Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry.

Next week I will be debuting my latest piece of choreography, "What the Flock?"  The overarching theme of Flatland Dance Theatre's upcoming concert, "LOL: An Evening of Humor and Dance" is...... oh wait, it's on the tip of my tongue. Don't tell me.....So a mushroom walks into a bar and the bartender says 'we don't serve your kind in here.' And the mushroom says 'Why not? I'm a Fungi!'  nyuk nyuk nyuk. You get the idea. But choreographing a funny dance? That's hard. Dramatic dance may be more up my alley. A bit of angst a bit of yearning, the right lovely music, a lot of beauty in line and form. Presto! Well, maybe not that easy, but it flows more easily when it comes from that little spot in my brain that likes to wallow in whatever that term is for pleasurable sadness. Just go ask a Romantic poet. Or Radiohead.
 My personal favorite angsty dance that I ever created was done in 1994 and was called "This Portrait". I used the music of Pearl Jam and a Kronos Quartet version of Jimi Hendrix' "Purple Haze" to create a concept piece about the disintegration of a family. I am still proud of that work and it was created using high school students, plus my own two children, aged 6 and 9. I had a wonderful, expressive student named Mitch in the lead role (with my son, at age 9 playing his younger self) and the whole work just fell into place inside my head and poured out, Mozart-like, in a sudden gush of creativity. I have it on video (courtesy of good friend, Jim Goodlett and his clever filming) but have yet to get it up on the internet (I presume that entails a YouTube account). But I did take some stills from the film, frozen in pause on the TV set, old school style. Remember this is pre-digital so lots of grain. It's like looking at the Zapruder film.

This was basically a prodigal son story beginning with a stiff family portrait upstage left. My daughter is the tiny girl far right, but more about her later. A family of five dressed in black and white, including the lead dancer as a boy sit very still, as if waiting for the camera to flash. Downstage right our protagonist is estranged from the family. Cue music: "Indifference" by Pearl Jam. As he dances the family begin to break apart, Dad leaving first, slowly departing the stage until only the younger boy is left. They have a brief duet, older and younger self. I was proud of my son for being so heartfelt at age nine. The family is replaced in the chairs by a ragged looking bunch of female ballet dancers.

 Cue the inner demons (on pointe) to screeching Hendrix music played on violins, like a surreal Hitchcock sound track:

At the end, the prodigal crawls backwards on his hands and knees to the family, who have reappeared in their original pose, and gently lays his head on his mother's lap, like a pieta, but it's only an illusion. Cue "hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away...."

I think I nailed it on that dance and it doesn't happen often. People did cry. Yes!!!

Jump to 2012 and now I'm trying to make people laugh by turning dancers into sheep. I was happy in 1994 to make people miserable. Now I want to hear that reassuring chuckle, titter, giggle, snicker, or guffaw when my little sheep start to perform. Is that Ba-a-a-a-a-a-d of me? And my little tiny six year old daughter? Well, she took the following pictures at my rehearsal of "What the Flock?" two weeks ago. Super digital clear.

I will also be making a brief appearance in my own dance, a la Hitchcock, as a sheepdog, because you're never too old to publicly humiliate yourself.

WTF, Val?