Volunteer Dancers
At play throughout this whole process has been the idea of "the piece doing you". I have often experienced being in some sort of time hold when I am onstage. I feel like I have stepped into an alternate world that is choreographed, has no relationship to my own life, where choices have been pre-determined. The piece dances me, and I just sort of experience. This seems to be a somewhat common experience. As a performer, I question how I can make every choreographed decision immediate and voluntary. Not pre-determined, but consistently chosen.
For the piece, Anna and I have developed a central, highly structure improvisation. The improv basically consisted of two elements: tableaus that express seminal, "landmark" moments in human lives and the transitions between them (which are just as important). We also have two additional sections that are a similar mix of choreographic elements with improvisational construction.
Now that we have established that we want to work in this world that is half choreographic, half improvisational, we are confronted with a very significant set of issues:
--How do you improvise and keep it rigorous?
--How do you work with composed aspects but make them integral to the improvisation that happens around those aspects?
Basically, our goal is to try and mediate the specificity and grander decision-making of choreography with the volitional, personal nature of improvisation. The goal here is to make a work that you very actively engage in every time you do it. That there are very clear tasks, and, in that sense, choreography, but the piece cannot do you. The choreographic moments are like pre-formed articles of clothing that Anna and I put on. It has its own shape and nature, and when we are in these moments, we become associated, but it retains its own identity and we retain ours. The choreography is something we experience or go through. Experiencing the choreography, is, on some level, an improvisational task. How do we come out on the other side? How does that change the choices that we make when we exit choreographic structures?
It's a bit like people's problem with musical theater: every time people start singing to one another the suspension of disbelief just goes. Thus people hate musicals. We must wrestle with the same issues in dance. How do we make the struggle between choreography and real time decision making rigorous, exciting and legible?
Posted by
Jacob Peter Kovner on May 2, 2008 12:12 PM
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