Choreographing on Commotions

I've just spent the last week end in Manchester choreographing on a youth dance company called "Commotions". The company has about 12 members ranging from 12 to 18 years old. It is a very nice non professional company with varying dance abilities.

I was asked to come and create a 6 minutes piece on the subject of "secret", in two days. Sadly the lack of founding doesn't allow for more time but I thought that it would be a great challenge. Being a choreographer is still something new to me as I am more of a dancer and teacher. I started planning the work about two weeks before going to Manchester, mainly by making lots of material. By material I mean dance phrases. I also decided on what the music would be and I created a rough overall structure. Although the time with the company was short I also wanted to make sure that some of the material would come from the dancers.

I arrived on the Saturday morning and we got started right away. First I taught a big chunk of movement and then we started playing with the rough overall structure. I wanted to see if some of my structural ideas would work. When the dancers had done enough learning we moved on to a creative task. The task was to pair up and play with the idea of:
- one of them walking and staggering and occasionally reaching with one arm. As if lost or in need of help.
- the other one grabs the arm and pulls it. Playing with pull and push.

I don't think I explained it very well but they still came up with some great stuff. I should have broken it down a bit more and made the first instructions more physical. We would then have been able to move on to a more conceptual idea.
For the rest of the day we worked on setting each of these duets and we played with the general structure of the piece.

The following day we started by running through what we had done the day before. Then we carried on working on the overall organisation of the piece. By then a much clearer structure had started to appear:
1st part - group section
2nd part - duet,solo with group in the background
3rd part - group section to end

I then asked the dancers to make one duet out of all the duets they had made the day before (only using the best bits). We used that material for the last group section. We also worked on the duet and solo that are in the 2nd part.

The idea of "secret" evolved into something a bit different. My first idea was about an oppressed state such as a totalitarian regime. Trying to show people that are sad and with no individualities. In that sort of environment people have secrets, but only in their thoughts.

Debbie, who was helping me, shared the fact that it reminded her of "1984" by George Orwell. So we thought about it for a while and decided to call the piece "101" in reference to the room 101 in the book. This is the room where people get punished by having their worst nightmare realised.

So the piece became even clearer:
- group section (showing oppression and lack of individualities)
- duet, solo with group in background (expressing how the group feels inside)
- group section (oppression leads to revolution)

The darkness of the subject never seemed to be a problem for the dancers. It is nice to explore dark ideas every now and then. The ending suggests a positive future without making it too obvious.

By the end of the Sunday we had a piece. There was still some cleaning and rehearsing to do but the piece was there. The dancers worked really hard. I didn't give them any break apart from a 30 minutes lunch. They were so good, patient and understanding with me. I am very grateful to all the people that helped during these two days. Debbie, who invited me in the first place, was amazing. She was so good at pointing me in the right direction and giving ideas. I feel I have learnt a lot through this experience. This was really a great opportunity.

Thank you Commotions!

Big School Project (2)

The project is going very well. I've started devising and setting with the students and I am very happy with everything they've come up with.

I had a session with them yesterday and was very worried that they wouldn't remember anything from the previous week, but they all did! Some of them struggled a bit but they all got there in the end. Remembering a choreography is difficult but, like anything else, it's a matter of practice. When done on a regular basis it seems really easy but most of these kids have never done it before.

Yesterday a friend of mine came to see how much work I had done and how the project was going and she was very positive and supportive. She thought the students looked good. We tried ideas together to set a theme for each group and a general idea for the show. It was so useful to have someone there watching and saying "yes you're going in the right direction, so keep going" because even though things seemed to be going well it is nice to be reassured.

I have now written down a "script" for the show so that everyone involved in the making can work together (media, dance, English department). I have four choreographies, one for each group. I have made up a story about 3 kids who are time travellers and each stop in time is represented by a choreography. The time travellers will come on stage in between each choreography. I have been given extra time after school to work with the time travellers.

