Process Works Update #2 - Collaboration

I can't help it - I LOVE my rehearsals. I find deep satisfaction each week as the performers I'm working with engage with the framework that I've provided. The discussions that ensue following each part of the choreography are equally as stimulating as the work itself.

For example: Last night we engaged with a piece of the choreography that we lovingly call Priority 7. It seems like it should be the easiest and most straight forward portion of this work. The dancers enter the space together with the intention of responding to one another (6 performers) and also responding to what is happening in the over-arching "dance" as a whole. This is the 7th element.

Priority 7, while structurally very satisfying, is missing a key element - individuality. The entire focus of Priority 7 is to pursue a selfless collaboration. Agreement is a word we once used to describe this section. But last night, we dove more deeply into what agreement actually means.

I discovered last night that agreement has come to mean some kind of unison, whether it is direct unison or simply an evolution of another dancer's movement. Agreement has meant sameness. But this is NOT what I was meaning by 'agreement' and so maybe this is the wrong word. I think a more useful word (or phrase rather) would be 'serving the whole'.

This is where we started to discuss the 7th element in clear detail. The seventh element again is the dance as a whole. I imagine that the dancers can take a birds-eye view of the dance at any moment. So that they are dealing with their immediate surroundings, but also keeping track of where the dance is going, what shapes are being made, what relationships are being established, etc. This means that the choreographers mind gets to working at any given time during this first section to help create what each individual performer might decide is an aesthetically pleasing dance.

We imagine that this way of working might be universal. Collaboration exists in most fields in various ways. This kind of collaboration can work - it gets things done, keeps individuals working, but in our case it is particularly safe. It doesn't produce the most innovative results. It's not meant to. It is meant to get the job done in a way that is mostly known but extremely efficient and systematic. This is why this section is only the beginning...