week eight, creative development - session 2

This week I both created more choreography and developed my movement from last week, as I realised that if I am going to complete my piece before the deadline, it will be useful for me to refine and polish my work as I go along. Recently, I have struggled with having the pressure of a small time limit to choreograph my piece and this has led me to feel the need to rush into making decisions, which I am then unhappy with and eventually change later on in this session. To overcome this, I recorded what I had choreographed halfway through the lesson, rather than at the end, so I could identify areas that I didn't like whilst I still had time to change or develop them. This means that next week I will be able to choreograph much more of my piece, instead of spending time developing my work from the previous session.

Since researching into my stimulus further, I have had more inspiration for my movement development. For example, I have thought about the 'voices' and 'shadows' that I read about in an anonymous account further (Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder), which has led me to incorporate the repetition of tapping my head in different places, symbolising the different identities and voices always appearing in the affected person's mind. To recreate the idea of identities being shadows, I have included walks in a circle with my head looking back in the other direction, to allude to the feeling of being followed or watched and constantly trapped and connected to the disorder.

I have also rewatched Crystal Pite's 'Flight Pattern' (Dance piece #1) in order to gain inspiration from her artistic style and qualities within her movement. From this I noticed a lot of expansive port de bras and deep, resisted use of plie and so I have aimed to include this expressive movement with my own work. To incorporate this, I improvised to my music with this broad and emotive style in mind and filmed it to see which elements were successful and would be worthwhile including in my choreography. This has also allowed me to experiment with another element of Crystal Pite’s choreographic process, which is listening to her music to gain inspiration. By improvising, I naturally picked out highlights from the music and altered my execution based on the dynamics of the music. This was challenging for me to truly let go and not worry about how my movement looked, however I overcame this by moving away from the mirrors and focusing on how I felt, rather than how I looked. This was different to my process in creative session one, where all my movements were decided with a purpose and adjectives in mind.  Here is the video of some of my improvisation:

I also incorporated this way of moving into the choreography that I developed from the first session, which can be seen in the video below. This has been a beneficial process for my choreography because I have developed a series of movements which reflect the attempt to escape, be free and dissociate from the stressful situation that the affected person is facing.

Links to websites/videos I have used for this post:

In text (Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder) - https://www.sane.org/information-stories/the-sane-blog/my-story/my-life-with-dissociative-identity-disorder

In text (Dance piece #1) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrNfZ6pCn9M