choreography – Page 2

What Makes A Dance? The Brain As Choreographer, Dancer And Spectator

July 5, 2016 by 4dancers

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Aloha to All –

We are very pleased to have as our next Dance Wellness guest contributor Judith Lynne Hanna, PhD. Dr. Hanna is a longtime dancer and anthropologist whose work spans many years. Reading reviews of her recently published book, “Learning to Dance: The Brain’s Cognition, Emotion, and Movement”, spurred me to contact her to see if she would write an article for us concerning the new research on dancers’ brains, and how growing up in dance really does change us. The new science of Neuroplasticity (also called brain plasticity, is the process in which your brain’s neural synapses and pathways are altered as an effect of environmental, behavioral, and neural changes) is fascinating – and there are now more than 400 studies related to interdisciplinary neuroscience that reveal the hidden value of dance.

Many of us in the dance world have grown up feeling / knowing that we were somehow “different” from non-dancers, but only recently has science been learning how and why. I found Dr. Hanna’s article to be a clear explanation of all this new research, and am so pleased to share it with you.
Enjoy! (and don’t stop dancing–ever!)

Jan Dunn, MS, Dance Wellness Editor

by Judith Lynne Hanna, PhD

At times during their careers, dancers may want to explain what dance is about to family, friends, students, schools, spectators, and the media. After all, knowledge about dance is new and limited compared to the other arts.

My journey toward understanding dance began as a child in 1946, and the odyssey hasn’t stopped. A pediatrician told my parents that ballet would make my feet strong. So I studied ballet. Dancing didn’t do much for my feet, but dancing has made me stronger physically and mentally. Alicia Markova’s experience with flat feet was different than mine. Critic Clement Crisp reports, “The sublime artist Alicia Markova was taken to ballet as a child because her flat little feet left sad imprints in the sand during a seaside holiday. Ballet, said a doctor, would cure that. And it did. She grew into an astounding artist whose ‘intelligent’ feet and legs were the envy of the ballet world.”

Fascination with dance led me beyond ballet to explore other dance genres (e.g., modern, Afro-Caribbean, Latin American, African, flamenco, Middle East, jazz, hip-hop, swing, ballroom, and folk). Curiosity led me to conduct dance research in villages and cities in Africa and then in theaters, school playgrounds and classrooms, and cabarets in the United States.

As an applied anthropologist I study human behavior, including many forms of dance and culture, past and present, and draw upon the work of different disciplines. I was surprised that at the 2008 annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting, more than 6,800 attendees paid rapt attention to renowned choreographer Mark Morris as he answered questions about the relationship between creativity and dance. Neuroscientists interested in dance? I wanted to know why.

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The Attraction of Dance

Scientists are turning to dance because it is a multifaceted activity that can help them demystify how the brain coordinates the body to perform complex, precise movements that express emotion and convey meaning. Dancers possess an extraordinary skill set—coordination of limbs, posture, balance, gesture, facial expression, perception, and action in sequences that create meaning in time and space and with effort. Dancers deal with the relationship between experience and observation.

The brain hides from our sight the wondrously complex operations that underlie the feat of dance. Although there are many secrets to unravel about the power of the brain and dance, advances in technology—29 at my last count, such as brain scanning techniques and the experiments using dancers, dance makers, and dance viewers–reveal to us the unexpected.

Misconceptions that dancers shouldn’t think, just dance, or that dance is merely physical or emotional expression, are challenged by reality. Research shows that dance activity also strongly registers in regions of the brain responsible for cognition. Hidden processes reveal that the brain is choreographer, dancer, and spectator. Dance is what the brain does.

The Choreographing Brain

[Read more…]

Choreography: The Messy Juxtaposition Of Aesthetics

March 26, 2016 by 4dancers

***Sophia Lee in In Tandem, Photograph by Bruce Monk.***

I’ve known Peter Quanz since our ballet training years at Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet Professional Division. I have always admired Peter for his courage as a choreographer in taking on supreme artistic challenges and creating inventive, thought-provoking art. It has been a joy to see Peter succeed in what is an incredibly demanding and difficult career path.

