May 12, 2018Catherine Chliaras No Comments

Final thoughts on “Re:patterning”

For my final entry on this blog, I am making a comment on my final work “Re:patterning”.

On Monday 7^th May at 11.00 am, fifteen people entered the theatre to watch six dancers moving and pushing themselves on the floor. The work lasted 32 minutes.

It started with a video of the dancers pushing a wall in an industrial space. This video was playing along the whole time.

The video was not edited or filmed by a technician. The sound was abstract and it wasn’t pleasant to the ear. Next time, I should have an expert taking care of a/the video.

Then, dancers were pushing each other from side to side using the stage space.

Then, they started to dance a piece that was once characterised as “simple Graham”. I don’t know Graham technique so well as to choreograph based on it, but I consider this as a compliment, since my dance sequence had intentionally elements of structured legs and arms and simple jumps.

The dancers were scattered in space and moving on their own rhythm on my dance sequence, which I found really interesting every time. I always tried to find when some of them would do a movement simultaneously and that intrigued me every time even during the performance. When they finished, they approached the edge of the stage to recite their lines simultaneously towards the audience on their own time and then go back to continue their dance.

My module tutor advised me to study Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker’s choreographies to find ideas of “patterns”. They really inspired me, because they were simple movements but, also, with significant changes that made the pieces interesting. This is what I wanted to achieve and, to my eye, I did.

Falling down, the dancers tried to find their pairs and, while reciting the text “Body pressure”, they were pushing each other and moving on stage. After many repetitions, they left the stage running.

The piece finished with a dancer reciting the lyrics of a famous song stating that each individual is unique. With that, I wanted to contribute to the circle of reciting texts, that Marina Abramovic started, with adding another text in my re-performance. Maybe, the next re-re-performer will start from that text and do something more or something else.

The dancers started again to push each other, until they disappeared along with the video.

The dancers were wearing black clothes with red lipstick, in order to show that they are similar, but different in the ways they chose to wear them (one was wearing dress, the other tights etc). I decided I wanted black because of the atmosphere I wanted to create and because of the antithesis with the video wall.
I wanted to give a message in this choreography, but I tried to remove the narrative and leave it really simple for the audience. My message was indeed that everyone is unique. We have our own times and timings, we push to have a space on the stage (of life) and we dance on our own rhythm. This is a conclusion from my own experience and from that I wanted to create something like “Re:patterning”.
From the basic criteria for the piece, the audience could find:
Endurance, when dancers were pushing and talking for a long period of time
Rituals, with the silence when changing positions
Repetition, when pushing and pushing and pushing // repeating the dance sequence // repeating the text

Unfortunately, I never had a dress rehearsal with the technicians, because of the slow process they had to follow to set the stage and the lights. Next time, I will arrange a gap of more than three hours to make sure that everything is on time and the stage is ready.

“Re:patterning” was a piece that I have never tried to create before, with repetition, rituals, without music, with talking, with video on the wall.
This was my first time and I will definitely remember what to take care of next time.

April 21, 2018Catherine Chliaras No Comments

Saturday, 21st April

It was the fourth sunny day in a row here in Lincoln, and today we had our rehearsal before we go out to enjoy the sun.

The dancers brought some clothes suggestion to be worn as costumes during the performance and we decided that next time, that we are going to rehearse at the theatre, they’ll be wearing them, so that we can have a full image and feeling of themselves.

Next time, I will also time it, so that I see if it is 45 minutes, less or more.

Let’s focus on today’s rehearsal, though.

In case you have been reading the “Re:patterning” blog post, you will understand where the dance choreography goes. It is 1 minute and 10 seconds, but they will repeat it several times. They were learning it fast, like sponges. I think they handled it pretty well. From now on, we are going to be doing the dance coreography together with the rest piece and they will get more accustomed to it.

