So I'm thinking more about structural things. Foundations. The plans on large white pieces of paper in an architect's tube that require some serious explaining and spatial relational understanding. (Reading a drawing to scale is so not my strong suit). But I have structure on the brain. Especially since I'm making a new dance for 12 graduate students at UNCG in a couple of weeks. I have seven rehearsals to make this dance, with hopeful check ins along the way. I am working with a series of written details that will work in the piece... (questions I asked the dancers to answer about what it is they love about dances they see and what it is they love, in general). I am curious to see how and where the things we love in general are also of key importance in dances we love. Are they the same? Not always but sometimes?
Not sure how their responses will gel together but, channeling some of my Joe Goode workshop experiences, I know there will be material that will emerge from the collisions of these ideas too. There is lots to explore and I am feeling like there should probably be a script of some sort but that feels like a scary place to start. I am not a playwright, even if the material I'm writing has already been written. Furthermore-how much can I edit when it's not my stuff? Well, these and other scary questions that emerge when you're working with WORDS are all up in my face. I know that if all else fails, I have three moments from ATdK's work that I can't stop thinking about that I want to extract, change in a way that is suitable to me and respectful of that work, and present anew in this dance. I know that now, but will I still know that when I'm in the thick of rehearsals? Well, let's say yes.. and so for now, I'll call these three things this:
1) The moving group statue
2) The lineup
3) The hand holding
But before I go any further, I want to talk briefly about ownership in dances. I believe that these moments that are filmic in my brain are by no means the actual choreography. They are my reading and interpreting of a text (the Rosas dance) and my ability to paraphrase something from that text in a conversation with someone else (the students at UNCG). I will reference this dance when I have this conversation but these dancers are in no means recreating that dance. The group moving statue for instance involved 8 dancers, and some pretty complex lifting, resting, falling and shifting moments. I can only see the THOUGHT of them as a moving statue. I cannot recreate it, nor would I ever dream of doing that. I am in love with the experience I had witnessing that moment at that time, and it is THIS experience that I wish to recreate somehow. The same is true of the line up moment, and even the simple hand holding idea too. I loved how I felt when I watched them. I believe all that I have written in regards to these three ideas is actually a high compliment to the Rosas dancers and to ATdK. It is not disrespectful or a dishonest act of stealing their material. I believe we as artists do this all the time...try to recreate the things or experiences we love and we do it consciously and /or unconsciously all the time. I am being much more conscious about it here. (blatantly so). I am also (on a more subconscious level, I think) doing what I asked the UNCG dancers to do: write what it is they love about dances. I loved those moments. I loved so many more in the work but these three are rising to the surface, after a few days (and new cities) have passed me by. I love them because they are clean, they are going to be a snapshot, a whiff of what my brain and body felt and they will become new moments.
what else:
I also know that I want a microphone, downstage right, where dancers will reveal something about themselves, comment on what is happening around them, ask a question to the audience, or just sing something. I want to know who speaks other languages too.
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I also know that I am tired and sore from walking around Bratislava and then later this evening, throughout Sweden platz in Vienna. Who knew it was so difficult to find hand sanitizer here?
Today is the first time that Jeffrey and I both remarked that we are ready to get home. So is Evie... although I'm actually not totally convinced she wants to leave Vienna. She loved watching the powerful hydrofoil motorboat disrupt the water as we sped down the Danube. She also admired a street performer today - her first street performance! You know, the ones ...who dress in silver and pretend to be a statue that move very minimally and only when you toss some euro in their hats... She also will not tire of chasing pigeons, dogs, or other children around the plazas. I'm not tired of chasing her, either. No really, I'm not.
Movement practice today: WALKING. Lots of it. Now I will stretch for 20 minutes and take a shower.
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