Defaulting to Front
A brief preface to this post....I choreograph for dancers and horses. Usually there is no defined, flat front. The immediacy of our work makes it impossible to be concerned with what angle a dancer is seen from. Now, when I watch choreography that seems to be unintentionally flattened, aligned with the viewers' gaze, I am baffled.
The again, some things just look more interesting seen from one angle than another....
Observations on Choreographic Defaulting to Front• Innumerable choreographic elements communicate to the viewer how to see, how to watch and how to engage with the work. One of the strongest elements in this complex choreographic stew is the use of space. This includes space between dancers (often the not too close distance that two dancers can stand close but not hit each other); facings within the piece; relationships of bodies to each other; and how the dance maker arranges the performers in spatial relationship to the audience.
• No choreographic element is so completely neutral as the squared off, default to face front. Dancers facing downstage, squaring their movement off to a visible or invisible proscenium is a convention that, if not defined, justified or given a reason to be there inside the choreography, says nothing. Space becomes powerless.
• That said some choreographers use this device very consciously and astutely. Their intention might be to confront the audience or deliver a message directly to the audience.
• I suspect that many choreographers make their work in a square room with a mirror along one side. They have fashioned their choreography to "fit" into that rehearsal space and perhaps inadvertently chosen front to keep things organized. Dancers use the mirror to "see" their cues. Front takes on meaning. But it is not consciously part of the fabric of the work. (Unison is also puzzling, if not used for a good reason. But that is another subject).
Horses, Planes in Space and Choreographing to Front
• I work with quadrapedal, consummately kinetic animals.
• Being quadrapeds, horses are always carving the space three-dimensionally. Humans do as well but being bipeds,that is less obvious.
• The horse's survival in the wild is dependent on being fully engaged in space at all times.
• Equine life does not exist in the pure planes. Equine behavior cannot be flattened or idealized into flat surfaces.
• So, the movement I make is never planar. For the most part, nor are the formations.
• Using planar formations has however been an interesting way for me to allude to abstraction. In a recent work I used a frontal square formation to communicate an idealized memory. In
Walking Score I used repetitive walking lines to create a human grid inside through which the equestrian and (ridden) horse would weave. At the climax of the piece the lines converge into a circle to trap horse and rider.
Making Three Dimensional Dances• Choreographing for dancers and horses has heightened my awareness of how powerfully space communicates. How a choreographers uses space contributes to defining far more than just "where." Space between communicates complex power structures. Movement through space, its ease (fluidity) or constriction gives movement its texture. Use of space defines time.
• The first stage of making a work is to create a landscape, then define how the humans and equines live inside that landscape. If the human bodies move in a flattened planar fashion, the horses will inevitably become the strangers inside in that human landscape. Or vice versa. This could be a very interesting choreographic tool. If not deeply attended to this divergence is space becomes a huge and unsatisfying disconnect.
• In training dancers to do this work, I must be sure that every dancer is able to constantly shift spatial orientation. Every choreographic module (and within each module) the choreography must function facing any direction.
• I eliminate all concern with orientation to the viewer. The viewer becomes secondary.
• Being seen is secondary to creating a dialogue between human and equine mover.
• Having written this, at times I do have to be concerned with the dancers being on the inside shoulder of their equine partner which can at times place them behind (thus hidden) from the audience.
• FYI: This is actually quite different from the concerns of a dressage rider who wants the judge to see certain movements of the horse from its most advantageous angles.
Posted by JoAnna Mendl Shaw at 10:26 AM - Permalink
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I Think All Choreography is Site Specific
I think all choreography is site specific. The site, in essence, dictates the internal logic of the work.
The choreographer creates a specific movement language. Inside that language is a deeply ingrained sense of space: the density of the space, where the space is weighted, the proximity of bodies to one another.
Inside that language is a sense of time: the speed of the movement as it moves through space and as it progresses through time; the speed with which the subject changes, when things happen.
That language dictates how sound is used, when it is used, why it used.
Embedded inside that internal logic lays the maker's relationship to the viewer. That relationship can shift but the shift ought to shift as part of the intention of the work.
As a choreographic work unfolds the internal logic of the choreography is revealed. Sometimes the internal logic reveals itself within the first 3 second; sometimes within the first 3 minutes; sometimes it takes the entire piece to be revealed. That trajectory is, in itself, an internal logic.
Posted by JoAnna Mendl Shaw at 6:53 PM - Permalink
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I begin with my hands...
Hands are tremendously important in our dances with horses.
This is a brief description of how they convey intent and meaning.
Hands
I begin with my hands.
