A blog post 6 - A reflection of my choreographic process so far

  A reflection of my choreographic process so far

Currently I am around 1/4 of the way there in my choroegraphic process. So far I have composed only a portion of the entire piece. However, the reason I have taken it more slowly, is because I wanted to ensure every movement I created had meaning and had a thought-out purpose. Additionally, I wanted to guarantee that the movement I created was also accurately influenced by my chosen choreographer Mats Ek.

I feel I have achieved the majority of learning objective 1 by interpreting the choreographer, Mats Ek, work. However, I feel that once I have done the next practitioner study I will be able to increase a developed understating of more of his works and therefore use more of his style and allow it to really help my piece grow. I want to continue to use his kind of weird and “strange” movements within my piece to represent a child like persona and to continue to portray the Child Character to the audience. For example the travelling squat movement with the head dangling down in the beginning section (See video 1). As the piece progresses, I will use less “stupid” or perhaps “silly” movements to show that the child is having to grow up extremely quickly and take on responsibilities and become brave. As shown when I perform a very controlled and stable movement which symbolises the child growing up and becoming more controlled with their emotions (see video 2). However, I will still place in some of these types of movements every now and again to show that the child still wants and longs to revert back to their old homes and families where they can truly be themselves and use their own mannerisms without fear of being scolded or judged. For example, in the section where I go into a deep second position  grande plié and then swiftly come back up to standing into an odd position, I am reverting back to child like, extreme, exaggerated mannerisms (see video 3). Additionally, to further achieve this objective I would like to research further into Mats Ek way of creating movement and how he particularly come up with and creates his movement. Hopefully, I will begin to find more interesting, unique and differing ways of creating movement that means I can develop movement I have perhaps not experimented with before.

Video 1 

Video 2 

Video 3

 

Regarding leaninrg objective 2, I feel a well acknowledged way in which many people choreograph, is to improve and then almost learn and retrace what you did during it. I have used this technique a lot so far in order to create my choreography, however, although this is a well recognised technique and one in which I find useful and helpful, I feel in order to make my piece more diverse and pull away from movements I usually do I need to try different techniques of choreographing. One technique I have been experimenting with, which I have found extremely helpful, is to choreograph with different music then the one I am using. I have found that this has encouraged me to use differing dynamics and just be generally more creative with what kind of movement I am using because of the influence of the different kinds of music. 

Finally, for learning objective 3, I feel I will be able to complete this once I have performed my ten minute solo during the assessment. 

The feedback I received from performing the piece in front of the class and also Miss Evans was very useful. Some of the movements that I was sceptical about for example the movement moving across the space where I invert and turn out my feet consecutively turned out of be an interesting and thought provoking movement for the audience as they suggested I repeat it more and make it more of a stand out moment at that point in the piece rather then rushing through it and then “waiting” for the music later on (see photo 1). Another bit of feedback that I got, is that they liked how I started facing the back and travelling down in the diagonal line (see photo 1). This is really important to me because I desired for this beginning section of the dance where I am travelling to the train station and saying goodbye to be understood properly and appreciated. Therefore, when someone said they liked and valued this idea, it was reassuring. 

Photo 1

I am going to apply the feedback I receive by changing the parts of my piece that were suggested and also thinking about other parts of the piece I have choreographed that perhaps could be improved. For example, changing the dynamics or even the level of movements. So perhaps performing the movement on a different level like being lower to the ground. I apply this feedback later on during my piece where perform the same movements on the ground as well as standing (I discuss this in more depth in blog post 9).