I was thrilled that Peter agreed to share with 4dancers readers a bit about his life-changing adventures; his passion and drive for creating cutting edge choreography; and of course, his lovely humanity in connecting with artists across vastly different disciplines and languages. We spoke for about an hour over Skype while he was on a break from rehearsals. – Karen Musey

***Dancers of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal. Photograph by John Hall.***

KM You have had an illustrious career and have explored many different avenues of work as a choreographer. What has prompted you to branch out?

PQ I’m very excited that I’ve been working as a choreographer now for over 20 years. And that has given me an incredible life, with experiences that I’d never expected I would encounter. I’m looking forward to more.

I’ve really tried to choose projects that scare me. If I don’t face a project in sheer terror with the feeling of “I’m not skilled enough for this”, then there’s an excitement that’s going to be missing.

KM You make bold choices and continually seek out opportunities to collaborate – how have these different experiences informed your perspective as a choreographer?

PQ I am currently collaborating with Montréal Danse for the creation of a new piece. To spark the creative genesis of the piece, Artistic Director, Kathy Casey proposed a question to me – “How would you make a dance if you didn’t consider the audience?”. That flummoxed me, because for me, one of my hang ups is trying to gauge what an audience is going to relate to. But if you always try to make something an audience will like, soon you will end up only sitting in the audience with them.

We started out with an initial two week rehearsal period. We spent the better part of it figuring out different ways of connecting as a group of people, when I suddenly realized that what was most interesting about this collaboration was the bond that we had as a team. The idea became how to find a way to create a social connection with the audience: essentially, a “social experiment”.

***Photograph by Jean-Matthieu Barraud.***

We are now building a durational production where the whole audience is animated the whole time through technology. They will be using their phone and their signals will be turned on. We are playing with people’s connection to their phones. We are seeing the phone as an extension of their bodies, as an extension of themselves. We are playing with the idea of how we can be drawn together through this immediate technology while not getting so disconnected from ourselves physically that it ceases to be dance.

KM An interesting paradox.

PQ Oh it’s been fantastic! We are finding ways of using the phones to show us our bodies and our movement in ways you can’t see in a normal performance. We are using video that is taken live, utilizing different perspectives to see parts of an image; using the settings on the phone to both create light or diminish what you see in an image. This is how we build “community” in this performance; and we risk in being brought close together with an audience in an artistic relationship, which is very exciting.

No one on our team has ever done a project like this. We are learning how to define what is happening without over defining things, because this choreography is not about steps. One of our dancers coined the phrase “aesthetic of the situation”.

I’m interested in revealing how artists think in spontaneous ways, how they make choices based on their knowledge of movement and performance; I’m curious about dancers themselves being the vulnerable material from which our experience emerges.”

The work with dancers I have in Montréal requires a sensitivity to an ever shifting relational dynamic – between the artist, their relationships to technology and the structure we have all defined as a group. In contrast with that process, I’ve gone off to work with very classical ballet companies setting choreography that is highly determinate of the music and relates closely to architectural structures in movement, which of course has to be very precise.

KM What are you currently creating with your company, Q Dance? [Read more…]

Dance: The Power Of Pauses

December 20, 2015 by Rachel Hellwig

"the opening of my dance" by snickclunk. Licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic. — “the opening of my dance” by snickclunk. Licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic.

by Karen Musey

There is always one thing I’d love to tell dancers while watching competition pieces:

Pauses are powerful. Could you find more in your piece?

Judges watch 2 + minutes of choreography that is often packed to the brim. Feeling the crunch to “fit everything in” and their adrenaline pushing them forward, the dancer is only able to half-finish a movement in order to get to the next in time.

I know dancers want to demonstrate as much as they can and choreographers want to give their dancers challenges they can grow into. I absolutely support you in wanting to grow and be your best self.

But how do pauses affect a piece of choreography’s impact on an audience?

Pauses in choreography allow for the dancer’s expression in a piece to change and evolve. If there are no changes in energy, the choreography can become indecipherable like a run-on sentence: the dancer and audience hold their breath and everyone wonders why they are exhausted after.

Audiences notice the dancer’s interpretation of the peaks and the valleys of the choreography. They feel the inhales and the exhales. They react to the energy dynamic of a go or a stop. The emotional quality and thoughts behind a comma, the excitement of an exclamation mark! The stillness of a period.

