dance on paper, and then we tried it out in rehearsal. There are plenty of holes, but the ideas are starting to be there. This clip starts after the guiding section and anna's solo section (see the last two weeks).
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Find Me in Here. Anna's solo.
Picking up where we left off last week, Anna's solo emerges from my phrase that everyone is repeating.
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Find Me in Here. Guiding as opening.
Here the ladies are dancing our new (and final!) opening, also known as the guiding section. We made some great progress in this rehearsal, clarifying performance attitudes and "details." My goal is to communicate cooperation and team building, and we were working on this section to make sure it is neither too internal nor too presentational/obvious/showy.
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Find Me in Here. Sarah's name dances.
Here are Sarah's dances in response to "Does my name represent me?" and "Do I like my name"
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Find Me in Here. Sarah's first name dance.
Ages ago the dancers created movement sequences in response to the question "does my name represent me? is it me?". Sarah finally gets a chance to catch up.
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Find Me in Here. A chat with Sarah.
Sarah and I talked briefly about what it's like to jump into this piece midway through.
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Find Me in Here. Hsiao-Ting + Hsiao-Wei Hsieh.
Hsiao-Wei and Hsiao-Ting break down the parts of their last name as written in Chinese - the is made up of other words (a whole is greater than its parts) and here we learn what they all mean.
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Find Me in Here. More phrase from Esther.
I am continuing to build on the phrase we started last week. this will be used as a transition phrase --just a little glue for the rough spots.
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Find Me in Here. A short phrase from Esther.
Curve ball. I created this phrase. More of it to come. Sorry the end is out of frame!
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Find Me in Here. Chelsea's solo, part 2.
Chelsea finished her solo, here we see her picking up where she left off.
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Find Me in Here. Hsiao-Wei's solo.
Hsiao-Wei finished her solo today.
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Find Me in Here. Hsiao-Ting's section 3-2 movement
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Find Me in Here. Section 3-2
Here are a few moments from the new section, which I'm calling "section 3-2." I'm not including the whole thing because of poor camera framing (the rest of the stuff is just hard to decipher). At the end of the video, what you can't see is the chelsea-sarah duo joining the anna-HT-HW trio serendipitously with the same movement that shows up in the different sequences they're doing. We will come back to that for sure --it was a lovely moment!
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Find Me in Here. Following Chelsea trio.
I started a new section today, and this is a more fun take (handheld) of the new "following chelsea" trio. Chelsea created this sequence for the once-was "opening segment," and now she's dancing it with Sarah and Hsiao-Wei. The next video shows parts of the whole new section, including this trio.
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Find Me in Here. Talking with the twins.
Here I ask Hsiao-Ting and Hsiao-Wei to tell me what it's like for them to work on Find Me in Here which uses so much of their own movement, while also choreographing their own work.
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Find Me in Here. Solos in dresses.
I created an order for the piece based on material we had created and this week we tried it out (and got to do so in style! the dancers are wearing Emily's process costumes).
Well, it was informative at least. So I spent the rest of the day rethinking how I got to where I'm at with this piece. More on that later this week, but for now I'll share from the opening of the piece in which Hsiao-Wei and Sarah perform their solos.
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Find Me in Here. Solos - Hsiao-Wei and Chelsea
And here are the solos from Hsiao-Wei and Chelsea.
Hsiao-wei added a gestural narrative to her solo, and I suggested she go deeper into the movements in between looking for the narrative motivation that takes her from one place to the next (I seemed to suggest to everyone to look more seriously at the why behind their movements and transitions). I think she's still working on applying this comment, but on repeat viewings, I'm not sure it's the correct one. Well, time will tell.
Early in our rehearsal, I looked at Chelsea's solo and asked her to consider her motivations in and out of movements -why was she moving from this dramatic or gestural moment to that leg kick? How does it all connect. She started working through those considerations and what's recorded here already shows improvement, with the solo having a tighter flow and more interesting performance quality.
Enjoy!
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Find Me in Here. Solos - Anna and Hsiao-Ting
Today we continued working on the solos, this clip includes Anna's and Hsiao-Ting's progress.
I am giving the dancers a lot of room to create from their own inspiration, hopefully so that they'll end up with personal solos that they enjoy dancing. At this stage, the solos are still pretty young, so I'm keeping my comments broad and constructive.
