Choreographic Devices - Practitioner Study  

-

During our most recent choreography practical lesson, we began by watching a Ted Talk of choreographer Wayne McGregor.  

   

McGregor is an esteemed choreographer well recognised for his innovative choreographic devices such his method "3D thinking" and use of technology. He believes creativity can be taught and is within everyone; dance is an expression of physical thinking and referred to creativity within dance as 'bodies misbehaving beautifully' as he experiments with the bodies' limits and how they move. McGregor uses a variety of choreographic devices to inspire new choreographic ideas and is often seen using technology to create new ways of moving. During class, we created word sets. During our most recent choreography practical lesson, we began by watching a Ted Talk of choreographer Wayne McGregor.   

  

During class, we created word sets related to our stimulus associated with Action, Space and Dynamics and used these word sets to create different movements.  


Our word sets were:

  - Spiralling, smooth, retrograde.

  - Circular motions, heavy, gestures. 

  - Isolations, sharp, motif. 

  - Jump, lively, perspective.   

  - Falling, change of centre of gravity and changing direction dramatically. 


For example, our first word set (Spiralling, smooth, retrograde) we created based on the premise of the second section of choreography and represents spiralling and expansiveness of the tree trunk.

 

At one point, we also exchanged word sets with another group and thought of ways we could relate them to our own stimuli. 


The word sets were: 

 - Sharp, angular, repetition. 

 - Gentle, circular, central. 

  -Broken lines, softly, resistance. 

 - Pedestrian, robotic, organised. 

 - Diagonal, swing, organic, pendulum. 

 


Overall I found this task to be quite helpful in my choreographic process. Not only did it allow me to come up with movement sequences I wouldn't have thought of otherwise, but it also made me focus on how I could connect words describing my stimuli to movement. 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Critique 3 – Crystal Pite : Flight Pattern

-
Over the course of this blog, I will be critiquing and reviewing  Crystal Pite's work Flight Pattern as recorded for the Royal Opera House in 2019. The piece begins with a woman sitting cross-legged on the floor right of the stage, huddling over. The stage is dark spare a single spotlight illuminating the woman and casting shadows on the dancers' bodies lying at random in the background. The woman begins moving slightly in a series of slow contractions and looks, surviving her surroundings. As she does a series of lunges turning to the front, it becomes clear that she's cradling a swaddled baby, rocking and appearing to hush them. As she stands, we can clearly see her costume consists of a grey tank top, black trousers, and a slick low ponytail, all of which adds to the sense of bleak despair the piece is emanating at this point. The rest of the piece continues in a series of partner work and as the dancers as a unified body. Something I noted is that the partner work usual...
Read more

Creative Development: A Reflection On My Process So Far

-
    Embarking on this choreography project, I wanted to keep a few things in mind as I had some experience with choreography from helping create our foundation group piece last year. One of the main downfalls that I felt I wanted to improve on from that experience was not relying so heavily on improvising to materialize choreography. Additionally, I also want to work towards not being so afraid to try things out of my comfort zone while attempting to be more organized by leaving enough time to therapy rehearse and finalize the piece instead of continuously changing things.  In the beginning: We spent the first few scissions learning more about different choreographers and their choreographic devices. I enjoyed the process of implementing these choreographic devices to create phrases for my work as I found myself moving further away from the style of movement I'm usually drawn towards.     As I had such a strong draw to my stimulus, I decided to start after ...
Read more

Further Creative Development

-
Within this blog, I will be reflecting on how I feel the choreographic process has gone so far for me in this module now that my choreography is completed as well as how it has developed since my first lesson working on the piece. Firstly I wanted to evaluate my starting objective if I have succeeded in executing them. My main aim for this piece was to communicate an element of climate change, deforestation, and the aspect of over consumerism within this. I wanted to convey this message as a time lapse through the life of a tree that slowly deteriorates over time due to the environmental impact of humans. My goal is not for the audience to feel saddened but empowered to make a change and appreciate the world we still get to live in, however fragile it may currently be. I think that this message is well displayed; however, I am aware that I need to work on conveying the storyline through my facial expressions and my movements. This issue is something that has also been brought up to me ...
Read more