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.
1st 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
1.
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.
2.
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.
3.
The soloist will also finish the piece, not leaving the stage.
4.
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.