The dance choreography is somewhat based on the “Body Pressure” text and it contains, I would say, “weird” movements for my dance style. By “weird” I mean, weird legs with easy jumps and then hips movements and hands to shoulders. It is a dance I wanted to make “peculiar” and, thankfully, the dancers felt the same. I didn’t just want to create a ballet or contemporary or even musical and hip-hop that I teach. I wanted it to be unique and to siginfy the “Re:patterning”.

Here you can see a video of the today’s rehearsal:

April 19, 2018Catherine Chliaras No Comments

Thursday, 19 April

Good news: A good rehearsal today, as we finished the whole piece.

Bad news: Two dancers wanted to quit, because they didn’t have time for their studies and the rehearsals.

___

We started with the dancers sitting down back-to-back trying to push away the “cage” they imagined they were in. They were pushing and pushing imaginative walls until they were scattered in the room.

They were allowed to go only on one direction: they one they could face while they were seated.

In the meantime, the video we recorded is going to be playing loudly behind them.

Scattered where they are, a dance comes and they start dancing (next rehearsal, Saturday 21/4).

And then they fall.

They reach their partners and form a mass after 9 repetitions of the text “Body pressure”. I must make a comment here: the partner work was better than the previous time. Today they felt more comfortable with each other, they were more creative in how and where to push and they were very conscious of the space they used, so it was easy for them to create a “body of bodies” with a flow and no interruptions. Consequently, they got exhausted faster and I could hear that in their breaths, but they didn’t stop.

With that flow and care, they started raising each other up, before they empty the space.

I gave them instructions on how to come back to the stage again in the end and what to re-perform.

I must, also, keep in mind, that the dancers are 1st-years and the following week is their assessment week and that means that they are going to be tired. I have organised what I want to do in the next rehearsals and hopefully everything will go without any more problems.

March 13, 2018Catherine Chliaras No Comments

Tuesday, 13 March

The rehearsal:

Today we worked on one of the segments of the choreography where we have a partner work.

The dancers in pairs where pushing each other while reciting the text.

The best thing of all was that after a while they started feeling exhausted. (Yes!) I could see dancers being pushed down, around, on the side, from the back, from the front. I could hear voices from below, from far away, from higher, struggling, deciding, shouting, whispering.

Amazing view!

I am excited because this was the first time that I saw my dancers pushing hard and getting exhausted. What I want them to understand is the “ritual endurance” of the work. I want them to understand that it is okay that their voice is trembling after being pushed and pushing and talking. For a first time, this was exciting. I think we are getting there.

Our next rehearsal will be after Easter and I can’t wait!

The lesson:

It was based on endurance.

Our tutor introduced a task-based private performance for me and my classmate. A very infuriating and enduring one, but also playful and “fun”, as Jamie said.

Before the lesson, I was watching our tutor grabbing bags around, pencils there, “Catherine, help me cut these papers”, then a lipstick, then two oranges and a bag of raisins and “Catherine, do you want to turn on the stage lights?”. And that made me more curious than ever.

With that, we began.

We started sitting on chairs at one corner. In front of us a tweezer, some pencils and the papers I had cut. With the non-dominant hand (!) we grabbed the tweezer (!) with which we grabbed a pencil and papers (!) to write about our experience on endurance pieces. Moving on, with the tweezer, we had to lay down legos on papers that would work as stepping stones. Yes. We stepped on papers with legos (Ouch!). Jamie was fast laying his legos down, but I wanted to have less pain and I had to choose the flatter legos. But this was very time-wasting. After some infuriating minutes, I joined him at the other corner, from where we should return to the middle again to comb each other’s hair and share a lipstick. And then go back again to the other corner, to another table, where the oranges, the raisins and cocktail picks were waiting for us. “Take a cocktail pick, stab a raisin to one end and stab the cocktail pick on the orange on its other end”. Easy? No. With the tweezer. With the non-dominant hand. Jamie was perfect! He did everything really fast and I was struggling. When we finally finished, we had to eat each stabbed raisin (wait for it) , without hands, without teeth, only with the mouth (!) And (!) not chew them, but to just swallow them! I tried to melt them in my mouth as caramels and finished first (yeahy! But no) . I had to help Jamie as well… I thought it would never end.

