Day 1
Day 1 in The Garage at Norwich, the studio is a big space, especially, for a solo piece, mirrors cover the width of the room, I have the curtains pulled over half of them just to help me focus in more. The strip of dance floor across the middle highlighting the lower celling at that point, the air con is gently buzzing and I have chvrches playing in the background to warm up too. Its a good morning to create some work.
The days plan was to create at least the first section, this went pretty successfully! There is a lot of research that I have done into this first part of the piece, so creating the material and the sketches of ideas of how the movement could develop was clear in my head. This plan in all honesty, completely changed and grew further when I got creating the movement, which is no bad thing it just took some surprising twists and turns. I am lucky to be working with Oli Bell who has begun to develop a score for this piece and was able to in an incredibly short time put together a brilliant first draft of the music. One of my ways of working isn't to work with the music that I am using to perform, developing the material around other music and then fit it too the score that is being used at a later date. This plan always brings some incredibly happy accidents, where moments of music and choreography fit and moments where it really doesn't.
This, as a solo practice is something I haven't had to use or develop in a long time. I am used to being sat on the outside with the ideas in my head, taken from notes during the last run, all the planning and then be able express that to the dancers and allow the dancers then, to take on board, that timing, or question or change of impulse and see how that changed the feel of the section. Now, it is a much slower process of recording everything, watching it back, trying to trust myself as a choreographer and also a performer, something I haven't done in a long time. Its fun, its much harder, but is going well so far, I have since spent the last 3 days watching back everything that was created and pulling it part, asking questions about what this means or how movements can be developed or expanded. Their is even a proper plan for the start which never normally comes until the end of most of my other creation periods.
On Tuesday I will be having another meeting with Oli, to discuss the developments to the music I need to make and how best to progress it further and how we can fit the new beginning to the piece in. I will then next be in the studio on Thursday again and start off by recapping and developing all the ideas I have spent creating and then begin to look at the third section of the piece. I am sure I will put another sneaky peak up on Instagram again on Thursday evening.
This week will also see us getting back behind the camera again to create a short film with some of our students and doing some photographic work as well. We also have some one off projects happening as well. Busy week all round indeed. Here is a link to get your tickets for the 1st of June. http://www.thegarage.org.uk/event/scratch-night-1
See you all next week.