I asked Anna to rehearse her solo, which has a lovely free-flinging energy, with an eye to upping the frenzy or calming it down. We'll see next time which direction she decides to go.
Hsiao-Ting shifted her intense footwork upright (see last week's videos) and really captivated me with this searching yet calming "journey." It's clear she's exploring and to watch is a meditation. This week, she added some jumps to add some variation in height and dynamics. I think we both agree this needs some more investigation - why is she freeing herself so abruptly? Is it really freeing to hurl herself through the air to the ground or is the control of her carefully padding feet, never fully on the floor, more liberating?
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Find Me in Here. Costume talk.
The previous
Find Me in Here post shows Emily's thought process in sketches. Last week when I had the dancers rehearse in skirts, we all agreed they were a bad idea --but the problem was how they obscured the legs rather than their inherent skirt-ness. Emily probably never saw the girls in long dresses, I just asked them to wear whatever they had, but still it was good to confirm what would have been a poor direction to go.
Instead, Emily has clearly been working with the idea of tent (waistless) dresses for a while and this time suggested a design connected more directly to our focus on process. She'll create basic muslin tent dresses for the girls to wear in rehearsal and at the parks when we perform this summer. These are meant to be subjected to normal wear and tear, the signs of which Emily will then use to inform her final designs that are unique for each dancer.
Practical considerations such as quick turn-around between final the park performance and the concert performance (aug 29-30) and the fact that dancers aren't exactly a messy bunch, led to Emily creating some preliminary designs to work from in the end --which we'll keep playing with for a while.
I love this design concept because it addresses the individuality of each dancer within a "uniform" or "group" style and, more importantly, because it relates directly to my creative methodology. Yay Emily!
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Find Me in Here. Anna on "solos".
So in last week’s rehearsal, we started working on our solos. I was really feeling a need to move. So I tried to make “big dance.” Chelsea wasn’t there, but I was trying to channel her because she always makes beautiful big full movement.& nbsp; My movement usually tends to be awkward maybe. I like to make things that feel weird or that I think will look weird. Not pretty. So that said, I was struggling with the genuiness of the solo representing me. But I think I will stick with it. Push myself a different direction. Still the solo is not going a necessarily pretty route, more just a space filling and big moving route. The beginning creations are a lot about throwing yourself around and momentum. I like it too.
We also played more with the teaching phrases without the teacher speaking to the learners. I got to be the teacher and it was a very interesting process. It was hard because my movement wasn’t about hitting shapes but about throwing weight and momentum. So for the other dancers it wasn’t about finding the right placement, but about the quality of the movement. That was really hard to convey with no words. Also, I found being the learner to be a lot more fun. It got boring for me to do the movement over and over thinking that yea they got it well enough even though they were still f iguring stuff out. I like being engaged in the figuring out more.
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Find Me in Here. A short chat with Chelsea
Here I ask Chelsea to talk briefly about what it's been like to go through our process over the past few months.
I totally agree with her!
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Find Me in Here. Guiding.
Here we keep working on the section I'm now calling "guiding". The ladies are wearing skirts so I can see how they feel as potential costume pieces, but none of us were wild about the length obscuring their legs so much. Emily, our costume designer, came up with a great idea and is creating tent dresses that will stay above the knee.. more details on that soon.
In the background, you'll also see Lindsey taking photos, some of which will appear hear in the next few days, enjoy!
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Find Me in Here. Solos.
We welcome Sarah Lehman to our group as we start in working on "identity" solos. A taste of where we're headed!
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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 GroupPremise: 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 RoverYou 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/
affected/released in/by the group. It's not necessarily a bad thing.
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Find Me in Here. Teaching phrase
Hsiao-Ting made up this phrase and the group is doing their best to sort out the details without being able to confer with HT verbally.
See how well they do!
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Find Me in Here. Group Effort.
In this video, you'll see the dancers assisting each other through their movement sequences. It's a hoot.
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Find Me in Here. Opening segment - notes
It is a challenge for me to work without a concrete overarching structure, and I'm trying different ideas to get into the material a bit more personally. The past two weeks I've been working with the dancers individually to get their specific experiences of themselves as individuals within a group. It helps me respond to their movement more precisely and gives me an entry point for editing their phrases for the piece.
