Monday Madness: In Which I Am Amazed
All my choreography worked today. Regarding which:
YAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSS!
My upcoming grown-ass semi-professional dance piece is a ballet/modern hybrid piece to Antony and the Johnsons’ cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” and the opening looks exactly as I visualized it—and it’s beautiful.
I was surprised by that. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but sometimes you suddenly make something beautiful, and it catches you off guard.
The rest is coming along nicely. The opening 35 seconds set a high bar(re).
Speaking of high barres, my coupé balances in class tonight were surprisingly good, though even the top barres in the studio where Monday class takes place are lower than is ideal for me. I think I’ve been over-correcting.
This class is at the school location in one of the two two larger studios. I’m guessing the top barre is optimized for students between 5′ and 5’3″. At 5’8″ with short arms, I have to do funky things to reach the barre when I’m on relèvé. The portable barres are even lower, though. The bottom barre, meanwhile, is optimized for cracking your knees when doing turns.
Speaking of turns, mine were meh today. I don’t actually have the faintest idea why, either.
Anyway, I’m cooked, so to bed with me.
Eventually you’ll get to see my “Heaven’s Door” dance, but probably not ’til it’s complete.
Posted on 2017/01/10, in artish, balllet, choreography, modern, work and tagged choreography, wow—did I make that?. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
danseur ignoble 
Hey, grats to being creative!
That’s a step few amateur dancers do – most girls I met are happy doing given steps, only a few like building things for their own.
That reminds me: I have to relearn my choreography, a birthday is approaching to show it.
Not that it’s good or the danseur isn’t really ignoble – but it’s my.
Thanks! It’s funny, before I started dancing again, I had never really thought about actually making dances. It’s turning out to be something I really enjoy.
I always end up creating things—I also write music (and essays, fiction, and of course blog entries :D). It would be interesting to study why some people feel confident in creating things and others don’t.
It would also be interesting to study *how* we create, and perhaps how different creative processes look on fMRI. My creative process tends to be largely unconscious: pieces of music or dance or fiction appear in my mind, and the process of realizing them is largely one of completion and revision. D’s process of choreographing for aerial apparatus is almost the opposite—he very consciously thinks of one movement, then the next, then the next, then the next.
I hope you’ll have success relearning your choreography! Let me know if you video it; I’d love to see it!
I’m really quite excited about this piece. Also rather terribly glad that I’m living in a time and place we all have video—capable computers in our pockets so we don’t get stuck going, “Wait, what did we do with the arms on the tombé between the développés?”
I’ve noticed that dances evolve as you set them, even if you begin with a very clear vision—someone in the group will do something unexpected, and it fits, so it becomes part of the dance.