One hand placed on the shoulder. My palm is fully in contact with the muscular contour of the horse's shoulder. I find a gentle anchor with the heel, palm and fingers and adjust my chest, pelvis, legs and shoulder girdle so that I can feel my point of contact falling through my vertical skeleton and simultaneously into the vertical skeleton of the horse's shoulder girdle.
I can rest my hand there for a while. As the horse shifts I keep my hand there and readjust my body. If there is a large weight shift I disconnect. Here the score diverges in several possible directions. If the movement is a turn of the head, my body will spiral with the directionality of the head. If the horse moves his feet I shift with him. If he drops his head to graze, I lower my torso, legs straight, til my fingers touch the ground.
Again the score diverges here. I can either place my hands on the ground in front of me, reaching as far as possible before I settle my weight into my hands and finally fold into lying into with my weight resting onto one elbow.
Or I can remain in that poised pike position, listening to the rhythm of pulling grass and chewing. With my next action I try to match that grazing and chewing pace. I pull up a handful of grass up and toss it, first randomly, then with slight intention towards the horse. A horse can feel a fly on his back. So the tossed grass elicits an attentive response. I time my pull and toss to the horse's pull and rhythmic chewing.
Now he is listening to me. I can shift the rhythmic pressure from tossed grass to a rhythmic flicking of the hands. Or arms. How and where the horse moves his feet, I mirror the motion. Exactly. Matching center of gravity. Matching weight, matching speed, matching the flow of the muscles as they contract and release.
He moves forward. I match his legs. Right for right. Left for left. If the movement continues I continue.
Usually at this juncture there is a pause, a checking in. He begins to follow me, sponging off my sense of time and flow.
Now we are in direct dialogue.
Posted by JoAnna Mendl Shaw at 11:11 AM - Permalink
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Speaking Eloquently to Non-verbal Creatures
Doug Fox, creator of Great Dance, approached me a few weeks ago at
Dance/NYC's goodbye party for Bob Yesselman. Doug asked what I do and when I informed him that I choreographed performance works for dancers and horses, he was immediately interested. That is not always the reaction I get from people in the dance world.
Puzzlement would better describe the typical response. The various sub texts of that puzzled response might include: "Is this really dance?" "How do you choreograph for horses?" "Where do you rehearse?" "Do you perform in New York City? Where?"
I would like to have my performance work for dancers and horses receive the ear and full attention of the dance world. A blog seemed like a terrific opportunity to talk to the dance world, and other worlds as well. I decided to join forces with Doug Fox and create a blog about my work.
So here is my first post. In it, I would like to give readers some background information about how I started doing this work:
Making
work for dancers and horses began with a commission from Mount Holyoke
College in 1998. I was asked to make a work for the 20th Anniversary of
the Five College Dance Program (Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Smith, UMass
and Hampshire College). The performance would coincide with an alumnae
weekend and the kick-off for a major Mount Holyoke College ( MHC)
capitol campaign. My objective was to bring dance into the foreground
of alumnae and trustees' consciousness, to create a performance work
that would showcase the amazing Five College dancers and the excellent
MHC Equestrian Team. To accomplish this I created a trilogy of works
for three venues on the Mount Holyoke College campus.
The trilogy
In the Landscape: Dancing with Horses featured, in total, 33 dancers and 12 horses.
Hillside was
a work created for a large hillside with a cast of 25 dancers, all in
white and a white horse and rider and dance soloist. The work involved
dancers and non-dancers from the MHC and Five College community.
Hillside was visually spectacular and hugely challenging to create. It
took untold hours of coordination and would have fared better as a
2-hour installation than a performance work for captive audience. The
white horse we planned to use was a dressage horse that did not fare
well when ridden in an outdoor venue. We filled in with a Northampton
friend and her white trail horse. The second work was a dressage piece
for 6 horses and 8 dancers created for the central green at Mount
Holyoke College. For this work my composer, Cam Millar, timed the
equine gaits for horses on the Dressage Team and wrote music that
perfectly suited their movement. The following spring the MHC Dressage
Team used Cam's music for their group ride competition!
The
third work in the trilogy was Body on Body, created for three horses
and riders and five dancers. This was the most successful portion of
the trilogy. Created for the Mount Holyoke indoor equestrian arena,
Body on Body was about women and horses. During the creation of this
piece we spent hours improvising with the riders and their horses. The
dancers developed a feeling for how to guide the horses from the ground
with precisely chiseled phrases that shaped the space. One memorable
afternoon we realized the horses were following the dancers. In that
moment I realized we had stumbled on a movement language that could
speak eloquently to non-verbal creatures. If ridden with a slightly
loose rein, the horses would make their own decisions about gait and
direction. The horses were responding to the dancers. Thus began a
decade of intense choreographic investigation.
Posted by JoAnna Mendl Shaw at 3:47 PM - Permalink
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