As I wander in that wonderworld of where does this piece take me next - I have a larger question and hope some of my colleagues might deposit some thoughts about.
Whenever I am making a new dance, about to embark on the new project, I begin simply with "What will the dance be about?". (Of course there are myraid more questions, but that is my simple beginning.) The trouble is that "about" seems to suggest narrative, though that is not my intention.
How about for you? When you are starting a new piece - how do you frame your entry? When you talk to people and they say what are you working on? And you say: "I'm starting a new dance, _________________________."
I'd like to collect some responses and make a web page on my web site. If you are interested.
Celeste, I have been meaning to respond to your question for some time.
ReplyDeleteHow to begin a new dance? It's mysterious, really. How do we make something specific and cohesive in this slippery medium of movement? And I ask this question every time I confront a new class of dancers looking to me for some advice and instruction. The spark can come from almost anywhere - start with a piece of music you love - a fleeting image -- a costume or character idea -a single movement that interests you - a rhythm -- or more likely, just breathing, and listening, and feeling, what can come out of me today? And then you DO something - try to keep that feeling, identify the quality, and write it down, remember it!
Personally, I force myself sometimes to just make phrases, I count it out to have something concrete, even though I often dismantle them later and use the material quite differently or not at all.
But this is the tip of the iceberg and maybe not even. You asked: How do you get the IDEA for a dance? Because we need that further defining idea to push past the starting point and get to the specific vocabulary that might shape a new and specific dance.
It really is mysterious. I am thinking of several instances:
Sometimes a motivation is clear - I wanted to dance an elegy for the Polish President and those who died last year in that awful plane crash over Smolensk last spring. I found a compelling image in the empty chairs that had been set for the entire entourage which never arrived. The Polish cellist offered the Bach D minor Sarabande. We made the piece in a day.
A few years ago, I wanted to JUST DANCE! in a dress, to a violin. So I consulted a violinist friend and began to explore music. But as I worked I realized I needed a little bit more of an "idea" to make the dance inhabit some specific ground - not to mention fill up 8-9 minutes of intense music. And as I asked questions of myself - a dress? what dress? why dress? what kind of dress? too ordinary, I'll just burn the edges of the dress -- and then I found myself in the territory of my personal history, how I started dancing after a burn injury where my dress caught fire.... I had to go with it. A one day workshop with Kazuo Ohno also offered me an image: thus "Dancing with the Dust of the Universe: The Dress."
Or again: I went to an artist to talk about maybe using some of her work I admired, some sculptural object, as a set. We talked and she pulled out a kimono with a silk screen of a photograph of her father naked ... what? (not what I had in mind)and a long story ensued which I thought, surely this is way too much content for me to deal with. But it was so intriguing... we kept going to make "Her Father" where I told a third person "story" if you will, a first for me.... Yes, I got some sculpture from her, but also text, slides, costume ideas I had never anticipated, but it all made sense and connected with my first person saga. It took about a year to complete this work.
Right now, I am swimming in this gentle whirlpool once more, trying to make some determinations for how to proceed in designing a concert here in Korea, which I plan to do in April. Vague images float in the mind and you really don't know until you just start working what is realizeable - with the people/dancers, in your own body, all the production elements that have to come together to make the images live. I have decided to begin by extending a little piece I started on students last semester to music of Henry Cowell. Ken Hiratsuka will come and make a stage design, so the One Line Labyrinth will be a guiding image, but quite where it will come out, I really don't know.
Thanks, Celeste, for asking this stimulating question.