Performance Notebook

Week-long choreography experiments.

1/3/18

Create a 30 second dance with 10 moves.
Moves are Juliet.
Each move takes 3 seconds.
3, 6 and 9 have full stops in locomotion

I'm really happy to find that ideas flow pretty smoothly once I'm actually doing something. That's really the entire purpose of doing this- the fear of not knowing what to do is the thing that stops us from doing things, and if we just commit to doing whatever, then that allows us to create. I really strongly feel apprehension, if not real fear, before I begin making something, even something tiny like this. And then it goes away. And I forget that I was feeling it a moment before. That's really super instructive. A next step will be to reproduce that moment in the room with other people. Especially from the position of director.

Interesting to see, even after only two little sequences, ideas that I tend to return to. My instincts say "DO SOMETHING ELSE" but that's not right, not yet: first I should make a whole dance with my arms raised over my head like a monster, and see what happens.

1/2/18

Rules:
Create a 30-second dance.
5 moves, 6 seconds each. Move 1 and move 5 are the same.
Create a floor pattern in the letter J.

Well, this was fun. Important: doing this felt great, but watching it I get tired of all the languid gooey slowness. Find contrasts. Also, do the opposite: make thousand-minute dances that are all the same speed. Ok, not thousand.