Example of "Joyous Movement" in Labanotation

As a choreographer, the number one question I get asked is: “How do you write down a dance?” It’s surprising to me how often this comes up. In itself, the question reveals a a literary way of thinking about choreography, as something that can be written. It’s also akin to the question my actor-friend is frequently subject to: “How do you remember your lines?” While there are notational systems for dance (eg. Labanotation), they are extremely complex and too cumbersome for “everyday” use. Labanotation certainly has uses, mainly as a tool for those recording and reconstructing master-works (visit the Dance Notation Bureau), but this is not how choreographers generally “write” their dances.

When you say “write” a dance, does it mean: 1) How do I make choreography up? 2) How I teach choreography to dancers? or 3) How do I document choreography for posterity? I hear all of these things.

my notes on aerial choreography

The way I start to make a dance is to build “vocabulary,” i.e. steps or movements. (See  Vocabulary Test post) For example, for “Ghosts” some recurring moves are 1/2 Umbrella, Disc, Pac-Man, Herding, Dervish, etc.. Naming the moves help us both to clarify the shape of the action and to remember it later. Sometimes I have fun making a movement cheat-sheet, matching names with my squiggly drawings. The second phase of choreography is creating movement sequences that correspond to a structure, whether musical, conceptual or narrative. Sometimes I’ll write down the sequences, but very often I do not.

Whatever notes I have in my purple-and-orange book serve only to jog my memory, but would be completely meaningless to anyone else, except maybe the original cast. My scribblings are not “writing” and do not express the choreography, even if they help me indicate it. When it comes down to it, fundamentally, dancing is NOT writing. It is, like an oral tradition, passed down body to body. Choreography is often generated communally. My dancers contribute to “vocabulary building” — you could say we are developing a common “language,” but that is perhaps a linguistically-biased way of thinking.

Choreography resides in the dancers’ bodies. And it lives there, exerting influence via muscle memory, for years after the original performance. For this reason, reviving a work with the original cast can be surprisingly quick — an entirely different experience from mounting the same work on new bodies. It’s in teaching a new generation the “vocabulary” that you realize all the things you didn’t “write” down. All the nuances of expression, idiosyncrasies have to be learned from scratch, re-invented, not just remembered.

So how do you record all these nuances? With video, of course. So that is probably the easiest and truest answer to this choreographer’s FAQ. Video. Duh!

more to come on this topic . . .

It’s taken a while to devise a costume and rigging system for this project. One issue is how to keep the wires and the costume from interfering with each other. Aaron Verdery, Streb’s rigger, helped us set up a pulley system so I can manually raise and lower aerialist Rachel Salzman. Now that we’ve got the mechanics in place, it’s time to figure out the dance! The first step is to develop the vocabulary. Here’s a few clips–early in the process–that show some Loie-esque aerial moves. More to come!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Paris Opera Ballet rehearses Nureyev's Nutcracker in "La Danse"

Having read in the NYT that Frederick Wiseman’s “La Danse” was one of the “finest dance films ever made,” I was set up for disappointment. What the movie has to offer is a sequence of beautifully-shot scenes of Paris Opera Ballet dancers rehearsing repertory. It gives you, literally, a top-to-bottom view of the Paris Opera Ballet, showing a rooftop bee-keeper and fish swimming in flooded underground passages. You get glimpses of people serving food in the cafeteria, seamstresses sewing ornaments on tutus, a janitor mopping the theater. The intention, no doubt, is to make you feel like you are there. The film certainly conjures up a sense of place but, unfortunately, it lacks coherence and narrative thrust.

Wiseman’s fly-on-the-wall technique of filmmaking purposefully omits context or interviews to ground the footage. The film flits between rehearsals of–we find out in the closing credits–Genus by Wayne McGregor, Le Songe de Medée by Angelin Preljocaj, La Maison de Bernarda by Mats Ek, Paquita by Pierre Lacotte, Casse-Noisette (Nutcracker) by Rudolph Noureev, Orphée and Eurydice by Pina Bausch, and Romeo and Juliette by Sasha Waltz. With such a hodgepodge of choreography on view, it’s hard to get a serious take of any one work. For a while, it seems “La Danse” is showing us each work’s progression from studio to stage, but that cliche narrative of the dance-documentary goes only partially fulfilled. After two plus hours, the film ends, wearingly, with the dancers back in rehearsal.

