Skype session 20th April

On Wednesday the 20th April me and Nafisah Baba had a skype session with Adesola. Our dance director Jodie Blemings in Chrysalis London also joined us. It was very beneficial for me because we told Jodie what our inquiry is about and what our plans are for module 3. We all tried to figure out what the company can do to help our inquiry.

I realized how much it helps to just talk about your ideas and concerns with other people than you sitting at home thinking about it. With this degree there is a lot of stages to go through and there is a lot of different opinions on what is right and wrong. Therefore it really helps to talk to people, like your SIGs group or your adviser, and discuss the questions you’ve got. I get easily concerned if I’m doing the right thing or not and to just hear from someone else that you are working in the right direction makes a lot of difference than you being alone thinking about it.

Choreography is such an umbrella term, this is the result of the influence of so many techniques being influenced by culture, choreographers etc. And because of that I have decided, with help of Adesola and Jodie, to focus on the different techniques there is in contemporary dance. Chrysalis London is a contemporary company and in this company Jodie use a lot of different techniques when he teach out choreography. Me and Jodie decided that I will have 1 or 2 days where I can do a workshop with the company trying out the different techniques. This will help me find out who I am as a choreographer and also what technique I like the most. I will compare and analys from what other big contemporary choreographers have said about their techniques and see if I agree with them or not.

I’m so grateful to be in a company where they let you experiment to find out who you are as a dancer and also who you are as a choreographer.

So what I learnt from that skype call was that if you are stuck or a bit unsure of something than just talk to people and hear their opinions on it. Hopefully that will help you get on with your work without you feeling unsure. That works for me anyway!

More literature

Choreography Empathy, by Susan Leigh Foster

When I was researching about choreography I wanted to see if I could find anything that has to do with the relationship the dancers have with the audience. As a good choreographer you know how to tell a story and how to make sure your dancers connect with the audience the way you want. Of course it is the dancers job as much as the choreographers to perform and take the audience with you on your journey. However, I would like to think that it is the choreographers job to know how to do that and bring it out of hers/his dancers. When I am in the audience I always want to leave the theatre feeling like I’ve been taken on a journey together with the dancers. I want to feel touched by whatever feeling they felt, wether they are happy, heartbroken, sad, in love etc. So that will be the main thing I’m going to focus on if I ever become a choreographer. 

I found this amazing book called Choreographing Empathy, by Susan Leigh Foster. What she talkes about and trying to answer questions is: 

”What do we feel when we watch dancing? Do we ”dance along” even without moving overtly? Do we sense what the dancer’s body is feeling? Do we imagine ourselves performing those same moves? Launching buoyantly into the air? Rolling with increasing speed across the floor? Balancing on our toes? Undulating the spine? Floating? Diving? Bursting? Or pausing in stillness? Do we sway to the rythm of the motion we see? Do we strain forward, lift upwards, or retreat backwards in response to different motions? Might we even feel our muscles stretching or straining? Our skin rushing past air or sliding across the ground? A shortness of breath? The damp from perspiration? Do we feel fear, witnessing the precariousness of the dancer’s next step? Delight in its expansiveness? Anxiety from its contortedness? And to the extend that we feel any of these things, in what ways do these responses form part of or otherwise influence how we experience dancing and how we derive significance from it?” (p.2 of 282.)

She has devided the book in three parts: Choreography, Kinesthesia and Empathy.

”I argue that any notion of choreography contains, embodied within it, a kinesthesis, a designated way of experiencing physicality and movement that, in turn, summons other bodies into specific way of feeling towards it. To ”choreograph empathy” thus entails the contruction and cultivation of a specific physicality whose kinesthetic experience guides our perception of and connection to what another is feeling.”  

So there is actually an explanation to the way we feel when you watch someone dance.

She also talks about a guy called John Martin and his theory is about kinesthetic sympathy that I agree on:

”When we see a human body moving, we see movement which is potentially produced by any human body, and therefore by our own… through kinesthetic sympathy we actually reproduce it vicariously in our present muscular experience and awaken such associational connotations as might have been ours if the original movement had been of our own making. ” (p.7.) 

