I find myself at a place where I am starting to understand how my lab research is going to develop. My initial project was focused on investigating my methods of creating work. To try to gain a fuller understanding of why I make work, and why certain images are constantly arising and never fully explored. I am not seeing these repeated moments as problems, but to acknowledge them as key images and to become more consciously aware of their presence in my work.
I am excited by technology and the visual; the seduction of the screen image, the uniqueness of the light of the projection and its effect on a space, and how this light can be manipulated in relation to the body. What I am noticing is that as my focus is consumed by the technology I often miss the fundamental element that is the body, the dancer, the skin and flesh – the articulation of something through a non-verbal language. I can become so wrapped up in the possibilities of re-shaping space and reality through projection, the moving body becomes secondary and often overlooked. I feel that this balance needs to change.
I wanted to challenge myself to create something that strips away the camera, lights and projector to see what I am left with. Is there a way to articulate what I want to say with the body alone? Can I create movement that relates to the haptic sense for both the dancers and audience? This is something I have never attempted to do without a video camera and evokes feelings of both fear and excitement.
I was asked to create a piece of work for Nottingham Community Dance Company. The company is made up of dance teachers, development workers, and those with a passion for contemporary dance. I began to work with 3 dancers: Lucy - an ex-professional dancer who is now a dance therapist, Phil - a primary school teacher with a love of dance and Becci – a marketing manager who trained in dance but didn’t want to pursue it as a career. This is where my research process began.
I decided that for this piece there would be no video or technical elements, no stylised costumes or sets, only the bodies in space - pure movement? I wanted to find a way for the dancers to embody the movement, to discover a dance language that is felt, and to attempt to articulate that to an audience. I wanted to learn how to develop this through the way that I articulate the movement vocabulary to the dancers and in the ways that I set tasks and work with each dancer as an individual with a different dance and body history. I wanted some of each dancers personality to be felt through the choreography as well as something of me being felt to.
I began to work alone in the studio playing with moving wherever my body wanted to go, something I noticed early on in my explorations in the studio was that the dance language that I was playing with was much softer and more fluid than any language I have used when working alongside technology. Maybe this is just where I am at, or maybe it reflects my constant attempt to struggle against the technology through the choreographic vocabulary.
Working with these dancers is great – I have bodies to work on, on a weekly basis, the downside is that they do want a finished piece to perform in July. So I can do my own investigations and try different things out but ultimately I have to make and set choreographic material…I’m not entirely such what we will end up with. Will my work be boring without the visual and technical elements?
This process happened to coincide with a Bonnie Bird bursary I was awarded to work with a choreographic mentor. Nicky Malloy suggested that Charles Linehan could be somebody good to work with, and so I went to London to see his work and have met with him once so far. Charles work seems to be wholly embodied by the
dancer’s that he works with. There is an ease with which the dancers move within his unique vocabulary. I am planning to sit in an observe him making his new piece, to see how he articulates vocabulary to the dancers and to see his creative processes. I feel that this will really help my processes of making.
A Finished Piece?
The NCDC piece of choreography is being premiered next week. I feel apprehensive about sharing this work, as it feels bare and undercooked. The work feels very different from my previous work, and I feel that I will be criticised or somehow disappoint the audience, that it lacks something.
Although I am scared of showing this piece it also feels exciting to have set myself the challenge and to have done it. Therefore it has been successful whatever the reaction.
The piece feels lonely, empty; but there is a sculptural beauty to the way the dancers move and follow their own choreographic journeys, sometimes ‘bumping’ into someone else and sharing a moment.
The beginning of the piece feels more clear to me that the rest. There is a quiet confidence to the dancers presence and a trance-like quality descends on me when I watch them moving. The second part seems less ‘felt’ and more structured, set. The material becomes a little more obvious and expected.
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