What I learned from them is that groups provide us with parameters. They restrict or release our personalities (or do both simultaneously). It's pretty obvious really, though interesting to hear that all of us make choices about our behavior out of consideration for how others will perceive our intentions. The greatest concern is having one's meaning misconstrued and used to form a inaccurate judgment of one's personality or identity.
After deciding last week that the audience clusters were a nuisance, I nonetheless decided I liked the presence of the chairs in the performance space. I like them as obstructions for the dancers, but also as reminders of place. I am considering other ways to accomplish these effects without using chairs (because they're big and oh so cliché in dance), such as a powder or skin application that could leave a residue on the floor after the dancers move from their starting position. But then you run into safety concerns (slip hazards), and it doesn't answer the obstruction need. I have also been brainstorming on what easily obtainable abstract, stump-like objects I might consider, but finally I remembered that part of my intention with this project was to employ the dancers in place of architectural objects, so I'm working hard to keep that in mind. I might try pairing the dancers, using one as a placeholder and the other to dance through the space. Seems an obvious solution, yes? We'll see how hokey it is.
[caption id="attachment_143" align="alignright" width="202" caption="two performing spaces divided by audience"]
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I'm also stumped on where to put the audience, and have an idea to try next Sunday that creates a boundary for the dancers between two primary spaces, as you can see from my rough sketch.
I worry that this will have the effect of creating two "groups" for the dancers to choose between, which misses the point of examining the effects of the group on the individual. But we'll try it nonetheless.
Thanks for reading!
** And my apologies for posting these notes a week late! It was a hectic stretch for me and I simply forgot that I hadn't done it yet.
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Find Me in Here. Opening segment - take 3
One more day working on the opening segment. I tried out the new audience set up, where the chairs create a box with a usable perimeter as performing space. It wasn't doing much for me, so we'll scrap it when we come back to this section in a few weeks. But we made some great progress on each of the dancers' "stories" for this opening sequence.
[blip.tv ?posts_id=1892981&dest=42686]
Next week: We move on from the opening segment (we will revisit later, as it is far from "done") to work on the big picture (I like working within a big picture, more room to play).
Here's an idea for a basic structure:
- Opening chaos moves into formation of a group
- Time spent as a group
- What the group does to the person
- The individual
- The group again (why? how'd we get here?)
What would these sections looks like? There's the bigger challenge. I am very drawn to this idea that groups limit and enable our personalities. So I'm working on different ways to bring boundaries into the movement and the relationship between the dancers. Check in next week to see what I came up with!
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Find Me in Here. Opening segment - take 2, hand-held
Here we are again with the opening segment - with a hand-held camera. The image is more fun, but may be more difficult to follow (slightly).
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Find Me in Here. Opening segment - take 2
Here's how the opening segment is evolving.
More thoughts on this soon at findmeinhere.wordpress.com (it's been a crazy weekend!)
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Find Me in Here. Hsiao-Wei on "opening segment"
The most exciting part in Esther’s rehearsal is you never get bored. Today she tried a new idea. (You can read her article—Opening segment - A Sketch) Although we had only three dancers this time, I felt my movements so limited when I danced. I had to aware of not only other dancers but also those chairs.
“Space” is an interesting element of dance. I never think about my route when I do some sequences because the space is big enough for all of us. But when there are five chairs randomly put in this space, suddenly they become 5 standing dancers/partners. How to present my sequences fluently with them? How to make relationship with them? Or do I need to ignore them? If they represent five clusters of audiences, how I design my route to go around and finish at the spot where Esther wants us to get together? Now, “space” is not only space between dancers, it becomes a relationship between dancers and audiences.
Finally, Esther changed her mind not to use this idea. But still, I had a good experience of becoming conscious that there are different meanings of space. I can create different visual impression if I think more from audience’s standpoint. Space can be dancer’s travel route, body shape, movement direction and also relationship with audiences.
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Find Me in Here. Opening segment - a sketch.
I was playing with ideas of audience arrangement and how to start the piece.
At the start of rehearsal, the chairs stood in for clusters of audience, but by the end of working on this segment, they just marked the dancers's starting position.
More to come in a couple of weeks.
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