Evaluation

In conclusion I think that I have been able to achieve my original goal to some degree. I think there has been lots of changes and alterations to my initial idea, but I think that it comes across in my outcome. The journey to get to this outcome was harder that I thought it would be. A part of this I think comes from the fact that its difficult to create a solo in a group. There were differences in ideas and choreography choices but its hard to add individuality if there are three people all coming together to create a piece. The choreography doesn’t feel very personal to me necessarily but checks off all the criteria for the assignment.  In the future I think I would listen to my own intuition more and choreograph things that I am entirely happy with instead of compromising that for time or other people’s ideas.  

Something I learnt about myself is that I struggle to work in groups when it comes to adding creativity. I realised that I find it hard to carry out something I don’t particularly like, for example there were lots of the choreographic choices I didn’t exactly agree with or to me didn’t make sense and I found it hard to enjoy the process and really get into it artistically because of this. I think this is a shame because I was really inspired by my initial stimulus however, I feel like my ideas did strain a bit away from this as the process went on.

Regardless I am still happy that I was able to produce something that I can show which tells a story and incorporates everything I have learnt over the past few weeks.  I will also carry the information that I learnt from my research of my practitioner into my future choreographic processes.  

 

 

Personal reflection

My group has managed to finish our choreography and full fill both of our motifs. I think that the next steps are to learn and refine piece and focus on portraying emotion through our moments to make our message clear. Personally, I think that there are certain movements I will change to make the piece more suitable to my choreographic vision and creative process. This will enhance my part in the process and showcase my own personal stimulus and motifs.

During this process my research on Matha Graham really helped forward my process. Her technique and performances inspired my own movements and I feel like I have used a lot of my research on her into my piece. Her use of sharp fast and bouncy movements really spoke to my second motif and her contrasting style which highlighted the use of flow and suspension heavily inspired my first motif.

During the process I feel like my group faced a lot of challenges. During the midway point we were stuck on creating movement itself and some feedback we got was to empathize the story we are trying to tell. We were able to overcome this by each devising small 30 second sections and combining them to fill our music. Another issue we faces was making each section we creative cohesive to each other’s and making it fit well with the music. Musicality and timing is something that I think we will need to refine and go over now we are near the end of the process and now that we have a full three minute of choreography to show.

“Steps in the Street” from “Chronicle” by Martha graham

 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrkuB5WwQGE&t=47s)

The second piece of work I have chosen to study from Martha graham is “Steps in the Street” from “Chronicle by Martha graham performed by the Martha Graham company (2020).  Immediately I can notice that whilst the steps of this piece echo Grahams signature style and technique, the overall mood and composition of this choreography are quite different. Compared to “Diversions of angels” this dance has a greater focus on steps and patterns in spacing rather than following a linear like story. The movements themselves are much sharper and faster. There is a great sense of rush I get from this piece as if the dancers are running from something. There are also nice moments of stillness like from the screenshot which add contrast; the stillness that comes from the fast paste movements adds a heavy mood. I think all this allures the audience in and gives a greater scope for interpretation. The dynamics of this dance match the music. The tempo of the piece is very jumpy, to match this the choreography includes lots of springy jumps which make up most of the movement. Personally, I really like the use of spacing to symmetry whilst all the dancers move simultaneously which reminds me of a pack of animals who would move together. Despite this there isn’t a deep sense of emotion from this dance, and I feel like the audience is more connected with the movements themselves.

I think this piece of choreography has really inspired me for my “war” motif as the hard and distinguished movements create a sense of power and almost depict a sinister aura. Upon reflection I think there needs to be a bigger contrast between each of my motifs and one step I could take is to speed up my second motif.

·        *  www.youtube.com. (n.d.). ‘Steps in the Street’ from ‘Chronicle’ by Martha Graham. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrkuB5WwQGE&t=47s [Accessed 19 Nov. 2023].

 

Reflection

My group has devised about one minute thirty of our choreographic piece. We found that it was much faster to each create a thirty second section for each motif separately then conjoin them to create a section of choreography. I found this was much quicker and meant that we each had a personal part in the piece. However, a challenge we faced was linking each section of choreography, so it flowed nicely unto the next. I think our next steps include refining the movements, so it looks like a cohesive piece.

