Wow...
Realized my last post was about the first rehearsal for my piece, and this past Friday was the fourth rehearsal!! Yikes. I've been using Facebook as my main channel for updating friends on my life, but I do like to keep a more detailed record here too. Sorry for long pauses (mostly to mom, since she mentions it to me the most :-D).
As for my piece, the main part of the choreography was done as of last Friday. I still need to build the movements for the one girl who has a smaller part, but everything is looking great! The girls are really doing what I ask and it's looking just like it did in my head. We still have lots of time to tweak, and there are a number of nuances about the movements that I will want to fix so that each person's "version" of the phrases look more similar. But the dream-like quality is already coming through, which is the most important part. I'm going to film them next rehearsal so I can look at the video over the course of the week and make notes on things I want to change, spacings I need to fix, etc. I have loved this creative process and how it's become somewhat obsessive in my life. The creating is certainly not over, but the first draft is done so now the editing begins. :-)
Fabulous valentine's day long weekend up at Smith with Sarah, we watched the Olympics and stayed inside where it was warm. I love all her friends, especially the dancers. Such fabulous young women! And I got to sit in on one of her classes on Monday (she had school despite the holiday), a course called Music from the Dancer's Perspective. Her teacher is an enthusiastic musician who accompanies many of the dance classes at Smith. He explained so many music theory concepts that I had learned the cut-and-dried way through piano lessons and theory books when I was younger. How much more interesting it was to think about music this way! He interspersed the lecture/discussion portions of the class with reading Walt Whitman and having the girls move around in the studio to different music and sounds. It was so cool.
Sometimes it amazes me that we can talk about dance at all, though - dance in itself is a form of communication which was created to fill the gaps where words cannot suffice. By its very nature it eludes description. Yet we still try to express things ABOUT it as well as through it. The artistic struggle continues. :-)
As for my piece, the main part of the choreography was done as of last Friday. I still need to build the movements for the one girl who has a smaller part, but everything is looking great! The girls are really doing what I ask and it's looking just like it did in my head. We still have lots of time to tweak, and there are a number of nuances about the movements that I will want to fix so that each person's "version" of the phrases look more similar. But the dream-like quality is already coming through, which is the most important part. I'm going to film them next rehearsal so I can look at the video over the course of the week and make notes on things I want to change, spacings I need to fix, etc. I have loved this creative process and how it's become somewhat obsessive in my life. The creating is certainly not over, but the first draft is done so now the editing begins. :-)
Fabulous valentine's day long weekend up at Smith with Sarah, we watched the Olympics and stayed inside where it was warm. I love all her friends, especially the dancers. Such fabulous young women! And I got to sit in on one of her classes on Monday (she had school despite the holiday), a course called Music from the Dancer's Perspective. Her teacher is an enthusiastic musician who accompanies many of the dance classes at Smith. He explained so many music theory concepts that I had learned the cut-and-dried way through piano lessons and theory books when I was younger. How much more interesting it was to think about music this way! He interspersed the lecture/discussion portions of the class with reading Walt Whitman and having the girls move around in the studio to different music and sounds. It was so cool.
Sometimes it amazes me that we can talk about dance at all, though - dance in itself is a form of communication which was created to fill the gaps where words cannot suffice. By its very nature it eludes description. Yet we still try to express things ABOUT it as well as through it. The artistic struggle continues. :-)