For our finale we had to go back writing, which means taking the oranges between our two bodies (hands!) with the cocktail picks and step on the legos and arrive at our first seats. There we wrote about our “now” thoughts about endurance, after this experience.

This is a piece of work I would never go and watch or perform or even create. After this experience, I feel that dance choreography is very different from performance art and, well, it needs special talent or not at all to create an interesting performance art work. The repetition can definitely be an element of dance choreography (see Pina Bausch, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and more). As Lara Shalson* says: “Repetition is one of the uncomfortable things about theatre”. And she continues by framing it to the “performance of death or pain”. Endurance is another thing. “Practices of endurance are repeatedly key to understanding the relationship between theatre and performance art: endurance is either the limit that distinguishes the two forms or the principal point at which they overlap”. Apparently, no “dance” or “choreography” word was used in this text.

What we did could be a performance of endurance (and I dare say it was). Simultaneously, it was something between theatre and performance art. In practice, I agree with Lara Shalson. The limit at which they overlap cannot be easily distinguished.

Well, this was interesting, though, right?

But that stomach-ache…

*Shalson, L. (2012) On the Endurance of Theatre in Live Art. Contemporary Theatre Review, 22(1) 106-119.

March 1, 2018Catherine Chliaras No Comments

Choreography: “Re:patterning”

Dear reader,

What you are currently reading is always being changing and changing. Here you will find all my ideas on the final choreography in-progress assessment and you will live with me all the changes of ideas I have date by date.

1^st March

On my hands I have the second score I made for my choreography with a title (“I pushed you and I pushed you”) that at the time seemed good but now is not *just* it.

The choreography is about all the pushing we do in our life:

We push to open the door

There are doors that need to be pushed

We push our feet to the ground to move, to ascend and descend

We push ourselves inside boxes and get caged

We push ourselves out of them

We push ourselves on people

We push them out of us

We push ourselves to dance

We are pushed to imitate

To get attached

To fight

To become members of a team

We are pushed to an order we were forced to follow

To talk and not being heard

We are pushed to do everything all over again

Important facts:

It is based on “Body Pressure” – the text that Marina Abramovic re-performed as the first of her Seven Easy Pieces.
I decided to re-stage this piece of work, because I thought I could give another aspect on the text choreographing more dancers, than just a soloist.
Few of the most important concepts the performers have to experience are the repetition, the ritual endurance, exhaustion, a possible (creative) boredom and the femininity of their bodies in the process.
Repetition, although boring, can create powerful messages and artistic images of bodies. It is then when the audience can take the full image in, can grasp details and can think more about what they see. (Take a look on Pina Bausch’s work, too).
The colors used in the choreography will be white (the door and a dancer’s tutu), black (stage, boxes as stairs and costumes) and red (lights, chalk and lipstick).
Red is here again a symbol
- Of women’s emancipation
- Of blood and fight (see Marina Abramovic in Lips of Thomas (1975))
- Of seduction and sexuality
I chose red lipstick for two more reasons:

It attracts attention
I want to make a signature as an emerging choreography, meaning that from now on, all my dance teams will wear a red lipstick on stage.

How could the choreography be described?

The audience is seated near or very far away from the performers. On the right side of the stage there is a door. On the left side of the stage there are box-made stairs on top of which three performers are seated. Closer to the audience seats there are four performers inside a four-wall box they made in their minds. While the projection is playing, the audience can focus on the video or the performers pushing themselves down the stairs or out of the box they made. The video eventually comes to a pause and the audience can hear the dancers reciting some lines of the “Body pressure” text.

A dancer with a tutu comes on stage using the door. She tries to open it by pushing with several ways and after a while, she finally makes it and enters the stage with the rest of the performers. The three performers that climbed down the stairs are now pushing the ground full with red chalk reciting the text. The four dancers inside the box made it out of it by pushing and pushing and have now approached the dancer that has started dancing on their pauses. The audience watches the performers’ non-stop movement till they reach the ground and become a mass of pairs pushing each other.