Unfortunately, we were not able to receive any feedback recently as we did not have a full section of choreography to perform. Despite this some feedback we received earlier on was to make sure each of our motifs were unique and definite their own emotions which we chose. Think my group and I have taken this feedback and applied it quite well to our new sections of movement. When creating my own thirty seconds for the group I really tried to capture the essence of the sharpness and dull/ hopeless emotion that we want to be present in our contrasting war motif.  I was also conscious about linking this choreography to my chosen practitioner Martha Graham by taking inspirations from performances of hers that I watched and studied. Similarly for my other motif I tried to capture the softer movements and think kind of separate emotion I want the audience to feel.

As of now I am very happy with the direction that my choreographic piece is going and hope to further improve and refine my movements to create a full piece of choreography that links back to my main stimulus and can convey the story. This includes piecing each section of choreography together as a group.

 

 

Diversions of angles by Martha graham

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9LGVsKY1iQ (‘Diversion of Angels’ by Martha Graham, 2020)

The piece of work I have chosen by Martha graham is “diversions of angles” performed by the Martha graham company. The piece starts with two people on the stage and begins progressing into several ensemble segments with the introduction of another dancer who wears a red dress. Upon first reaction the audience can tell that there are three main dancers in this seeming to play out a narrative story. The initial interpretation is that the story and relations of the dancers in this piece recreate that of the religious symbol of the devil (red costume) and angel (white costume) both trying to divert the intentions of the dancer in the middle. The choreography between he first two on dancers really stood out to me. The dancer in white is almost being placed by the other dancer, almost doll like. It comes across as uneasy in the beginning for the dancer has almost no sense of realty in whilst the dancer who is placing them seems very infatuated and through the movements and choreography seems to be longing. However, this is very different to the choreography and style of the dancer in red, their choreography is consistent of mainly jumps, sharp movements and dancing around the other dancers rather than with them. The impact this has on the audience is that of an uneven relationship between all three dancers.

The choreography to me relates to the music. Where there is soft instrumental, the dancers seem to flow nicely to the music compared to where there are sharper and more dynamic parts. In this piece specifically Martha makes use of pauses, holds and suspension which fit the music and create sense of interest to draw the audience in. this is something I hope to achieve in my own choreographic process and have already begun working on.

* ‘Diversion of Angels’ by Martha Graham. (2020). YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9LGVsKY1iQ.

 

Choreographic devices and motif development  

 

A choreographic device I am using to aid my creative process are two motifs. One motif being centred around the ideas of the reality of war and how it benefits no one, also how peace and ceasefire can feel for like a longing than something that will happen.  The second motif my group developed was the idea of peace and the dream/hope for it. For each of these motifs we choose a certain way we would like to move to convey this, motif one being sharper and more ridged whilst motif two had a softer and lighter feel.  These both links back to my chosen stimulus “flower bomb” as it links both the ideas of war and peace. This I hope to distinguish with the contrasting motifs.

My chosen practitioner is Martha Graham and as a group we were inspired by use her of ability to covey deep emotion through movement of the body, however she mainly focuses on more hard-hitting emotions and a lot of her pieces have a deep sense of anger and passion which our second motif lacks. With this curating our second motif became a lot harder. Here are some clips of each motif (still a working process).  

                             

                               

                                                 

Moving forward I think as a group we should focus on polishing our choreography, so we have two clear recurring motifs. Overall, I think researching Martha Graham really helped push what I wanted this piece to convey and made it a lot clearer on how I would be able to preform it. Despite this upon evaluation I still need to work on how to indefinitely execute my message whilst linking it back to my main stimulus. So far I am liking the direction that my choreographic process is taking and I definitely think that I have taken new found inspiration from Martha Graham.

 

 

Martha graham

 

Martha Graham was an American modern dancer, choreographer, and pioneer.  She was born in 1894 and passed in 1991(Wikipedia Contributors, 2019) . Over her lifetime as a working choreographer, she produced many works of dance and founded her own dance company in 1926. I personally had not heard/knew much about Graham other than the “Graham” technique. Upon research I found out that Graham technique is comprised mainly of contractions and release with heavy emphasis of moving the core with the limbs following (Pierce-Master, 2021). I was drawn to Graham as I believe she is one of the first females in dance to have such a huge and long-lasting impact on the art form, considering many of the greatest  pioneers in choreography are male and this area continues to be a male dominated area despite the high number of female dancers.   

