Compositional Final Study
This is a reflection post for a composition class final that I worked on and collaborated with Avey Jespersen, Julianne Vicari, and Cameran Jane (CJ) Stoflet
The Final Study and The Emergent Dance
I will say about this entire process is that my natural instinct as a choreographer, especially when I'm choreographing on myself, is to add quite a few pedestrian-type movements and really draw out a possible story, not just for the audience but for myself. And that was not something that I had in common with any of my collaborators. So with that, I was really given the opportunity to step out of my typical way of interacting with my own work and put not just risk but also new intention behind my movement. While I do still greatly enjoy my more mentally and story-heavy artistry that I find myself truly being drawn to, it was nice to be given the chance to experiment without feeling like all of the pressure was on me, and in moments where I wasn't completely sure what to do next I had a person right beside me who was ready to throw out ideas or give a helpful suggestion.
My collaborators and I made a very design-heavy and position-based dance that had a clear set of motifs that we created as a group. Our intention was to look at the impact that would come from the dance, keeping mostly the same movements but changing sequence, facing, togetherness, musicality, and spacing. We used the song Spring 1 - 2012 recomposed by Max Richter, which is the album cover above. For me, this was a very interesting experience because it is uncommon for me to work with other dancers on a work that we will all be dancing in and help create. This gave me a new sense of collaboration that I had not experienced before with the most struggling thing being that while we all agreed upon a common interest to dive into we all still had ideas of the best way to dig into it and due to time conflicts I don’t feel that we were really able to discuss and experiment with each person's own personal idea of how to continue. Unfortunately, that's just how it goes sometimes, but I still firmly believe that we made a great piece and we all discovered something new about ourselves. The nature of our interest really didn't lend itself to a large amount of change in the movement, so in the time in between rehearsals, it was interesting because without the other dancers, I wasn't able to personally come up with any ideas, but I believe it led to more collaborating and less of one person doing everything, which is a tendency for people sometimes. I will get into this more later, but I feel like if I were to come back to this work at any point, I would be curious to see the effect that lighting and scenery could have on the feeling of this dance.
Collaboration as Choreographic Practice
We agreed on a shared interest collaboration that proceeded at a sustainably unproblematic rate. With only a few large Personalities in the room, respect was still given, with a loud voice for some truly communicatively helpful conversations around what the facing should be, what the motif should look like, even down to the song. a large thing that my collaborators and I really wanted to make sure of was that everyone had a voice and we approached any suggestion with a try attitude, which, while it is possibly a little time-consuming, at points it gave us several moments in the dance where I personally think is our best work because we tried it seven different ways and eventually combined a couple of suggestions. Another thing that this mentality of trying it first gave us as a group was the trust that there was honesty behind people's opinions, because we all want it to look good, but if we don't try the wrong ideas, then it'll take forever until we find the right ideas that fit for everyone. I personally feel like we did a great job with collaborating and making sure we listened to ideas and tried stuff on, even if it sounded or looked a little goofy at the time. One of the movements that ended up in the dance we called the Waka Waka walk, and it started off as just an idea that someone threw out, and so we tried it, and it worked so well that we put it in the work and then used it as one of the motifs and put it back in several times later in the piece. I'm a good listener in emotional situations, but when I'm trying to listen to five or more ideas in a dance space, some of them my own, it can be difficult at times. I really was able to then utilize the try attitude in those moments, which I think is going to be one of the key things that I take out of this study and collaborative process.
Final thoughts