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...

 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 ...

 When talking about costume, I mainly wanted the dancers to be comfortable in what they're wearing so we decided together on wider legs and smaller tops to be able to isolate the arms in the light at the start. I also just wanted them to be simple as to not take any focus away from the choreography and relationships on stage. I further wanted to have a consistency of black and white costumes to tie back to the original inspiration of the piece being black-and-white photography.  Emily:                                                   Tilly:

  As part of practice research for Superficial Thinking, I wanted to return back to my initial stimulus of layered photography and try it out with some of the images that you can see within the piece. I took two of the most recognisable positions from the piece and layered them with the opposite (first image) to represent the two starkly different sides of a self, and a slightly changed version (second image), to represent the slightly different layers of identity that can sometimes blend into one; the layers of a person filter over one another to create every person you know, and I wanted these images to be a representation of being able to see inside of a mind as we're trying to achieve with this choreography. These images will be on display in the reflection space as a representation of the piece.

This rehearsal was a bit tricky as it was the last one until the day of the performance and I needed more studio space. We ended up working through some things in the hallway before half an hour in Studio 3 and then half an hour in Studio 6. Despite the small spaces and the location changes, we made the most out of it and worked as productively as possible, trying out costumes as well. When we were in the hallway we read through the notes from  Luc í a  and I talked through my narrative thoughts with them to clarify storytelling. I wanted to spend this rehearsal combing through the piece song-by-song, clarifying details and implementing Luc í a's feedback from last week. One of her pieces of feedback was to take more time in establishing their relationship at the start of the first song before it changes to the second. This was tricky as the choreography I had set fit perfectly to the end of the first song. So, I asked Sophie if it was okay to go over the 12-minute maximum of...

When choosing the music for my piece I wanted the sound to have a contrast of softness and sharpness, so I started looking for pieces of music with violins as I feel like their sound has the ability to make you feel calm and at peace as well as panicked. I further wanted at least one song to have a steady beat to represent the constance of a heartbeat that intertwines with the self throughout a life. I needed something slower at the start and more erratic towards the end. So, I started listening to EPs and albums by classical crossover/instrumental artists and found an EP by  Ó lauf Arnalds called The Invisible that invited a melancholy, introspective feel. The EP is a collation of 'eight forgotten tracks' that the artist created over a decade ago which I further felt was an interesting representation of this idea of introspection, looking in on the self and finding forgotten parts hidden away.  I basically then used this EP as a soundtrack to our rehearsals before I decided ...

For this rehearsal, my plan was to choreograph the ending speeding up section into the dragging/weighted section and plot out all our choreography to the music. I didn't necessarily need the dance to be fully cleaned or for the dancers to have memorised the order, but I wanted to get a grasp on it for myself. We started off by recapping from the end of the first song to make sure the movement worked when doing it full-out and then added on to reach the end of the second song. They ended Tilly's Train of Thought duet crossed-legged and back-to-back, so I asked them to push over onto their knees and repeat their kneeling solos there. Then I asked Emily to get up and start doing her solo, with Tilly noticing and then doing her replication of Emily's material.  Video of End of Second Song: This definitely needs some cleaning and clarification on timings, but the timing of it and the movement content are definitely right for this section. There is this idea of awareness as they...

before this session I redid my timeline so I went into the rehearsal with the plant to test what I had plotted out the music in the space. We were in studio 4 so I could get a good idea of where I wanted them to be at the start of each section, so we mainly focussed on the travels between sections. Timeline before Rehearsal: Due to Emily's injury, I didn't focus much on the qualities of breath that need to be added to the piece, and just went ahead with testing the structuring of the first two song as to avoid as much contact improv and back-involving movement as possible. I videoed a test of the first song; I asked Tilly to do as much as possible but Emily to mark. It ended up taking less time than the song and with me pausing them before each section was meant to start, but with the full movement I think it's going to fit perfectly to the music. I was more concerned it would take more time than the music so it's a good outcome to have to slow some parts down. From rew...

Following the editing of the music, I had to re-do my timeline as there was some space between the tracks that cut the runtime down by around 10 seconds and I wanted my timeline to be as accurate as possible. So I spent the few hours spare I had before our next rehearsal planning out the timings of sections to the songs to test out with my dancers. The timeline being accurate was especially important now because of Emily's injury as we had decided on her marking the movement this rehearsal and the timings might not line up as we test them. Me accurately placing the sections and making sure that at least Tilly's timings lined up with what I plotted will help to ensure we are productive and make progress in structuring the piece. I also scheduled our second rehearsal of the week to be on the Friday so Emily had the biggest gap possible in not doing the choreography to rest as much as she could. I also checked in with her as I was remaking the timeline on what she thought/how she ...

I don't usually reflect on my supervisor 1-1s in this learning journal, but we talked a lot about and developed ideas around the structuring and narrative of the piece and checking in practically. Going into this 1-1, we planned on discussing the structure of the piece as we previously agreed that I would roughly try to plot out some of the sections to the music. I came in with my timeline and we talked about different sections we'd created and how I would use them to propel the narrative of the piece. I had some thoughts about the narrative the day before and jotted them down in my notes. These were very reflective in terms of what duality means to me personally, and the different ways that I perceive the narrative of the dance. My Narrative Thoughts: Through their styles and outputs of energy, I have established that Emily more so represents the Internal Self and Tilly the External Self External Self: Something that feels so controlled, energetic and intentioned can spiral o...

As my dancers were on residency this week, I wanted to take the time to get my head around the structuring of the piece. I discussed with   Luc í a  about bringing to our next 1-1 a timeline/blocking together of the sections I had already created so we could work on the structure and see where the gaps are and what is needed to fill out the piece's narrative. So, I arranged a 1-1 with Luc í a at the end of the Y1&2 residency week so I had the week to think about the piece and find a structure to it. To do this, I created a timeline of each song and a list of all the choreography we've created and started blocking out where each section is going to sit within the piece. This is what I came up with on my own. I nearly filled the first song, which I think is important for establishing the dancers' relationship with each other, so is where I want to work with them first. I found some links between the start and end of some sections that flow nicely, for example, the end of...

  Rehearsal 7 Plan: back to back breathing warm up Create Start: Repetition exercise from starting position Recap everything we have Lucia coming in to watch My main goal for this rehearsal was to get a start to the piece so I can start structuring all of the choreography that we have made after that. So we started by doing our regular warm up, and I noted down a few movements that they did that I can refer back to if I'm looking for transitional choreography. Video of Improv Warm Up: Ideas from Improv: E twist lunge from standing, T twist backwards over back, E lower to floor from knees, forearms push, pushing leg out higher like pendulum until standing before they go into the starting section they’re creating, feeding arms up and down, head rolls, then go into movement I then set them off on a task to create the start. I had them start in one of the leaning positions we created last rehearsal and move from there, and every time they get stuck/don't know what to do, they had ...