To hold space onstage with stillness requires vulnerability. It feels very powerful and creates anticipation. Being onstage with “nothing to do” can feel overly revealing. I will tell you though –

Every piece I’ve watched that won top awards had the dancer(s) commanding powerful pauses in their choreography.

What can you do to find and craft the pauses?

Understand The Intention Behind Your Choreography.

This is an important step whether you are in the process of picking your music, are in the midst of creation, or while perfecting the choreography.

Why was this particular piece of music or theme chosen? Is there an intention to explore a topic, a way of moving, a way of expression? How do you personally relate to the song/theme and how can you grow from it?

What if it is a foreign way of moving, expression or style that you do not yet relate to?

Will taking extra classes help you acquire a clearer competency of the style? Could watching current events or movies that relate to your subject matter give you a better comprehension of the idea? Could you discuss with your teacher/choreographer and peers how you can interpret a more truthful and revealing expression of the piece?

When you relate to and understand the intention behind your choreography, you will be able to break it down and find dynamic through pauses.

"to "freedom" from the prince of egypt soundtrack" by snickclunk. Licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic. — “to “freedom” from the prince of egypt soundtrack” by
snickclunk. Licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Get Comfortable With Stillness.

Improv is a great way to experiment with pauses. If you improv and can find places to be still, discovering and owning the pauses in your own choreography will be easy and fun!

Choose different pieces of music to improv to that have varied types of pauses. Some may be static and sharp; others might be subtle or lengthy. Having your teacher create artificial pauses by hitting pause while playing the music can also accomplish this (similar to freeze dance, but for improv!). Allow yourself to relax and breathe in whatever shape you have created – feel the architecture of the shape and be open and curious to what thought or expression that shape could be endowed with.

The more you explore different types of pauses, the more you will become creatively curious in how you shape them in your choreography.

Nervous Tension vs Powerfully Creating Space.

What is the difference between tensely holding a pose or feeling the shape of it and breathing into the space around you?

Sometimes tension in poses is beneficial and creates a certain feeling in the piece; other times it stops breath, creates anxiety and uproots the dancer from their connection with the floor. If a dancer tensely holds a pose without breathing and with nervous energy, they often have difficulty easing into the next part of the choreography and have to play catch up.

Knowing exactly how many counts your pause is and how you can continually fill and shape it with energy and breath will keep you grounded, focused and in command of your choreography.

Slow Down.

What if you are already working on a set piece and it is choreographically dense without discernible pauses? Yay! What a great challenge for you.

First, slow your music down to a speed that you can easily complete the steps with. The slower, the better. You can use Garageband or other music programs to quickly adapt the speed of your music. If you articulate your movement at a more workable pace, you will start to notice all the different types of little pauses that can be found in between each phrase of movement.

Then – when you are able to fully commit to and finish your movement with the phrasing in place, you can gradually start to quicken the tempo. You will have developed the coordination and clarity you need for a more defined, polished piece of choreography. The pauses, phrasing and artistry of the piece will be intact, leaving you feeling powerful about the interpretation you want to showcase.

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By taking the time to investigate your choreography early on, you will create the possibility for fantastic performing opportunities down the road. Enjoy the journey

Contributor Karen Musey is a dynamic Canadian born, New York based performer,teacher and dance adjudicator. Her training includes study at Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet Professional Division, The Banff Centre, EDGE PAC (LA), Upright Citizen’s Brigade, The Barrow Group, Kimball Studio, Canada’s National Voice Intensive, Comic Strip Live and more.

Karen Musey judges national and regional dance competitions and festivals across the United States and Canada. She was a Director/Choreographer Observership Candidate during the 2011/12 season with Stage Directors and Choreographers Union and has served as a rehearsal director and dance captain for KOBA Family Entertainment. Karen Musey is an ABT® Certified Teacher, who has successfully completed the ABT® Teacher Training Intensive in Pre-Primary through Level 5 of the ABT® National Training Curriculum. She is a U.S. Member of the International Dance Council CID, recognized by UNESCO.