 On YouTube I was able to watch a few of her most famous works. A clip that stood out to me was the performance of “Night Journey” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaCIpIcoz80) (SaintsDance, 2014).  The reason this piece of choreography stood out to me was because like most of her work there was a deep sense of emotion not only conveyed through facial expressions but the movement itself which was often sharp and rigid with physical expression and only moments of smoothness.  In the book Martha Graham Dance Company (White-Migure, 2021) the author writes “Graham sought to create an original American art form coming from the ferment of place. Cultural identity and oppression were early themes in her dances such as Heretic (1929), Immigrant (1928), and Imperial Gesture (1935)” I think her themes and motives for each of these pieces (and her overall work) link greatly to my own stimulus, which links to the current Palestinian oppression. Furthermore, I think delving further into her technique will help me create a clearer focus on the type of emotion I want my piece to portray and how I will be able to preform that only using my body and the music.

* Pierce-Master, A.D. (2021). What is Graham Technique? [online] Available at: https://danceparent101.com/what-is-graham-technique/.

* SaintsDance (2014). Martha Graham Night Journey. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaCIpIcoz80.

* Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Martha Graham. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Graham.

‌*  White-McGuire, B. (2021) The Martha Graham Dance Company. 1st edn. Bloomsbury Publishing. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/3042772/the-martha-graham-dance-company-house-of-the-pelvic-truth-pdf (Accessed: 5 November 2023).

 

Music studies

My group decided on the piece of music “view from the other side”. This track stood out to me as I really liked the melancholy undertone of the music, I think it helps represent the story our stimulus is trying to convey. Our stimulus highlight’s themes of war, discrimination and violence whilst also contradicting itself with imagery of hope and peace. In my opinion I believe this piece of music really captures that in its tone and melody. Moreover, the actual composition of the piece of music will enhance our story or message. The music builds up in layers gradually and has some nice moments of stillness which could be associated with the eeriness of war, and how there of glimpses of silence and hope. Overall, I think the piece of music has a very deep tone which we can create a meaningful piece of choreography from.

Impact

The impact I hope to have on an audience with this piece is a heartfelt message. I hope to convey how the realities of war, which we as a western society don’t experience as often, can affect our views as humans. In addition, how war and violence can twist the way we perceive other people. Ideologies of war and fighting often divide people into a category of being “good” or “bad”. However, we know that war benefits almost no one. I think our stimulus “flower bomb” really helps back this idea as it portrays the irony of someone throwing a bouquet of flowers, something typically unaggressive, as if it was a grenade. I think this links to how most times during war people are dehumanized and are perceived purely like pawns in a chess game rather than individuals. Through my choreography I hope to interpret this message to my audience.

 

Understanding and creating movement

Within the first session we focused on movement and developing it through a stimulus. In one exercise we were tasked to choose 5 random words to curate a sequence of movements (one movement for each word). I found this exercise difficult at times as for words such as “up” or “open” it was a lot easier to devise a meaningful action given as the words themselves are very transparent, however for words such as “at” or “the” it was harder to give the action meaning. I found that for these words I had to tune in to other aspects of the stimuli, such at how the word sounds and what that would look like in a single movement. This allowed me to play around with dynamics and helped me realise that meaning does not always have to be so literal. In addition, this will develop my choreographic process further as it will allow me to think more openly about how I move. In another task we were challenged to pick a random photo off our phones and once again curate a small section of choreography. This exercise I found less difficult however it was hard to create movement from such a vague stimulus. With my partner we learnt that sometimes you must create meaning/story when it isn’t directly given to you. Moreover, in a sense also made it easier as we could use our own imagination and turn the choreography into how we felt and what we saw in the stimulus such as: the mood, tone, colours, angle or what the backstory behind it was, turning it into something more personal and unique.

 

Sparking new ideas

I plan on forwarding some of the things I’ve learnt into my choreography. The stimulus my group chose was “flower bomb” a graffitied piece of artwork produced by Banksy. The artwork depicts a man holding a bouquet of flowers looking as to throw them and is situated on the 760km wall which separates Israel and Palestine (Public Delivery, 2020). My group and I have already had small discussion on how we would go about creating a piece centred around this image. Such as how we might move to portray the connotations of peace, and how the music might contrast that to highlight the violent undertone.

 

(https://https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.Vbdx0jGNGBLOkg8xMH0vuQHaE8?w=260&h=180&c=7&r=0&o=5&dpr=1.3&pid=1.7veja.abril.com.br/cultura/banksy-perde-direito-de-obra-famosa-em-disputa-judicial/0)

 * Public Delivery (2020). Banksy’s Rage, The Flower Thrower - Everything you need to know. [online] Public Delivery. Available at: https://publicdelivery.org/banksy-flower-thrower/.

‌