So for Solo/Solo, each of us are writing down a solo for someone else to perform. Here's the catch: it had to be composed of pieces of published books, articles, interviews, or reviews. A bit of a collage project, but we were taking everything and arranging it to use as a template for someone to create a dance from.
Below is what I wrote for my long-distance dance partner (follow the lettered sources to the bottom links to read where I pulled these quotes from). Imagine what you think it might look like. If you like, try it out and send it to us. Or just give me some thoughts. I'll pass them on to the dancer and they might end up on stage!
Rehearsing and performing note:
“a lot of things I bring into rehearsal are half-baked. I don’t want to finish them because they can be finished by the dancers, or by my working on them in the studio. Sometimes someone makes a mistake, and that brings you somewhere else. You Have to keep that option open. (A)
Score:
Opening night began with an unintended amusebouche: the curtain rose, the music started, the dancers remained motionless, the curtain fell, and there was a smattering of applause. (C)
Apply when/where necessary
Part One: “My Animal, Virginia Woolf”
- Sinking down on her haunches, her delicate body quivering, her eyes glisteningly wide, she seems to physically morph from woman to hare. She undergoes an evolution of sorts, often animalistic and grotesque. It’s a wild ride and she commits unwaveringly. (G)
- More earthy, more crude, more real (E)
- From a fetal position, she morphs through various emotional and physical states. She is fully absorbed and embodied, even in moments of repose. Events were always vivid, yet only rarely comprehensible. (D)
Part Two: “Luscious Murakami”
- Patterns change in ways that are never arbitrary but always mysterious. The dance tells no story. It could be a dream about dreaming, about ecstasy in the sweetest sense. (F)
- The movements were fullbodied, sultry and playful with intricate, intimate partnering, (you are) able to improvise within (this) set structure. (F) Drawing on the emotional essence of Murakami’s writing (H), the virtuosic and the casual, all treated equally. (B)
- Tracking her in the shadows is (the) ghost, a dark force she can barely resist. (H)
Part Three: “Stories that Bleed”
- Repeating precise arm gestures to ticking sounds. Some actions resembled surgical operations. Or were they autopsies? (J)
- Events were always vivid, yet only rarely comprehensible. (J)
- (You give) the audience a piercing stare as if he were... concerned for the prosperity of his land. (I)
- It is not a story. It is not music made visible. It does not follow an established or predictable form. It is not random. It is not dull. The drama is often at the edge of melodrama, of selfparody. The sharp swerves in tone are often humorous, but some of the material is actually silly. (B)
Part Four: “Bleeding Kylian”
- Sashay, dribble, wiggle, waggle their hands, tug at their shirts, run in place, execute solos, put their hands to their mouths or over their ears, get pregnant, and give birth before finishing in an attitude of petite mort. (C)
- Tracking her in the shadows is (the) ghost, a dark force she can barely resist. (H)
- The integration is so tight that it is hard to tell whether the dancer is shaping these visuals or vice versa. (D)
- One can’t help but cast gaze on those on the other side of the room and feel a heightened sense of being a part of something both special and bizarre. (D)
- The sharp swerves in tone are often humorous, but some of the material is actually silly (B)
- More earthy, more crude, more real (E)
Sources:
A) Quoting Wendy Perron in - Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism, by Sally Banes p. 275
C) http://thephoenix.com/boston/arts/76785-review-jiri-kyli%C3%A1ns-black-and-white-at-boston-ba/
F) http://expressmilwaukee.com/article-permalink-20754.html
H) http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/nov/24/james-cousins-without-stars-there-we-have-been-review
J) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/06/arts/dance/06mars.html?pagewanted=print
