Choreography woot!
We are in the process of starting up our dance company again after about a year's hiatus (part of the delay was our director broke her ankle just as we had come up with new plans).
Today I showed our director a vintage tango choreography I spent a couple of months working on. The music is "el iresistible" by Lorenzo Logatti from 1908. You can hear a snippet of it here: http://www.amazon.com/El-Irresistible/dp/B004463OEA/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1319174233&sr=1-5 This ragtime - era style arrangement is significantly different from how it is played by an Argentine tango band.
This was a difficult piece to work out because of the complexity of the rhythms. I was very pleased that the director liked it. There is still a lot to work out with staging and transitions, and there are several places where we have to see if our dancers can do it gracefully at the tempo on the recording. It might be slow enough that ruedas just move too slowly to pull off with panache. And we need to work out the lifts, they may end up being a little skip where the man just gives the lady a little boost and he acts as the fulcrum.
But I am very pleased and excited with how if came out. Most of what I know about choreography I picked up from our director, but there's "knowing" the steps should work with the music, and then there's actually accomplishing it. And I have a different approach in that I can't hear music and understand how it's organized just by listening. I'm way more visual than auditory, so I don't feel the patterns in the music by listening, I have to move to it before my brain can understand the structure.
By the way, if you are not familiar with the linked album, click back to the main page and listen to "valse de ma couer" and "waltzing the blues", two of the most luscious ragtime waltzes ever recorded.
Today I showed our director a vintage tango choreography I spent a couple of months working on. The music is "el iresistible" by Lorenzo Logatti from 1908. You can hear a snippet of it here: http://www.amazon.com/El-Irresistible/dp/B004463OEA/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1319174233&sr=1-5 This ragtime - era style arrangement is significantly different from how it is played by an Argentine tango band.
This was a difficult piece to work out because of the complexity of the rhythms. I was very pleased that the director liked it. There is still a lot to work out with staging and transitions, and there are several places where we have to see if our dancers can do it gracefully at the tempo on the recording. It might be slow enough that ruedas just move too slowly to pull off with panache. And we need to work out the lifts, they may end up being a little skip where the man just gives the lady a little boost and he acts as the fulcrum.
But I am very pleased and excited with how if came out. Most of what I know about choreography I picked up from our director, but there's "knowing" the steps should work with the music, and then there's actually accomplishing it. And I have a different approach in that I can't hear music and understand how it's organized just by listening. I'm way more visual than auditory, so I don't feel the patterns in the music by listening, I have to move to it before my brain can understand the structure.
By the way, if you are not familiar with the linked album, click back to the main page and listen to "valse de ma couer" and "waltzing the blues", two of the most luscious ragtime waltzes ever recorded.