After the first rehearsal with our expanded community of dancers, we had some time in the studio with just the Code f.a.d. company members. We spent a couple hours on this Saturday morning developing even more material, plus working with our gesture phrase to figure out how Finding Place should begin. I would say more often than not, I work in this way – finding some vocabulary, developing a few phrases of movement, then figuring out how the piece should start. So, we are not quite just starting from the beginning, but usually that is the first part of the work that gets set or staged choreographically. This way it is easier to see where the arc of the piece will need to go.
Technically, we started with the middle of the beginning on Saturday. I knew I wanted some of our guest dancers to do the very first movement the audience will see – a portion that then was set in rehearsal 3 (the next time with all our dancers). See below a rehearsal shot of one of the first images in the work:
Of course, we still have to work out costumes, and even that box is not the real prop we will have by the time we get to the NC Museum of Art, but we are used to working with whatever is around at the time until all those details are hammered out. I find it better to start working before getting those types of things to some degree because then you can see more clearly what you may ideally need for a prop/costume/set.
The company members and I mapped out that “middle of the beginning,” and each company dancer used part of our gestures to create a “big movement phrase” for the work. They were instructed to stick with the same style as the two phrases I had already taught them, but otherwise were free to interpret the assignment as they liked. We got some very interesting movement, yet at the moment I wasn’t sure how to make all this “big dancey stuff” turn into this work of art we are aiming to create. It turned out, all I needed to do was ponder a day or two while listening to the piece of music I had already designated for this section (composed by Proxy/G. Todd Buker, of course), and most everything started to fall into place.
Rehearsal 3 (back with all our dancers – company + guests) was then spent staging the “beginning of the beginning,” and working out as much of this “big movement section” as we could get through. We made it through about half. Fourteen dancers is quite a lot to work with for all that loco-motor dancing, particularly since I tend not to like large sections of unison material. I’m feeling confident we will finish this part in our next full-cast rehearsal, though, and I hope the “story sections” will progress a bit quicker. (I say that only because of the short amount of time before the July 7 performance; overall this is probably the fastest I have choreographed a work – surely the fastest with so many people!)
As you might have gathered by now, Finding Place has several sections of dance. For this premiere performance, I’m envisioning 5 sections in all: Opening, Story 1, Big Movement, Story 2, Closing. These aren’t titled sections, just how I see the work laying out. (And we may continue working on this piece after the premiere – adding additional stories and sections.) Thinking about the work in sections also is making it a bit more manageable for me to be able work on parts in rehearsals with everyone and other parts in rehearsals with only a few people. The opening, big movement, and closing sections definitely involve the entire cast, so those are my priority in our larger rehearsals. I’m almost ready to get started on the story sections now, though. We’ve been collecting stories from our cast members, so it is exciting to see how their memories will shape our “place.”
-Autumn
(Code f.a.d. Artistic Director)