Final Rehersals

so tonight is the final rehearsal before this weekend's performances. choreographing has been a very interesting experience and i haven't really been writing about it, partially because i'm not sure i have the vocabulary and partially because it just seems to be happening.

we started with one member of the collective suggesting an overall feel for the dance. there are 4 sections of the poem, so she suggested the 4 corners of the stage, with a consistent theme of a dancer lying down. i knew i wanted a fairly full stage and i wanted one central dancer that would move between all 4 sections. from there, we just talked about what the feel for each section should be, highlighted maybe some main words for the dancers to focus on, and thought about the beginning and ending shapes.

next, it was a matter of highlighting movements that felt "right." one thing i saw was that dance could fill in some parts that the poem couldn't. for instance, in the second section, i think the movement in that area is between the character finding a sense of closeness in the military, but that closeness carrying a sense of responsibility he couldn't carry. the poem talks about the weight he felt because of the love he felt,but it didn't talk about the closeness there and i think the dance can illustrate that perfectly.

after that, we tried to think about the timing of the reading and the transitions between the sections at the stage. we still need to nail down a couple of parts of the dance- the transition between the 1st and 2nd stages was way too much we found and the movement between the first and second parts of the third section was clunky- but hopefully that will go smoothly.

it's been really touching the way several of the dancers really get the poem and are able to translate that into movement. it's been such a positive, creative experience, i'm really going to miss it when it is done.