Performing highlights – PHISH at Madison Square Garden; World Premiere of the Canadian Opera Company’s Das Rheingold (Wagner Ring Cycle); National Artist Program Gala for the 2003 Canada Winter Games; for HRH Queen Elizabeth II during the Golden Jubliee Tour; Chicago (Rainbow Stage); comedy short Foreign Exchange (72 Hour Asian American Film Shootout); music videos for The Guards and Malynda Hale; international tours and performances with The Young Americans, J.A.R. Productions and KOBA Family Entertainment; stand up and sketch comedy around New York; Bravo! documentaries, films and more. She is currently co-writing a play. www.karenmusey.com

DVD Review: BALLET 422

November 16, 2015 by Rachel Hellwig

by Rachel Hellwig

BALLET 422, a documentary by Jody Lee Lipes, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Justin Peck’s Paz de la Jolla, his third ballet for New York City Ballet and the company’s 422nd new work.

Without the use of voiceover narration or intermittent interviews, the film shows scenes of Peck dancing alone in the studio for a phone camera, making sketches of steps and formations for the ballet, using his computer as an aid, and giving directives in rehearsal–“isolate the elbows”, “it’s not crispy enough”. But if you’re looking for more detailed insight into his choreographic process and the ideas behind Paz de la Jolla (as a well as the filmmaking process), you’ll want to turn on the commentary by Peck and Lipes in the Special Features section. You’ll have to do this on your second viewing though, because it will be layered over the film’s sound. I found the commentary enriching and I wish it could have been incorporated into BALLET 422 instead being a supplement. Nonetheless, there is an effective, quiet drama evoked in the film’s minimalist approach.

BALLET 422 also features backstage scenes, Peck’s collaboration with costume designers, discussions with lighting director Mark Stanley, and work with the late Albert Evans, former NYCB dancer and ballet master. As for the dance scenes, they give glimpses of the unique qualities of the principals of Paz de la Jolla: the athletic, lightning-speed sprightliness of Tiler Peck (no relation to Mr. Peck), the rebounding energy and charisma of Amar Ramasar, and the understated sophistication of Sterling Hyltin. Moreover, the dance scenes and performance clips capture some of the most exciting elements of Peck’s choreography –the Balanchinian propulsion of speed extended into a digital-age pulse and the prose poetry in his manner of melding contemporary and classical movement.

Magnolia Pictures, 75 minutes.

Purchase this DVD:

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Fresh Choreography Every Time

June 15, 2015 by Rachel Hellwig

Untitled photo by "snickclunk". Licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic. — Untitled photo by “snickclunk“. Licensed under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic.

by Janet Rothwell

As a high school dance educator I am responsible for choreographing four or five dances each year for various performances. Although choreography is my favorite aspect of dance, it can be challenging to come up with new ideas, movement, spatial designs, beginnings, endings, and themes each year. As someone who values originality and the creative process, I have realized there are certain things I do to help me stay organized and creative in my work.

Over the years I have adjusted my process to include some staple methods so as to not get burnt out with repeating the same movement or spatial pattern every time I choreograph a piece. I thought I would share these specific parts of my choreographic process that seem to aid me each year as I strive to maintain newness in my artistry.

1. Maintain a choreography journal

My choreography journal is my best friend in my creative process. Not only do I use it daily while choreographing works, but I use it year round to write down ideas that pop up at random times for future works too. I write down music I like or ideas I have for themes so that when I have to create a new dance and I feel uninspired or stuck trying to think of something, I can go to my journal and look at the running list of things I have written.

I find that my choreography journal is extremely helpful for me to remember what is happening in the dances I create with my students. When I’m juggling three or more pieces at once it’s difficult to remember what choreographic elements I have already used with other dances, and since I value being original and unique with my choreography I write everything down in my journal. I make drawings of spatial designs, describe movement ideas, brainstorm titles, take notes on my music, and write down costume ideas. I also make notes on what I want to do for the next day so that when I return to my students I can take a look at my journal and know where we are in the work and in the music.

A choreography journal does not have to be pen and paper either, although I find that’s what works for me. You could use a tablet, your phone, or whatever tool you like to work best in your process. However, I would say that staying consistent is best to keep organized. There is nothing worse than having written down great notes only to have misplaced loose papers or random receipts you wrote them on. I keep an actual journal so that all of my ideas are in one place and easy to find.

2. Pick clear themes and diverse music for each dance [Read more…]