Our body is built so we can dance and move around. So when dancers move around and tell us a story we can relate to it because our body respond to what our eyes see. I think it is really cool how our body works. 

Task 5A

My company, Chrysalis London, rehearse in different places around London. So I thought my work/professional community which is the most familiar with me is different dance studios where I work/rehearse with Chrysalis. It is important for a dancer to have a good place to rehearse in as it can effect your whole career if you get injured because of the space. These are the points I think is important when it comes to ethics/codes of practice in rehearsal spaces!

Codes of practice in rehearsal spaces:

-       Fire safety.

-       Professional dance floor/sprung floor.

-       Access to get fresh water.

-       Air condition/heating units available.

-       Easy access to toilets.

-       First aid kit available.

I also had a think about what the regulations was for choreographers, as that is my inquiry, and I realized it’s the choreographers job to make sure you give your dancers a good place to rehearse. Therefore the choreographer needs to think about the codes of practice in rehearsal spaces too.

Codes of practice for choreographers:

-       Ensure with your dancers if they are ok for you to touch them.

-       Make sure your dancers are warmed up and give them a cool down after rehearsal.

-       Treat your dancers fairly and with respect.

-       Make sure to give them time to drink, eat and rest.

-       If they are under 16 or 18 (?) you have to get premission from their parents?

-       Choreographers needs to make sure that they are rehearsing in a suitable place for dancers (like I mentioned before.)

This is just my own thoughts. I’m looking forward to use sources that already is out there and find out more about it all. :)

Different Process Techniques

I’ve also researched and been thinking about what the different techniques there is to choreograph as I want to know what technique is best for me for the future. Here is some of them that I have experienced before:
 

-       Choreograph on your own time and space and then teach out to your dancers. (Most common in commercial/jazz dance.)

I like when choreographers already know what they are going to teach out and get on with it in the studio. It is probably because I like picking up choreography quick and like the speed (maybe because I’m impatient haha.)

-       Choreograph in the studio with you dancers to get inspiration and help, but have an idea of what your end results will look like. (Chrysalis London’s director Jodie Blemings use this method a lot.)

I’m used to this technique because of Chrysalis. Jodie like to choreograph on the dancer so it will show of he/she in the best possible way. So he will choreograph together with the dancers and see if it looks good or not and change a lot through the process.

-       Choreograph using numbers.

For example Chance dance that is Merce Cunningham´s method. He make up movements to the different numbers and use the chances to choreograph a piece. In that way it can look really creative and different.

-       Choreographers that let the dancers improvise and get movements and inspiration from them. (Usually contemporary dance.)

When you improvise you never know what you will end up doing and it can be different movements every time depending on the music, how you feeling, how much space you have etc. So this is a good technique if you don’t have any movements idea but maybe you know what music you wanna use. So you let the music and the dancers decide what kind of feeling the piece will have.

If you know any other process techniques that I havent mentioned please comment!

Choreography

The statistics for choreographers (male and female)

I have been researching about choreography and came accross a book, Fifty Contemporary Choreographers edited by Martha Bremse, and it is basically facts and information about the big contemporary choreographersrs in the world. It is very interesting to see how many of them is male choreographers and how many is female. I counted and there was 33 male and only 17 female choreographers in total. I wanted to see if it’s actually true what they say with ”male choreographers are more successfully than female choreographers.” Why is that?

I found a dance history essay written at London Contemporary Dance school, May 2000, by Hallvord Reiar Michaelsen Steen, http://www.hallvord.com/dance/mfchoreog.en.htm.

He writes about just exact this issue. He wanted to see if it’s actually true when you look into the facts about contemporary choreographers (in the UK). He researched on loads of different companies and at the end he says ”The more established a company is the less it pays attention to gender issues. ” But you can see that there is a more even balance among less established dance companies. Why is that? Is it because the bigger and successful you get people doesn’t care because they get all the good attention and the statistics doesn’t matter anymore?

