CHOREOGRAPHY AND ANALYSIS
Composition II
Final Comp Paper
For my final composition paper, we were tasked with taking an original 1,500 page paper discussing a dance piece of our choice and cutting it down to 750 words. Avoiding "to be" verbs and concentrating on the analysis of Deli Commedia choreographed by Merce Cunningham, I was available to cut half of my original essay while still including my main analysis of the dance film.
Final Study
For our final study, my friends and I worked as a trio to complete our most open-ended study given to us. We were able to pick our own song, which I think we struggled with the most throughout this process. After choreographing to a specific song and later playing with many other songs, our end product focused more on the spatial relationships and connections between the three of us in the space.
Analysis Study #2
In this second study for Analysis, my group and I explored the different possibilities of a motif score. Throughout the process of creating movement and writing our own motif score for this assignment, we discovered the flexibility of notating dance. When the three of us were initially given the assignment, we struggled over how and where to start. Brainstorming led us to first picking out a song, then writing out the motif score, and finally figuring out the movement in our bodies.
I now realize that picking out a song first for our trio was a great way to start this study because the music inspired our movement even before we interpreted it in our bodies. With "Love On Top" by Beyonce playing in the background, we were able to form the basic structure of our study by writing out movement ideas in motif score form. The three of us discussed where it would be necessary to travel, be stationary and pose, or perform specific movements and put these actions in our score.
Once we completed the overall score, we easily translated the ideas into our bodies because we could picture the movement when we first created the score. We were able to go back in the movement and add specificities, like poses/gestures and directions/facings, to diversify our movement. These additions were then added to our motif score to include a variation of the many possibilities to write a score for our study. The end product consisted of all of our original, basic ideas that we initially wrote as well as the specific details that we added to represent our individuality. This helped me realize that analyzing dance can result in a range of notations, but it is up to the individual analyst to decide what is important to be included.
Dancing in Writing: Different Interpretations of Dance Language
One Hour Study
In my One Hour Study, I studied how movement in physical writing can be interpreted by dancers differently. I hoped to observe the multitude of versions that may result from specific movement phrases in writing because of how each individual dancer perceives the basic words attached to the movement.
I began my exploration of how every dancer interprets dance in words by creating a short phrase of movement consisting of 2-eight counts and filming my choreography. I transcribed the movement into writing in basic words that allowed the readers more artistic freedom when recreating the movement. The three dancers I gave the language version of choreography to were given 20 minutes each to interpret the written form and film their version of the choreography. I observed the three videos and combined my version as well as the three new versions of the choreography and filmed the final product. I then compiled each video into one film to visually represent the differences in how each dancer perceived the choreography.
The final product consisting of four versions of 2-eight counts of movement was exactly what I was expecting: four similar yet qualitatively different. The dancers had the general idea of what I created, but they each added their own nuances to my simple movement, causing the choreography to be drastically different. While the basic structure between the four versions were relatively the same, the important details that make a dancer's movement their own varied greatly between the four of us. I think this study brought more awareness to myself as a choreographer because I now see the different possibilities of all my tendencies of moving as a creator.