REHEARSAL 4 - 23/04/2024

For this rehearsal, we were in studio 5, which is quite a small space, so I spent the time we had offering a lot of prompts for the dancers to improvise to. I'm starting to feel quite nervous about getting the piece done in time as I haven't been able to work on it much over my break due to work and illness, so I thought I'd start the first rehearsal of the term off with being very experimental and improvisational to hopefully spark some ideas for me. One perk of being in this studio, though, is its window into the social space at Dance City. With one of the key themes of this work being the contrast of internal and external perception, I wanted the dancers to get used to the idea of being perceived outside of a traditional theatre space, as you can see in a lot of the videos from this rehearsal that people around the building will have a look in. This is interesting for the dancers as it allows the process to be observed in the same way that the performance is, but also for me as a choreographer being observed in my process. I found that I didn't notice it all that much when I was very focused on the tasks at hand, but every so often someone would pass by and there is a small notion of consciousness that plays into my thought process. It's this idea of placing myself in those observers' perspectives, asking the question of what it is like to observe myself from outside my body. This somewhat then gave me this artificial feeling of depersonalisation, if only for a second, and was interesting to play around with while possible in this specific studio.

We started with a warm-up improvisation, starting the dancers in their individual spaces with the stimulus of warming up but also moving from the breath. Even in this, you can see their two distinct movement styles and different perceptions of what moving from the breath means to them individually. Emily moves through breathing in waves, whereas Tilly has very distinct staccatos that separate her inhales and exhales. We then moved on to a new stimulus of spirals in the sense of mentally spiralling and how that feels to be physically embodied. This was a bit of preparation for the emotional narrative of the piece's structure and what it means for them as individuals to embody this sinking feeling. In response to this, Emily's movements became a bit faster and more erratic, connoting a sense of being overwhelmed mentally, whereas Tilly's movements softened as if physically exhausted, having a softness like there was no mental room left to think about what was coming next, the movements just falling after one another. This made me think about how the descension of a mental spiral can be both erratic and fast but also slow and sinking, often in contrast to a 'self's' (in this case their movement identity) typical or characteristic appearance. 

Video of Improv Warm Up: (Individual)

We then repeated this exercise but in contact with one another. They started back-to-back standing and really played with this idea of breathing into the back and neck, with a lot of focus later on hands and arms, almost guiding each other through the surrounding space without watching each other. I like the idea of them not having direct eye contact with one another for the first part of the piece, two sides of the self having the knowledge that they're both there and working in tandem without directly perceiving each other visually, that perception developing throughout the piece. Once we started wrapping and spiralling I did have to add an extra prompt of having a force between each other and being more physical in communicating what they want the other to do/try as there was a missing sense of urgency and conflict that I wanted to see to develop the emotional narrative of the mental duality that we are exploring and the different layers of their relationship.

Video of Improv Warm Up: (Contact)

We then did some travelling passes of the room to explore different dynamics of movement that we could look into creating movement from in further rehearsals. The first one was the idea of interweaving with each other and what it means to move as one unit across a space. This was most successful when they were watching each other, perceiving how the other was moving and what they might do next and working around it. This exercise proved a good way to get across the idea of selves being so intertwined in their knowledge of each other inside a mind as well as being individual in their movement styles. They didn't necessarily adopt the other's way of moving but adapted themselves to move around and find pockets of space between body parts that blended their movement together.

Video of Travels: (Interweaving)

The next travelling prompt was for each of them to get the other to the other side of the room and back. We started with Emily moving Tilly and then switched over. This is something I definitely want to develop over the next few rehearsals in choreography but this was a good starting point. I found that both dancers when moving the other did so with care and it wasn't like they were moving an inanimate object, so it will continue to play on their relationship. It's something that I envision to be after one self tires themselves out, and the other dancer has to bear the weight of both selves simultaneously. This idea of neither of them being able to carry on without the other but one having to carry the emotional weight of two with the energy and strength of one. The only thing was that these movements became somewhat pedestrian and lacked urgency so I'll need to develop these ideas in a way that pushes them to explore this through dance so as to not be such a stark contrast to the rest of the piece as I'm not looking to take the audience completely out of this symbiotic environment that is so rooted in contemporary dance.

Video of Travels: (Emily Moving Tilly)

Video of Travels: (Tilly Moving Emily)

I then gave them another Improv stimulus to test out, aiming to further develop their comfortability with contact work; dancing as if they're glued together, and can't go anywhere without being attached to one another. This didn't particularly work in the way I wanted it to, maybe trying to set some movement from it, as they were more focussed on staging attached than being an extension of each other, so I'm going to think on this and find another way of working/task that could generate some contact work.

Video of Improv: (Glued Together)

We then just did a bit of catch-up for Tilly and made a kneeling version of her solo material as Emily did before half-term. 

Video of Tilly Solo: (Kneeling)

The last thing I wanted to do was experiment with the ending and pick up the pace of some of the movement as it was all very similar in terms of dynamics. I had them both pick up Tilly's solo material with Tilly speeding it up and ignoring the pace of the music, working herself to exhaustion as a representation of mental overload. I then had them continue into the improv of Emily dragging Tilly around and carrying the weight of her after she's reached burnout. I am leaning towards a structure of  Emily continuing Tilly's material, almost trying to encourage her to keep going, then helping Tilly do the material, and finally having to drag Tilly around and carry her until she is also too tired. I want to revisit this next rehearsal and make Tilly's descent a bit more gradual, maybe also developing the dragging to revisit motifs from earlier in the piece.

Video of Speeding Up Experiment: