Step by Step:The Choreographic Process

The creative process used in making a visual artwork can be complex, but it can usually be explained through the technical process, supplies used, step by step procedures, special personal "tricks", which can reveal one aspect of making art, because the other parts, the intuitive leaps, the impulses, the ponderings, the decisions and indecisions, even the missteps in judgment are harder to grasp because it is all happening internally and often spontaneously. Sometimes even the artist doesn't know what she was trying to convey until the artwork itself reveals the meaning to her. (I'm raising my own hand here. My artwork always surprises me, even the 70% I throw away)
When it comes to choreography it can be even more difficult to reveal the process because not only is it happening in the choreographers head, it is happening on the dancers bodies as well, happening for weeks in private until it is suddenly unveiled in completion, and again, there is that in-between space where some sort of chemical reaction occurs between the concept and the execution, between a mental image and a physical reality. Add to that another art form, the music, and then add to that a collaborating artist in another medium, and the end result is often a very unexpected hybrid.


Here then is a documented attempt to explain how my choreographed work, "Belong" came to be, and how it was so much more than I thought it would be.

When I chose my daughter, Naomi, to be my collaborator last Fall, it was based on a series of photos she took of the Flatlands Dance Theatre in an abandoned warehouse:
 

At first I thought I wanted to do a work showing the process of aging, possibly because I am an aging dancer, and I wanted to juxtaposition photos of young, athletic bodies against older, worn down bodies. But nothing was clicking in my head, and no music I was listening to seemed to inspire me. Then one day I was playing one of my iTunes playlists, and the song "In This Heart" by Sinead O'Connor came on. It's from this 1994 album. Very emotionally moving.......

 I had also been following the Academy Award nominations and had been reading about Judi Dench in "Philomena" about a young mother forced to give her child up for adoption and her lifelong search to find him.. Suddenly I saw an image of a grieving mother surrendering her child, for whatever reason, and realized, ironically working with my own daughter, that I wanted to do a piece about a mother/daughter relationship. Thus was born "Belong".

But, I also had seven dancers in my group, so it had to be about more than two people. I began in a state of vague confusion and swirling ideas and artists' block, as I often do (as many artists and choreographers often do) but it was time to start rehearsing so I began where I often begin....in the middle. I had found some cool, interesting music by an artist called Alt-J, and I selected a track that was mainly instrumental with a strong rhythm and building intensity. To this music I choreographed a combination, with the idea of expressing group connection and also reaching for something bigger than oneself, that could be called lyrical old-school modern dance, throwing in one or two quirky steps and rhythm patterns so the choreography would not be a slave to the beat and become predictable to the audience. I had no idea where and how this section would fit in but to all creative people I say just start, start anywhere, and see where it takes you. I have two mottos in choreography: 1) Never be predictable. 2) Don't be deliberately obscure but don't be simplistically literal. I like my works to evoke a meaning but I also like them to have layers of  subtext, something that speaks to each person, and something that speaks differently each time a dance is viewed. Well, I also have a few more rules for myself. One is to have a strong beginning, and to know the ending before I start. In this case I had neither, which caused me  a lot of discomfort and self doubt. Also, I had to incorporate Naomi's photos and I didn't know how or where or even which ones. But deadlines, and people staring at me waiting for instructions, are both huge motivators. So I did what many of us probably do, I stalled. I worked on that one section of music, playing with the steps and moving the dancers around, for about three weeks worth of rehearsals. In music and in art this would be called developing a theme and variation. It would also be called waiting for further inspiration.
Meanwhile, one of my dancers had to leave because of a pregnancy that needed care, and another dancer also announced she was pregnant but could continue to dance. I'm a go with the flow person so I became aware that my mother/daughter dance was now achieving meta levels. Having danced and taught dance pregnant myself, it was just another day in the life......
So finally I went back to the beginning, to my Sinead O'Conner song, and found my opening pose of a mother cradling a daughter in her arms.
Four performance photos below by Andrea Bilkey:

From there I had a short sequence where the mother and daughter lovingly connect, then the mother slowly backs off stage and the daughter flounders alone, like a young bird thrown from a nest.

   Above is one of Naomi's rehearsal shots. I later changed the dress to something simpler and more flowing.

Here I finally figured out how to open up the dance. I had the other dancers come in and join in the daughter's solo. From this point on they became her new community and the center section of the dance was about her seeking their acceptance, wanting to belong. I still had only used about three of Naomi's photos to be projected on the white wall behind them, mainly to reinforce the developing theme, but I also wanted to do something more visually creative with her photos from the warehouse, of the large groups in various poses,and including jumping in the air and crouching to the ground. She had also come to rehearsal and taken a similar series of improvisatory poses of my dancers in the rehearsal space, and it was while we were scrolling through the images on her computer to see which ones we wanted to use that I noticed the Muybridge effect. As she clicked from one image to the next the dancers appeared to be moving as if in an old silent film. Section 3 of my dance was born. I alternated quick rapid pose changes between the actual dancers onstage and the images behind them. In that way the space and the number of bodies expanded so that the daughter's community became even larger. (I have not seen an actual video yet of my work, but I know watching it in the theatre with Naomi I was pleased with the results).
 Here below are some dashed off cell phone images of the dress rehearsal, since I had to also keep an eye on how everything looked the night before the performance, but it helps convey the mood a little. The red scarf was a symbol, a bond, an umbilical cord, between mother and daughter. The mother wears it at the beginning and the daughter wears it for the rest of the dance. And fortunately, Naomi had taken a series of photos of a friend who is a silk arial performer and had numerous images of her hanging in the silks, and others just of the red silk itself, so I selected one of those to make a bold opening statement. Red was the only bright colour in a very neutral toned dance. Here, I think, my background in visual art helped me make decisions that I hope invoked painterly moments and interesting compositions.

 Another photo by Andrea Bilkey from the performance:

Below, my cell phone shot, and a better photo by Andrea Bilkey.

   Another shot from the performance, by Andrea Bilkey:

And so, on to the ending, the ending I didn't yet have. I knew I wanted all the dancers to slowly leave so that the daughter would now be an independent, if solitary, being. In my head I wanted to bring the mother and daughter back together after all the other dancers had left, with a photo image of them in the same pose projected behind them. But at the last minute I changed my mind. I didn't want to just repeat the beginning. I didn't want the mother to return. Instead I left the daughter alone onstage slowly lying down in the same pose in which her mother had leaned over her and soothed her with a lullaby, and now, only the photo showed the mother there. I felt this made it more poignant. Even as our own mothers grow old and then pass on we still carry that image of them in our heads.

So, from a dance I felt like started from a state of confusion and undefined concept, through moments during the technical rehearsals where I thought the work was horrible and I had made a huge mistake, to the actual performances, and very positive feedback, I looked back, as probably many of us do and wonder at what point the "magic" occurred, when this amalgamation of music, bodies, and imagery became a unified work that hopefully spoke to someone's soul.

The wonderful lighting was by Emmett Buhmann.