So here I am, weeks since my last blog post. So much for daily writing.
Where do I start after I so blatantly failed on the "dailiness" part?
Do I give excuses? Skip that and instead go right into what I've been doing? (Isn't that essentially one and the same?)
Or just start from here...right now... on Thursday afternoon, August 26 at 2:30pm and see what happens, realizing that it will likely be a combination of all of the above:
excuse-giving, recapping, and some other current, up to date ideas. (with some email-checking happening simultaneously, of course). Damn that email. It only means more work if I open it. But I can't resist the new messages!
Since leaving Vienna, Jeffrey, Evie and I flew to Boston, MA on August 9th where we were joyfully met by parents. What a homecoming and reunion. So lovely to see my folks and spend a restful week at the beach. Evie loved the ocean and the sand and everything the beach offers a toddler: sandcastles, sand in her hair, sand in her diaper, sand in her mouth...seagulls, chasing seagulls, feeding seagulls, shells, collecting them, throwing them, eating them. I love visiting the cape, and hope that life is filled with many summers where I can bring Evie there.
There was one attempt on my part to go to the Centerville public library and get on line to blog since my parents don't have a wireless connection at the house. My laptop settings were not jiving with the library though and so it was a futile attempt. But then it occurred to me. The cape was a vacation, and taking a vacation means taking time away from what we do normally. So writing about dance questions everyday, which I deem a normal activity, deserves a break when one is on vacation.
So now we are back, Evie is settling into a daycare routine, the cats have been de-flead of their fleas, the clothes have been returned into the closet that was re-designed when we were away, laundry and emails are more or less caught up, and the week long residency at UNCG with a great group of 12 grad students finishes on Friday. So its time to dive in...
Some thoughts on making a dance fast:
Making a dance in one week is challenging, certainly, but it also has some great merits:
1) decisions must be made quickly, and so you get better and eliminating something sooner in the process when it just doesn't fit. Rip the bandaid off. There is no time to coddle a section that might just need a swift kick out of your dance.
2) You are immersed in it day after day, so even though the amount of days is only 6 consecutively, you know exactly where you are, what material you have, what you need to do next. Even if you run out of time one day, there isn't a long wait until the next rehearsal. But even if you don't know exactly where you are or what material you have you don't have time to second guess yourself, so you have to remain confident, certain, and make decisions.
3) If your process includes dancers contributing their own material (which I can't imagine I would ever EXCLUDE from my process) well then, this material that is contributed is what you have to work with. There is certainly editing you can do within
it all but bottom line- your ingredients are your ingredients. This is somewhat terrifying yet also it is rather calming too. You can't bake a cake if you only have ground beef. With ground beef you know you're making a few things: you're making hamburgers. Or maybe tacos. Or maybe meatballs, but you'll also need breadcrumbs for that. Does that make any sense? I always seem to make analogies to food...
Some less meritorious details:
1) The dance cannot marinate. (food, again).
2) Do you really know what is good or bad/ right or wrong/ appropriate or unfitting for this dance in such a short time?
3) You've only begun. Then it's time to scatter.
4) You prioritize. Things like "cleaning phrase material" go away because you are still figuring out what music you should use.
5) A really important detail like what music you should use should not be saved until the end of a rehearsal period.
Fortunately for me, this dance will have 6-7 more rehearsals, for 90 minutes each. On Friday evenings at 5pm. Starting one week from Friday, Sept. 10.
I guess I wonder though- what will I do in that amount of time that will make it strikingly stronger than it is now?
Things I'm thinking about:
1) what the hell am I doing with music?
2) do we need a microphone?
3) how do these parts gel?
4) how do people speak about what they love in this dance?
5) how does the language of what we love in the dance stand against the other text parts that are less clear, less about love, and more just there because they developed in rehearsal?
6) what goes away?
7) what still needs to be there?
8) how do I incorporate these other theatrical parts I've been thinking about -
like the props in the wheelbarrow? (that word looks misspelled no matter how many times I look at it).
9) does the manifesto stay as it is?
10) (and this one is my favorite- thanks to my friend Larry who put it out there for me to consider):
if a dance is going to set out a promise at the beginning of itself, does it have to fulfill its promise? is that even possible?
more on this.
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