Now that I have a theme for each group and that I've started making the choreography, the main job will be to make sure we manage to put together the dance and the media. It is probably going to be the hardest part of the project, but I won't have to worry about that until nearer the performance day.

Big school project

I have just started a new project with a technology college. It's a big challenge. I have four groups of about 25 kids aged between 9 and 15. Most of them with no dance experience. I see them once a week every week and after four months we need to have a show ready. It is very exciting and challenging. I have taught many workshops to similar kids but I never had to take on such a big project.

The show has to be about the history of the college as we will be celebrating its 140th anniversary. There is a media artist working with me. He is going to work with the kids as well. We also have the English Department involved. They will provide us with material such as poems, texts, etc. The show will be performed in the college so not on a proper stage but in a hall.

We're only just starting. I have seen the pupils three times so far. My aim is to get as much choreographic material from them as possible. It would be too easy to come and teach them every move. I want them to be creative and involved. It's not easy though. One of the groups in particular really needs to be spoon fed. So, for my next session I have decided to teach them a little choreography that they will have to transform. Other groups have been extremely creative with very little input so I think it will be easy to get something out of them.

The main reason why it is such a challenge isn't because they don't have much dancing experience. It is, I believe, because they are doing it as part of a school subject. They didn't really choose to be involved. The other thing making it a challenge is that each of the sessions are 50 minutes long. It is a very short time within which I have to warm them up and then create and rehearse a choreography. I have been talking with the teachers to maybe have some longer sessions.Creating with kids takes time.

The first three sessions went very well. I had them improvise, learn a choreography and make up their own. So from the next session on, we need to start devising choreography. The making of the show begins!

Improvisation

After reading a post on this very good blog http://studio180dance.com/blog/ I got inspired to write about improvising.

Improvising is a very important thing to teach and a very hard one too. It's one of those things that you have to enjoy doing yourself before you can share it. You also have to be ready, as a teacher, to try and fail a few times before getting it right.
It is important for three main reasons:
-Because it is the best creative tool and it is the best way to create new material. When you find yourself doing the same choreographies year after year maybe it is time to improvise.
-Because it is accessible to everyone.
-Because it can be used for a wide variety of things.

First timers are usually the hardest ones to teach as there is so much for them to discover. You have to convince and reassure them as they will feel very vulnerable. There are two very important rules in improvising:
-no self censoring
-no judging (yourself or others)

Setting an improvisation task requires to have an aim. Concentrating on this aim you can then create any tasks. The most simple one being something like:
lets cross the room (giving a beginning and an end) but we have to stay on the floor (imagine the ceiling is 30cm high).
The aim here is to discover levels (the level of the ceiling can change as we cross the room). We can do the same thing with quality of movement or rhythm, etc.

The aim can be as simple as wanting people to dance. The great thing about improvising is that anyone (I really mean anyone) can do it, if they're willing to. You just have to find ways to make people move.
You can react to something (picture, theme, poem, colour, etc)
You can tell a story
You can place body parts in the space
The possibilities are endless. The only thing you require is an open mind and a bit of imagination.

Every time I lead a creative class with first timers I improvise with them. It helps them feel less self conscious . It is often very rewarding to see people discover how much they like it.

For pros, I concentrate more on how to challenge them. They are used to improvising and they need new tasks and ideas to explore. Most of the time the aims are the same only the process of discovery changes.

As a professional dancer myself, I have rarely worked with a choreographer that hasn't created through improvising. Most choreographers use improvising as a creative tool.
Some will teach you a phrase or combination and then ask you to personalise it. The exploration the dancer goes through, to change the phrase, is an improvisation.
Some will set a task with which you can play.
Some will film you improvising on music and then pick up the movements from the video.

Improvisation is a subject that could be discussed forever. So many books have been written by so many experts. It is worth having a look at them if you're a novice. I would love to chat and exchange ideas on improvisation (tasks, games, etc) so feel free to comment.