Today was my first rehearsal for the beggining of my creative process towards my final dissertation for my degree in dance choreography.
I have three dancers in my cast, I knew this would be a difficult number to work with but as this topic I have chosen is quite personal and involves a lot of my feelings I thought it would be a good idea to keep the "company" small and intimate. Using this environment to talk about each others feelings on this subject and if they have any experience in this and putting this into the piece.
I used my first rehearsal time to explain my idea to my cast. My idea being the 5 stages of grief, based on the kubler-ross model. The 5 stages are; Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. My piece has to be 15 minutes long if not more so Im not sure whether I am going to use all 5 stages or just focus on the main ones that I vividly remember going through myself.
I expect my dancers to have emotion in this piece, have all the confidence in them. I have chosen three very strong dancers which I need to portray some of the feelings. I will work with my dancers to create the fnal piece allowing them to be creative as well and set improvisation task etc to explore movement before setting anything in stone. I have an idea of what I want the end product to look like but if it doesn't end up like this I am not going to hold on to it, I want the movement and the creative process to take me on a journey.
I know that this will be wuite an emotional piece for both me and my dancers. Im trying to look upon this opportunity as having my own company and creating a piece that I want to dance and the performers enjoy dancing. This is a very personal project for me but it is helping with some issues that I have overcome and hoping to over come in the future....Its like therapy!
I will be posting blogs on my future rehearsals hopefully with video's and pictures of my creative process.
