Do you think I know what art is?
Do you think I’d think anybody knew,
even if they said they did?
Do you think I’d care what anybody thought?
Now if you ask me what we’re trying to do
that’s a different thing.
-Georgia O’Keefe
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:
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.