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/.

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