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Ballet Squid Chronicles: The Philip Glass Project — Possibilities

Aug 17

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So I’ve been listening to lots of Glass, and I’m feeling like his short piece “The Poet Acts” (from the soundtrack for the film, The Hours) and his longer piece “The Light” are going to work brilliantly.

I’m envisioning a pas de quatre for “The Poet Acts,” with no hierarchical distinctions, just a lot of fluidly-interchanging parts. I suppose if there were any hierarchical distinctions, it might not properly be a pas de quatre.

For “The Light” I’m envisioning something with a larger corps (recruiting and setting the piece on more than 10 dancers might be pretty much impossible; I’m not that organized and, you know, Burning Man, so it’s not like I can suck up everybody’s entire week, unless they really want to spend a week the desert trying to make ballet happen as much as I do) and maybe a couple of featured dancers who emerge from and are absorbed back into the corps at various points.

“The Light” is much longer than “The Poet Acts,” and there’s a lot of opportunity in there to play with lines, circles, and lifts. What I’m envisioning for the principals regardless of gender is something more like what Bourne does with the Swan and the Prince in his version of Swan Lake: less traditional; almost more catch-and-release than lift-and-support (or, heaven forbid, lift-and-separate, which is what happens when your lifts go badly, from what I’ve heard).

There’s also a lot of opportunity in “The Light” to make use of groups of dancers doing different, even opposing things.

I can’t help but notice how the percussive instruments in “The Light” actually remind me of Tchaikovsky in the context of ballet. There are brilliant little cues built in to the music. That’s one of the thing I really enjoy about watching the Tchaikovsky ballets — Tchaikovsky tucked these beautiful little cues in all over the place that are profoundly useful both for dancers and for the audience.

The funny thing is, this doesn’t seem like it should be much more daunting from a choreographic perspective than Copland, and I’ve seen Copland ballets (including Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring”).

So I think it will work, if I can give myself a crash course in creating and setting choreography on dancers.

I’ve got a year. How hard can it be*?

Notes
*Yes,  that’s supposed to be ironic, there.  Don’t worry; I’m not that manic.  Yet.

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Ballet Squid Quickie: Two Things Forgot To Mention

So last night I mentioned to our friend Kelly that I was planning on choreographing a sort of post-post-modern story ballet, if you will (actually, I’m not sure it’s post-post-modern at all in the technical sense; it might not even be modern — but here on the Innertubes we play fast and loose with our English all the time), to some of Erik Satie’s piano works and that I was planning on possibly putting up a small ad-hoc performance together at Burning Man next year.

Kelly immediately said, “Meh! It’s already been done. Now, if you can choreograph something to Philip Glass, I’ll be impressed!

I replied, “I could do that! I love Philip Glass!”

And Kelly said, “Ha! If your dancers can count!”

And thus was the choreographic gauntlet cast. So I guess I’ll be selecting something from Mr. Glass’s oeuvre (but NOT the whole of Koyaanisqatsi!) and trying to whip up some kind of little ballet for it next summer. The idea is to do some collaborative choreography, spend a little time rehearsing it, and throw out a little performance.

I might still see about doing selected bits from Simon Crane (that’s the working title of my Satie ballet, which is not, coincidentally, about a stunt man — though that, too, might make a cool idea around which to build a ballet). Maybe just a few pieces that give shape to the story. We’ll see.

Sorry I’m so chatty today. Just trying to put all this stuff down so I’ll remember it, and also in order to force myself to do it.

In other news, I find WordPress’s simplified post editor very annoying, and am irked by the fact that the “New Post” feature now defaults to it unless you go to Dashboard>Posts>New Post. Most irritating.

That’s all, really, I promise. I’ll shut up now.

Posted on | Aside

2 AM. Can’t Sleep: Choreography.

May 19

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I realized this evening that I will have to make an audition video for the graduate programs in Dance/Movement Therapy.

I kind of knew this anyway – it just hadn’t sunken in yet.

Tonight, in bed, I found myself percolating choreography.   This is new – mostly I percolate writing.  But it suddenly occurred to me that here I have this awesome chance to do something cool; make a dance and perform it and film it.

I am thinking about using either one of Eric Satie’s gymnopedies (three, maybe?) or a selection from Holst’s The Planets (Mercury, perhaps?).  Very different pieces, but both ones I’ve loved so long that they’re in my bones.   When we were little, my sister and I created epic ballets to The Planets every chance we got.

So now I can’t sleep because my brain won’t quit dancing.  I guess I should apply the brakes to avoid mania, but this creative force feels really good.

Now if I can just master grand jete en tournant (or, as my phone would have it, en gourmand) by November………..

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