Third and Fourth Rehearsal

Following the first two rehearsals there were about 3 or 4 weeks with no contact as I was on holiday. I had been very pleased with the improvisations that the dancers had made around the themes I wanted to explore with extremes of emotions. It had become clear to me that a duet between Jem and James would work well as the main part of the performance. There is something about the way they move that creates a sense of 'unheimlich' (literal translation from German is 'unhomely') or uncanny and that is a theme running through the work that I want to explore. Dan and Jack could provide an interpretive role by watching and using their moves to puzzle over and decipher the emotions between the dancers and eventually join in to explore their own emotional states.

I'd been thinking about trying to make a music cut or a storyboard or something to begin to work out a structure but didn't really know how I should approach this or where to start in terms of dancers expectations. Rachel advised NOT to start with music as this would be too rigid. She kindly picked my brain, contributed some good ideas and acted as scribe extraordinaire so we had a plan for the third rehearsal.

On Saturday morning we cracked right into it! And it worked surprisingly well. Rachel had the playlist from SamULG for the music and we found about 4 tracks that were good to use. We set the first 3 parts/phrases/scenes (what do you call in dance - no idea???) quite thoroughly although we didn't have music for the 'control' duet. Again I was absolutely overwhelmed by the dancers skill and ability to translate my garbled instructions in to something amazing. Thanks to Sally and Rachel for help with interpretation. And to Dan and Jack for some really good ideas to progress the choreography for Jem and James. I became more confident to give instructions, make changes, say no to suggestions that really didn't work for me and so on.

The last rehearsal was the following day. My daughter was having a little party so the rest of the day was spent cooking and hanging fairy lights. No time to reflect before we're in the studio again. The one thing I could do over breakfast was to try to find the music we were still lacking and - bingo - looking through the playlist on my phone I discovered a strings version of Joy Division's 'Shes Lost Control' by  the Vitamin String Quartet (VSA). Perfect!

So by the end of Sunday morning we had cracked it and with a 'flocking' ending. Apparently this is a technique that is bit of a cliche in the dance world but for the purposes of finishing the work on a playful and upbeat vibe, and with Sally's advice to the dancers to refine it, I think it works perfectly.

So I have edited together video of the whole piece and it runs about 12 minutes. I'd love to post it here. But I won't! Not yet! Come and see live on Sunday 21st at 8pm. Farnham Maltings.

http://www.thedancemovement.co.uk/tickets-every-day-people