This mass is becoming red-der when the performers remove their gloves covered in red chalk and dusting it everywhere. Their sweat and breathing becomes one with the air, the ground, their clothes, their exhaustion.

A new video is being projected when they reach the point of no more pushing on each other and understand that it’s time to reach the end of the piece. The audience can see them trying to push the door, while reciting, and leave the stage.

There is a performer staying on stage. A performer that can’t leave. The performers emerge again like shadows and continue reciting their lines.

And everything starts again.

6th March

Serra told “To move the work is to destroy the work. To move the site-specific work is to re-place it, to make it something else”.

I decided that my space will be the auditorium of the LPAC theatre with the first four seats of rows down, in order to create more stage space.

No door. Unfortunately, the technical team cannot stabilize the door as I wanted it: stable to hold my dancers’ bodies while climbing on and pushing it. However, I can create another way of “climbing” in case I feel it necessary for the piece, as creating small crowds that raise high one dancer at a time.

The soloist will also finish the piece, not leaving the stage.

Possible names for the work in progress:

Re:cital
Re:cover
Re:gress
Re:partee
Re:ply

12th March

I found the best title for the choreography. I am very happy. I have also changed the title of the post, so you can see it better.

Re:pattern

13th March

Follow the link

19th April

One of our last rehearsal today. Unfortunately, two of the dancers had to quit the piece because of their studies. That means that I had to change several things for the choreography without affecting the concept and the work that the rest of the dancers had already made. So, let’s make a revision and add the new elements.

Huge stage. A video-wall projection. Lights on the sides. A video is being played and played until the end of the piece, with sound only its first and last time.

Five dancers are pushing to different directions trying to reach further the space. They are only allowed to go straight-forward by pushing and pushing. They are whispering.

After a while (when the dancers have reached their potential), a dancer comes in, wearing a tutu and starts dancing while reciting loudly the lines of the text.

The rest of the dancers perform with her: talking and dancing. They are looking at her and they imitate her. Until the end. After the end they perform together in silence and they immediately fall down to find their partners.

In couples now they push and push each other to become again ” a body of bodies”, a mass, of colors and sweat and sounds and breaths. Together, they have to stand up and raise each other.

And run away. The stage is empty for a moment and the five dancers come back again to their original places, pushing and pushing.

The dancer in the tutu comes again with a piece of paper and hold a microphone. She starts reading:

I’m not a stranger to the dark
Hide away, they say
‘Cause we don’t want your broken parts
I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars
Run away, they say
No one will love you as you are

When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out
I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I’m meant to be, this is me
Look out ’cause here I come
And I’m marching on to the beat I drum
I’m not scared to be seen
I make no apologies, this is me

Another round of bullets hits my skin
Well, fire away ’cause today, I won’t let the shame sink in
We are bursting through the barricades
And reaching for the sun (we are warriors)
Yeah, that’s what we’ve become

Won’t let them break me down to dust
I know that there’s a place for us
For we are glorious

23rd April

Today the LPAC technical team told me that the use of chalk is not allowed, because there were some problems the previous time someone else used it.

For that reason, I decided to use red aluminium wrapping foils, that I will lay down all over the stage , so that it makes noise and it can be destroyed along with the forms that the dancers are going to take.

I like this idea, as well, as it is going to give more color to the stage and it will create another optical essence of the piece.

For that reason, I will remove the gloves from the dancers costume, as they will not need it.

24th April

After a meeting with my module tutor, Kayla Bowtell, I decided to make some changes on things she advised me.

For example, it would be good, if I loose the narrative , in order to not limit the piece in meanings and messages. So for that reason I am removing the tutu and I will be changing the formations and positions.

For that, I thought, to change the ritual I had (the pauses on the change of costumes) and use the dance sequence as ritual everytime a person comes on stage. That would be interesting.

Also, no chalk or aluminum foils use. I think I will just use the dancers bodies, the projection behind them and the lights to focus on the pushing and pushing.