the more i read the more i understand where i want our piece to go, I feel our piece has influences from both Pina Bausch and Di Keersmachers, we found that Keersmachers influence of pedestrian movement could be manipulated and altered to achieve a different movement quality that we all have within us any way but with the addition of the emotional stimulus this could be hightened further.
also Bausches works Bluebeard and Le Mont Of The Empress have influenced the choreographic devices ,for example Le Mont Of The Empress shows random images throughout the whole dance film, we were going to display disturbing images that we found on the Internet to evoke emotion to our audience, but after discussion we though that as the images had not been used during the choreographic process then it would be beneficial to our piece to keep them out .
but we did decide to use Investment as a continuous stimulus for our piece and this is a concept that bausch and her dancers work with for example," will this performance matter?, where will it matter?, will the performer carry this with them tomorrow?,in there sleep?, in the psyche? and as an audience will it haunt me? will it change me? will it change you? if not is it a waste of time? " (risk and investment reading ) I have found these to be questions that i ask myself during the choreographic process.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Our original ideas and where we are now.
We have come a long way from our original ideas for our work in progress. Our very first thoughts were different rooms evoking different emotions. This ideas was to be done through music, smells and props. An example of the kind of things we would use is sweets and grass, but we soon found that this idea would be less a performance and more of an installation.
As a result we decided to think of a new way of evoking emotions, using similar ideas.
Previous to this i had watched a channel four documentary called 'Serbia's Secret Shame'. This documentary highlighted the abuse of mentally ill children in institutions in Serbia. I found this documentary to be distressing, and possibly one of the most shocking things witnessed by me. I found that i could not get these images out of my head.
Whilst thinking of tasks to create movement for our choreography, i decided to use the case of the mentally ill children in Serbia as stimulus.
As a result we decided to think of a new way of evoking emotions, using similar ideas.
Previous to this i had watched a channel four documentary called 'Serbia's Secret Shame'. This documentary highlighted the abuse of mentally ill children in institutions in Serbia. I found this documentary to be distressing, and possibly one of the most shocking things witnessed by me. I found that i could not get these images out of my head.
Whilst thinking of tasks to create movement for our choreography, i decided to use the case of the mentally ill children in Serbia as stimulus.
My other influence for choreography
Another idea for creating movement for our work is exhaustion.
During a theory class we had this term we watched a piece called 'Bluebeard' by Pina Bausch. One section of this piece in particular made me think. It was a section where a women kept repeatedly falling to the floor, getting up, and then falling to the floor again. After a while i found that this evoked emotions within me. I felt that the dancer must be really exhausted, i felt that i should be thinking what amazing stamina this dancer had, but instead i just felt exhausted for her myself. This got me thinking about how the movement on stage effects the mood of the audience.
I hope that our choreography is very fast, fluid and risky and that as a result we are able to evoke similar feelings onto the audience.
During a theory class we had this term we watched a piece called 'Bluebeard' by Pina Bausch. One section of this piece in particular made me think. It was a section where a women kept repeatedly falling to the floor, getting up, and then falling to the floor again. After a while i found that this evoked emotions within me. I felt that the dancer must be really exhausted, i felt that i should be thinking what amazing stamina this dancer had, but instead i just felt exhausted for her myself. This got me thinking about how the movement on stage effects the mood of the audience.
I hope that our choreography is very fast, fluid and risky and that as a result we are able to evoke similar feelings onto the audience.
snippets from my journal that influenced our choreography
There is a combination of information from the classes of this term that have given me, and influenced ideas i have had for choreography.
One if which is the class on risk. I was unable to attend the class myself but afterwards i spoke to Vicky and she was explaining what the class was about. I remember her telling me that she had taken part in a task where she had to imagine she was high on top of a building and that she felt genuinely scared, even though she knew she was in class. This started to give me ideas. I wondered how it would effect movement quality physically and visually if someone where scared to perform movement fully.
A while after this we were given a reading about risk and investment. It spoke about the risks taken when choreographing a piece and how the audience perceives the performance. Does it leaves any feelings with the audience or the performers? I liked the idea that when we had choreographed something, after it's performed, it sill leaves an impression on the dancers as well as the audience. After i had read this i started to think about ways in which a choreographic piece could leave a feeling or memory with the audience and the performers.
When we were told we needed to choreograph a piece i already had some ideas in mind. I liked the idea of risk taking and making our dancers feel they were slightly at risk, and hoped to create a piece that would also slightly scare the audience.
Other ideas i had as well as these were ways of expressing through movement, speed and movement created from everyday scenarios.
Now that we have started to choreograph i have been able to put all of these ideas together. I have been able to incorporate speed, risk and everyday scenarios into our choreography.
One if which is the class on risk. I was unable to attend the class myself but afterwards i spoke to Vicky and she was explaining what the class was about. I remember her telling me that she had taken part in a task where she had to imagine she was high on top of a building and that she felt genuinely scared, even though she knew she was in class. This started to give me ideas. I wondered how it would effect movement quality physically and visually if someone where scared to perform movement fully.
A while after this we were given a reading about risk and investment. It spoke about the risks taken when choreographing a piece and how the audience perceives the performance. Does it leaves any feelings with the audience or the performers? I liked the idea that when we had choreographed something, after it's performed, it sill leaves an impression on the dancers as well as the audience. After i had read this i started to think about ways in which a choreographic piece could leave a feeling or memory with the audience and the performers.
When we were told we needed to choreograph a piece i already had some ideas in mind. I liked the idea of risk taking and making our dancers feel they were slightly at risk, and hoped to create a piece that would also slightly scare the audience.
Other ideas i had as well as these were ways of expressing through movement, speed and movement created from everyday scenarios.
Now that we have started to choreograph i have been able to put all of these ideas together. I have been able to incorporate speed, risk and everyday scenarios into our choreography.
Choreographic Process Natural Human Reaction
The ideas for our choreographic work in progress have come from a number of stimuli. The start of the process has come from the class where we had to devise a workshop style senerio to evoke natural human reaction. For my workshop I chose to split my time into two seperate tasks, the first was five people stood in a line next to each other and i asked them to shout out one thing they wish they could of said, this could be in any context something you wish you said yesterday or something you wish you said four years ago, for example Lyndsey shouted out no oinons.As the class shouted out there wishes it became apparent that I did not really evoke natural human reaction but just recaction that the performers had thought about. The second task I devised was that five people stood in a staggered diagonal line so they could not see each other, I then went along the line and wispered a different sentance into each of them, what i said was, "you smell nice", "your dog just died", "i fanced you since the day i saw you" and"ive slept with your boyfriend" and to one of the performers i said nothing. This was the most interesting reaction as a coulpe of people had already had things said to them, Sarahs reply to this was, "What you did not say anything, what am i suppost to do?" . It was that tiny moment of chance that made me think about evoking natural human emotion. I really enjoyed the process of this class and all the different workshops that the class had devised, this then became a starting point for me to think of ideas for my work in progress.
Lisa,
Thanks for your comments, I'll look into those piece's and If we have the oppertunity to develop this piece after christmas then I'm sure there's lots more we could do with it, when you said about expanding upton my blog... do you mean for next term because I have alot more documentation but I've only posted extracts. Also, I[ve posted our working title! Hope you like.
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