Thoughts on final assessment
Lighting-
The lighting in our piece was a horizontal strip at the front of the stage used through the side lights. We wanted to use the light within our piece as a restriction and a particular area that the dancers worked in to create movement that used all of the space lighted. There were interesting moments such as when Rigmor places her foot over the line of the stage and breaks this barrier or restriction, which possibly built tension within the audience. This idea of breaking barriers could be displayed through Rigmor and Becci walking into the light from the wings and slightly outside of the horizontal strip of light at the beginning of the piece. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the piece within this lighting as it created an intensity due to the dancers being close to the audience and the dark space behind them built tension, pushing them closer.Music -
Our piece focused on body percussion, which created our own unique sounds emphasising movements within the piece. We wanted to record the sounds made within the piece and play them over the dance, however we found this too over powering and took the quality away from the work. A common question I ask myself when choreographing is "does the music support the work or make it look better?" I don't usually like to work with music until the end of the piece as I find it can ruin the quality of the movement and distract my focus on creating movement and the dynamic quality. Therefore watching our piece without music was intense and allowed me to become completely absorbed within the movement quality without being distracted.I extremely enjoyed working with Becci and Rigmor and I appreciated the audience response to certain movement, as it created some moments of laughter creating a humorous approach that we had not expected. The playful quality and detailed contact work created a relationship between Becci and Rigmor, which was intriguing to watch. Becci had moments in which she manipulated Rigmor such as pulling her up by her hair and pushing Rigmor's head into her hands and holding Rigmor in postions in stillness for several minutes, in which the audience and Rigmor were unaware as to when the next move would be.
I am thoroughly enjoying working with Becci and Rigmore, we are all working well as a group and are responding to each others suggestions and ideas well. We are all facing individual challenges and constraints due to each of us having a different movement vocabulary and choreographic style. However these challenges we are facing in terms of the movement and choreographing is creating original and interesting movement, making the process exhilarating and exciting. I have taken the role as “director” and I am extremely enjoying this role, as I have been the “dancer” for the last few tasks. Therefore I feel as though I can focus on how the piece looks for the audience, what choreography works and what does not and I am able to keep a clear structure and focus to help keep us motivated. I have also been able to clarify where the movement content can be seen for the audience as we are working within a restricted area of space and light. I am excited to see how the piece turns out with only one more week to go!
Sarah and I really wanted to challenge ourselves and our audience with this idea of how to end our piece. We played with a few ideas including conventional endings i.e. end in a position, light goes off, end still moving as light fades out, end in stillness and black out. We eventually decided to end the piece with me (the dancer) staring into the audience creating intensity between us and making each of us vulnerable and unaware of what was to happen next. We wanted the audience to decide when the piece had ‘ended’ through the use of stillness this idea of being face to face.
I felt focused and aware of the ending, however the tension and uncertainty of not knowing when to end made my body twitch. This could have displayed my insecure and vulnerable side of not trusting the audience and myself. I think Sarah found this challenge hard as well due to her dimming the light after a long period of time, as we had no response from the audience. What was only a minute felt like fifteen!
I extremely enjoyed the task and this idea of experimenting and creating idiosyncratic movement. Although I found it a challenge and felt out of my ‘comfort zone’ of movement vocabulary, which made me feel uncertain about my performance and dancing. Sarah and I explored a range of movement by focusing on this idea of feeling and being awkward with our bodies, getting caught and stuck in positions we had to get out of. We tried to see what more we could do with our bodies and what body parts hadn’t been used. If our body recognized the movement or found it easy and natural to dance we challenged ourselves even more to think ‘outside of the box’ and create movement our bodies had never experienced before.
In terms of our use of light we wanted to create a diagonal stream of light restricting the spacing and allowing my body to only move within the light. We wanted to create a relationship and intensity between myself and the light displayed through the movement travelling towards the light. Also intricate movements such as playing with my toes were close to the light source to create a clear vision for the audience. We started with a dim light at the beginning of the piece as the movement remained static and we made the light brighter as the detail and energy built. We also kept the light bright to highlight moments such as playing with my eye and looking into the audience. This allowed the audience to have a clear outlook of the movement and it also built a stark and unwelcoming environment, possibly making the audience feel uncertain of movement. The position of the light also created a shadow of my body dancing around the room and the audience stated that it created another dance within the room, filling the unused space.
From our performance the audience had different experiences and perspectives through our choreography and use of the lamp. The piece naturally built humour through the idea of investigating with the lamp bringing it to life and portrayed by some as the “Pixar” lamp. This image of the “Pixar” lamp could have been supported through the creaking noise created by the slow intricate moving of the lamp when inspecting parts of the body. My group had not realised this humorous character had been created when choreographing the piece. However it was extremely intriguing to see that we could create a different experience for certain people with the audience through our performance.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of working with different light sources and restrictions in movement choreography. I started to think outside the box instead of just creating movement within the space. I thought about the detail, quality, and brightness of the light given off, imagery, shadows, trickery and what ways we could make the audience question what was happening in front of their eyes. The limitations that we were faced with seemed a shock at first, but it created an intensity and quality to the work through the focus and development of ideas we shared when working in a group. This allowed each of us to question and challenge what we were doing at all times, always seeing what more could be done to create an interesting image for the audience.
I was extremely intrigued by this video through its ability to trick the viewers eye , with use of shadows and highlighting certain body parts in awkward angles making it impossible to work out. There appears to be many light sources used including torches ,lamps, fresnel, and data projectors.
This blog is a reflection and documentation of my position as an Intern for Tavaziva Dance. It will give me the opportunity to share my journey with the company over the next 5 months!
