This is the third in a series of posts on the process of creating a new work entitled "Elapse" Once I've cast dancers, taught phrases, and collected base material, I cannot procrastinate any longer. I have to start composing the actual choreography. This is the layer that the audience will see, and nothing is harder than laying down the first strokes. At this point I look around the studio and wish someone else were in charge. A grownup. Afraid to start Photo by Jaqlin Medlock Groups are the hardest, and normally I wouldn't touch them the first week. I like to wait until I know more about characters and the shape of the piece. Also my group sections are informed by and composed of material
This is the second in series of posts on the process of creating a new work entitled "Elapse" Some of the most frequently asked questions by audience members in post-show Q&As are about music. How do you choose your music? What comes first, the choreography or the music? For me, the music usually isn’t the first piece of the puzzle. I start with an idea or image. In the case of my new piece Elapse for Ballet Memphis, it was the idea of running out of time. Then I choose my dancers. During our first few days we establish a language together for the piece we’ll create together. I teach them some base phrases, then we create new phrases based on a list of words that relate to my idea (metro
This is the first in a series about the process of creating a new work entitled "Elapse" Elvis Costello allegedly said that “writing about music was like dancing about architecture.” As a choreographer, I agree. It's challenging (though rewarding) to create work about anything besides dance itself. I love to see meaning emerge from movement, even if it dissolves back into abstraction within seconds. In my mind every piece I’ve created is about something outside dance---rivers, threads, cats, whatever. And sometimes that meaning is discovered very late in the process---through the search for a title or the writing of a program note. In this case, however, I was assigned a topic: “A Futu