Contemporary dance is still dominated by male choreographers. But this issue is only for contemporary dance and not so much Jazz, Musical theatre, Commercial and Ballet dance.

I am not that bother about this issue. I feel like right now feminisim on social media and everything that has to do with statistic with male and females is bigger than it has to be. When it comes to choreography maybe the women are a bit more scared and laid back while the men is up your face and wants to be seen and succesful. I am not saying that women are cowards but maybe we should just start to take more place because we are as good as the men (if not even better ;)) People do say that it is harder for women than men to be successful in the dance world because there is more of us women that dance but that is just how it is.

I hope i haven’t defended anyone by saying how I feel about the male and female situation. I am only talking about the choreography world and not any other gender problems we have in our lifes. Dance and choreography deserves to be bigger and more important than it is now. We should therefore be proud of the big names out there no matter the gender. We all know how hard it is to be successful in the industry.

Task 4A

Before I started Swedish Ballet School when I was ten years old I was interested in choreographing. I always made up some silly dance routinces for my sister and I and had shows to my family. So when I started in a professional dance school the interest in choreographing continued to grow. After my dance career I would love to work as a choreographer so I thought this is the perfect opportunity to research and learn more about it through the degree.

My inquiry will be about Choreography.

I want to find out and research about:

-       The different process techniques

-       What kind of choreographers is there?

-       What did they do before choreographing?

-       Is there more successfully choreographers that are men than women?

-       If that is the case, why?

-       The difference how to choreograph depending on the dance style

-       Different opinions – What does people like to see?

As a full member of Chrysalis London I learn a lot of different choreography almost every week. In spring we have shows coming up and that means rehearsing what we already know and also learn new pieces. Most of our pieces is choreographed by our director Jodie Blemings. However, I know that some people in our company is going to make and create new pieces on us in the next couple of weeks so I will take that as an opportunity to compare and see how different they all are as a choreographer. 

Aswell as interviewing and talking to my director and the people in my company I would also want to know more about the bigger names in the choreography world as like Merce Cunningham, Wayne Mcgregor (because he was not a dancer before he became a choreographer), Matthew Bourne etc.

There is a lot of different styles of dance aswell as there is a lot of different ways to choreograph. Sometimes it depends on what style you choreograph in but also what kind of person you are as a choreographer. Contemporary dance is what we do in Chrysalis so that will be the main dance style that I will study and learn more about but also jazz/musical theatre and commercial dance. I want to figure out who I am as a choreographer and not just as a dancer. I know that I am very expressive and emotional with my dancing and I want to find out if I am the same when I choreograph or maybe completely different.

Module 2 group chat (Friday 26th Feb)

I found todays skype session really helpful. Adesola explained and introduced us to Module 2 and I had the chance to hear what other people in the course were thinking.

When I read the handbook and the readers I freaked out a little because it’s a lot of information to take in and it seems like it’s a tons to do on a short period of time and I’m sure I’m not alone feeling like that. But after the call I’m defiantly more calm and I know what my next step is.  

We talked about what different inquiries we all were thinking about and most of us wasn’t 100 precent sure of what we were suppose to do next. One of the most important point that I think came across clear in the chat was to not overthink everything and Just Get On With It. I thought that was a really good advice as it’s really easy to get stuck or to get confused by all the information you read. If you know what your inquiry will be about then just stick to it and start researching and you might find another directon that suit you better and that is just a part of the whole process. I sometimes find that I feel unsure on what to do until I hear other people confirm or talk about it even if the instructions are clear. That’s why I found the skype call so helpful as it just confirmed on what I was already thinking about.

If you are unsure of what to pick as your inquiry or you’re just stuck, then my advice is to talk to other people in the module to see what their view and thoughts are. That always help me because I can then continue with confident knowing I’m doing the right thing.

So the things I'm going to think about during the module are:

-       Just Get On With It

-       Don’t Overthink

-       Talk To People (that are doing it or already have done the module)