Festival Project Journal

Reflective Space: Here is my poster from the reflection space after the festival week. I chose to represent the piece by using practice research photos that recreated the initial inspiration for the contribution and its themes. Questions I Asked: Were there any moments in the piece that you felt connections with the dancers on stage? How did their individual dynamics make you feel? This piece explore the duality of the self, what did you notice about the relationship displayed on stage? I think due to the time my piece was in the schedule, there was a smaller audience, most of which were family and friends of me and the other choreographer and dancers. So, I didn't end up getting much feedback about the actual questions I asked. One person did note the feeling of panic as Tilly started speeding up which was helpful to note as it meant our intended general intention got across to at least this person and the narrative had a heightened moment where I wanted it to.  There's also a...

After Fuzion Festival, I wanted to get some thoughts on how my dancers felt throughout the process and what they got out of it, as Collaboration was one of our core values for the festival, which to me carries through to my contribution and how I worked with my dancers. I also didn't want to go into my reflective essay and talk about our collaboration by presuming their thoughts and experiences, so I made them a Google form to answer and get their thoughts. I tried to make it as open for interpretation as possible and not to sway their reflections with my wording of questions. How did you find collaboration among the three of us? Tilly: Emily: How do you feel you collaborated with the other dancer, did you notice anything about your working relationship? Tilly: Emily: We worked a lot with perception, is there anything new you learned about yourself and your peer? Tilly: Emily: We talked about duality a lot in relation to partner work, how did you feel this impacted your dance pract...

 After my tech, we went straight into Courtney's as we're a double bill, so after this was done the rig would be all set up for her performance. So, I stayed in the theatre and took some photos for her as I didn't need to be in warm-up perfectly on time as I wasn't dancing today anyway. I think it was really interesting playing with all the prop and different lighting that physically represented barriers.

 During my tech rehearsal full run, I took some photos of the piece. Because I was still trying to watch, there were a lot less than usual, and the lighting was quite dark, but I'm still glad I got some higher-quality images of the piece as its initial stimulus came from photography.

I was actually really nervous going into watching the performance, it definitely wasn't helping that it was second in a double bill so I had to wait through Courtney's piece to watch it which built my anticipation.  The piece actually made me a bit emotional to watch as it felt like a culmination of all of our work together. It felt that in the moment of performing it, they really clicked with the emotional narrative of the piece and just let themselves feel it in the movement.  I got a bit nervous when the runners hadn't closed the backstage door and the light was leaking onto stage as they were setting themselves in place, but it got shut before the starting gobo wash appeared. They did speed through the performance more than usual, but I'm putting it down to nerves and Tilly getting caught on her costume, but even with that they made it look intentional in how they moved with the music in the moment.  I got some feedback from a peer that at the end of the first song ...

 Tech Specifications & Reasons: Low gobo wash as they're breathing together: I wanted the light to be low and patchy with the gobo to isolate body parts and establish their relationship as a connected system, so I didn't necessarily want to audience to see who is who whilst establishing that starting position that will be repeated a few times. Sidelights + Wash brighten through opening sequence: As they start moving off their spot I wanted them to get more visible so the relationship is more visible through movements and breath. A diagonal overhead light starts as Emily walks backwards to upstage right:  This marks the start of a new section as they both finish their solos and are drawn back together, it gives Emily a clear direction back to Tilly and continues to the end of the song with the movement through the light which is brighter than the wash to highlight the leaning positions.  Lights pulse over gobo wash with the beat of Song 2: This enhances the 'heartbea...

I went into the tech rehearsal with these notes to tell Nick, Courtney and Deane, which we went through and put in place with a combination of music and visible cues. This went quite well and we were able to execute what I had envisioned with the tech on the rig.  I got some positive feedback from my tech team that all of the cues were understandable and digestible with very clear markers in either the music or in the choreography as the physical cues were consistent in happening and very obvious for them. The only cue that we had to go over was at the end of Tilly speeding up when she stopped, but I just had to show them that she does a double turn instead of a single, which Tilly will always consistently do, and after that it was fine. We started then by doing a full run with the tech, which  Luc í a  (and Aggie :) ) watched, which went really well for me, I felt like the tech brought the themes of the piece together and enhanced the build of tension throughout the piec...

This rehearsal was right before our tech just to try everything out in the bigger space and work on some notes. I had them start out by doing a full run of the piece as best as they could without me telling them what comes next. This went really well and them remembering the order/structure allowed me to then go into more detail on clarifying notes such as: Tilly taking more time with the bit at the end, going through the exact motions of Emily guiding Tilly through her solo, specific music cues to hit at the end of sections, and emotional output. We also had some people from the building come in to watch a bit of the run which was good preparation for going into the performance later in terms of nerves in performing it to an audience and expecting distractions. Video of Full Run: I then wrote down all of the tech cues for Nick and Courtney while they changed into costumes and worked through any notes. We then did a run of the last two songs just for memory and to make sure they could ...