Yelle!

Facebook as inspiration? The success of social networking?

My friend Donia posted a link to this video:

French Fry glasses. Dinosaurs falling over. Unitards with puff sleeves. Bolero jackets with nothing underneath. Stripes. LOTS of stripes. Amazingness. What does this have to do with my thesis? Likely, nothing. Possibly? Everything. It made me want to dance. I bought the song “Ce Jeu” off I-tunes, and on the following Sunday morning generated a phrase in the middle of my living room. A phrase where I made it a point to subvert my habits in sequencing movement organically. The phrase is quirky, and a hell of a lot of fun to perform.

In rehearsal that afternoon we tried it to the Yelle song. I like the idea of ending the entire dance with an upbeat anthem, but initially was not convinced that the French pop song was going to be just right. In a sense I felt like I might be emulating Cecilia Bengolea & Francois Chaignaud’s use of a Spice Girls song at the end of their work “Sylphide”. But my dance isn’t loaded with the severe oddness of S&M sensory depravation bags or the heavy metaphor of a life/beyond life cycle. So we tried the phrase to a number of pieces of music. The other overall winner was a song by Lee “Scratch” Perry, and it is certainly in the running for ultimate dance section.

The nice thing about the Yelle song is that in the opening there is percussive sound that would need to coincide with a head jerk – and it makes it so that the head jerk is not on the anticipated first count, but on an “and four”. I’m not sure if that makes sense the way I’ve written it, but it is clear kinesthetically & aurally to the dancers.

Jillian / Julie Duet

I’m trying to remember how this started for me. On one hand, the duet came about from the reality of having only Julie and Jillian available. I think my initial directive was to stand facing the same direction, front to back, and improvise moving their arms together. With my i-pod MIA (turns out it was there the whole time) Jillian put on music by The Innocence Mission, which fit the mood perfectly. Their folky album looped continuously as we created. Mostly I directed – asking questions and making decisions based on the dancer’s physical answers. I thought we had created a nice, succinct duet, but when we showed the rest of the cast they said “Beautiful! I want more!” Now, leaving people wanting more is a good thing, but the following week we decided to add more, which I think solidified some of the movement themes by allowing permutations of repeated movements. Hopefully we’ve not extended so much that we have lost the desire for continuation.

Cindy Sherman

Some days you just need to throw the plan out the window because you have a better idea. That happens a lot with this piece. I often change my plan just before rehearsal, or come up with new things to try on the way there. This is unusual, for me, and it feels good to be open to this way of working. Thus far the results have been great every time I change it up.

Before this rehearsal I was looking at my photography books, thinking about working on translating photographic exposure into some kind of movement constraints, and was feeling stuck. I saw my book of Cindy Sherman’s untitled film stills, and as I thumbed through it realized she often captures the moods I’m going for in this work.

Initially I was very interested in (and still am, for that matter) working along the lines of Pina Bausch – asking questions that allow the performers to access personal memories or experiences and translate them into performance via improvisation. It is a very internal to external way of working. I began to wonder if it might work the opposite way – external to internal. For instance, what if we emulated one of Sherman’s film stills as a starting point?

In her Untitled Film Stills, Sherman is the subject and photographer. She is a master of disguise, and each image truly looks as if it is a moment with motion and intention before and after it. It is easy to believe they are stills from a film. In the staging of each still I imagine the combination of the visual aesthetic and the emotional landscape had to come together from a place of universality and iconography. I would be surprised if personal moments came into play in the initial stages of imagining an image.

I asked the dancers to each select a photograph that resonated with them, and to start by emulating Sherman’s physical pose. From there I asked them to create movement that led up to, followed, or encapsulated this moment. After they worked for a while I asked them to journal, from the perspective of their “character” from the photograph about what was going on. They could include back story or be in the “present” moment of the image. Then, I asked them to return to moving.

Some of the results were really moving and beautiful. Nola’s gave us an idea for a dane in a towel. Molly’s exposure of her stomach could be an interesting moment to explore, and Bella’s reach for help that isn’t coming could be a basis for a solo.

We ended by playing with how these snapshot moments could be overlaid, or used as transitions.

The Bare Essentials

A great article by Gia Kourlas dated February 2006

The Bare Essentials of Dance

Thinking about titles...

Looking at photography related words. Wondering if there might be sub-sections with their own titles.

Underexposed

How to fix an underexposed ___________

Underexposes

Underexposing

Insufficient exposure

Indistinguishable

Shadow detail

Exposure Settings

Crushed Shadows

Shooting to the right

Shooting to the left

Manual exposure

Automatic exposure

Emulsion

Reciprocity Failure

reciprocity refers to the inverse relationship between the intensity and duration of light that determines the reaction of light-sensitive material.

For most photographic materials, reciprocity is valid with good accuracy over a range of values of exposure duration, but becomes increasingly inaccurate as we depart from this range: reciprocity failure, reciprocity law failure, or Schwarzschild effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(photography)

Text to put in the piece somewhere?

The Schwarzschild solution, which makes use of Schwarzschild coordinates and the Schwarzschild metric, leads to the well-known Schwarzschild radius, which is the size of the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole.

Exposure Words

• Multiple exposures
• Double exposure
• Indecent exposure
• Partial exposure
• Sun exposure
• Over exposed
• Under exposed
• Dodge & burn
• Film speed
• Density
• Chemical processing: developer, fixer
• Exposé
• Exposition
• Expositor
• To reveal
• Revelation
• To lay bare

Rehearsal #3 - 11/14

This rehearsal left me in awe of what can be created cooperatively when you have a group of smart, open and engaged dancers. I think we made a stunning, quirky, moving section simply by building it one piece at a time.

To back up to the beginning though, we began by fine-tuning the Patsy Cline improvisation. Now there is a foreshadowing of movement that happens later, marker points in the music, Molly must get down to the floor (and back up again) without moving her hands from her tush, and some little jumps in the second half. I'm completely in love with this section. The dancers are creature-like.

We quickly ran through the Jillian/Nola duet and Julie's solo. We added Molly into it at the end, and due to the fact that she is so much taller than me the partnering sections was adjusted and is now much more exciting!

The bulk of rehearsal was spent working off this Tom Chapman image:

At first we tried to recreate it with bodies in place of the sticks, but it wasn't very easy or exciting. Standing on the other side of the magazine, which was open on the floor, Nola noticed how interesting the image was upside down:

So we tried to emulate this image, to much more success. Jillian is in the place of the woman, on top of Julie who supports her shoulders. Nola, seated by Julie's feet, supports Jillian's feet on her shoulders. Molly stands behind, stroking Jillian's hair, lifting it up and letting it fall.

From the tableau we created I asked how might we get into this? So we played with that, adding Nola running her fingers through her hair as she waited for Jillian & Julie to roll into her. From here, Molly uses Jillian's hair to manipulate the rest of her body, and to set the tableau into motion. We kept repeating and experimenting with what should be the next moment. What ensued captured and sustains the feeling and mood of the image above.