Some of the more intriguing bits feature the company’s Artistic Director, Brigitte Lefevre. We witness her in meetings, offering encouragement and praise to dancers, discussing casting with a visiting choreographer and entertaining ideas from a public relations team. Throughout, she presents an articulate and compassionate persona. While there are hints that there might be political tensions below the surface–as in a company-wide meeting regarding pension benefits–Wiseman resists expose. We are left with the impression that the Paris Opera Ballet is a well-managed, humane if hierarchical, operation. As there’s not much conflict on view, there’s not much drama either. The pleasure of “La Danse” resides solely in watching exceptional performers practice their craft.

A couple of weeks later, I found myself in Montreal as the subject of an Art Nouveau makeover. My own elaborate hairdo and make-up were for a video shoot arranged by Moment Factory, a multi-media installation company based in that city. The idea was to make video projections of me dancing “a La Loie” which will be included as part of the Fête des lumières in Lyon, France this coming December. The projections will be large-scale, so the organizers wanted to make the face and overall effect quite dramatic. Loie herself embodied the spirit of Art Nouveau, so the makeover was period-appropriate. As inspiration, the office wall where I was being “done” was adorned with images of Nouveau-style women: trailing locks of hair adorned, seemingly spontaneously, with garlands of flowers. After three hours in the hands of make-up artist Laurie Deraps, I had abundant hair-extensions, false eyelashes, faux flowers and pearls artfully arranged in around my hair and face. Looking in the mirror, I saw myself transformed into a fantasy from another century.

I was invited along with seven Time Lapse Dancers to participate in the opening ceremonies of the Champions League T20 international cricket tournament in Bangalore, India. We were just one of the acts which included appearances by the singers Chaka Kahn, Shaggy and Jamelia, as well as (among others) the daredevil-kung-fu Shaolin monks,  four male acrobats, about hundred Indian youths forming lotus flower formations, a laser light show and fireworks.

So what does it feel like to perform for so many people? Certainly I had nerves before hand, but once we were out there I felt strangely calm and alone. Because the arena is so vast–over 100 meters in diameter–I was far away from the fans. And, as I stood on a small platform apart from the rest of the company, I was literally in my own isolated sphere. This was violated only by the over-eager camera man whose head collided with my sticks several times during the spinning sequences.

Once our first number was over, we had the fun of watching the rest of the show from the arena. The finale, which we never rehearsed with the actual music, was an improvised free-for-all with the entire ensemble. Such a glorious moment, whirling under fireworks as the crowd roared, enjoying the spectacle and anticipating the game to come.

The music is Quentin Chiappetta’s percussion-only “click-track” version of “Anitra’s Dance” from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite. Lighting is by David Ferri. Recorded at Vassar College, August 8, 2009

Choreography means making decisions. As a dance takes shape, I always have mixed feelings — excitement for the new work, of course, but also a sense of loss for all the possible dances I could have made in its place. (I especially miss the one that I had to describe with great detail in funding proposals a year in advance of its making.)

I usually console myself for the loss of un-actualized choreography (i.e. the alternate assemblages of material or all the cool moves that just don’t fit in) with “there’s always next time.” For my new piece, Forms of Dilemma, I’m letting myself make “next time” part of the process.

I just spent the past two weeks in a creative residency at Vassar College, working on version “A” of Forms of Dilemma. For this incarnation, I set the movement to Grieg’s outrageously melodic Peer Gynt Suite.

For version “B” of Forms, I plan to re-work the vocabulary for students at Barnard College in the Fall. This time, though, composer Quentin Chiappetta (my long-term collaborator) has promised to “mess” with the music. Already, he’s created percussion “click tracks” which follow the exact rhythmic structure of the original, but are bereft of melody and orchestral instrumentation.

I’ve heard that the quicker you make a decision the happier you are with the outcome. i.e. if you fully weigh every option, you get attached to possibilities which you must inevitably reject. (Think of “the bachelor” taking a whole season to pick his fiancee — he might end up with his favorite, but he’s gonna miss all the other ladies too.) I have to say having made version “A” in the span of two weeks, I’m rather pleased with the outcome. And am also thrilled to be able to say yes to more possibilities with “B” (and maybe “C”) down the road.