Sunday, November 1 - "I am happy it is November, for nothing more than false hope of a new beginning. October as a whole felt like WORK; I am hoping November will prove a time to put the pieces together and see some results."
"The October 30 rehearsal took a lot of energy, and by the end left me feeling overwhelmed. Luckily, the beginning was a blast. Mike and I started rocking out to Ron Jeremy (background music used during his years as a porn star) and I just kept adding new movement material, unsure where it was coming from. Mike sets a good pace for me, as he requests detailed instructions to movement that I, if left alone, would just assume I would remember later. Yet he is also completely willing to keep going without a slight pause."
"Julie came early to give feedback for Mike and I. She recommended we find a way to connect physically sooner in the phrase work, so that the lift mid-dance wouldn’t seem so out of place. (Yes, he literally flings me on his shoulder and carries me from one side of the room to the other in the middle of a bunch of unison dancing . . . I knew we would have to work on it.) Feedback from others almost always challenges your own ideas in an arduous way—as good as it was to have, I bit my lip at the thought of actually creating it. Mike and I had been doing a ton of unison, so incorporating a more obvious connection is a definite need-to-do."
"When in the studio, I find that I want to just keep making material, whether or not it makes sense, just to have a bulk of work to prove the style of this group. I am wondering, which will ultimately feel more satisfying: a bulk of work? Or short, clarified, sensible phrases? For this project, I am leaning toward the bulk of work goal, since the grant is geared toward helping the beginning of an artist’s project."
"Julie, Andrea, Mike, and I continued into the second hour reworking the diagonal improvisation pass we had set last week, although it wasn’t as easy to come back to as I had assumed. The individual movement assignments were present, but a bit foggy. I wonder what is a good way to keep the ideas fresh? Assign movement homework?"
"We also reviewed in depth some group phrase work, thanks to Julie speaking up. My brain gets awfully full in the studio, so it was nice to have her voice of reason."
"The third hour arrived with Lucille, proving that I was a bit ‘behind’ my intended goals for the rehearsal. When considering Lucille, I must admit, I was unsure of how to bring her into a group that had already worked for weeks together. My mind fluttered to ideas of a solo for her? Drop everything and start fresh with the four of them? I couldn’t do either, since Mike, Julie, Andrea, and I had already gotten pretty far into our previous creations. I had to keep going with what we were already in the middle of. Lucille was totally up to just join in, so I tried to be up for it too, although I could barely wrap my head around it. She was brave and joined upon cue, but I left feeling unsatisfied."
"I had spent too much time on counts, not enough on the new dynamic of the group. What is a good way to start once you add in a new member?"
"Before the hours ended, the five of us put all of the phrases together (in the order they were created), and ran through all the different sections of movement as if they were one long drawn out idea. It took ten minutes. Ten minutes for over a month’s amount of work! The ratio of work to product is always so amazing."
"I decided for next week to try a rehearsal with just women, as a way to more smoothly incorporate Lucille, and will work on a trio with Julie, Lucille and Andrea. I have a few Saturdays coming up with a trio of different women, so I think I am going to give out my same ideas twice, to the two different groups, and see how drastically (or not) they compare at the end."
Experiment.
Slow down.
Clarify.
Small projects with the goal of creating lots of new phrase work for a bulk of material.
Please feel free to watch, comment, join, and enjoy the rehearsals!
Thursday, November 5 from 11 to 3 pm
and Friday, November 6 from 11 to 2 pm
Chase Studio, Flynn Center, 153 Main St., Burlington
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