Kelli Edwards, 09 CPF, 3rd and final week

The showing on Sunday was extremely helpful. The piece has changed so much since then (it's now Friday) that I can't remember what state it was in when we showed it. I think we still had three separate sections and didn't know how they could be woven together. And we still had music. There is no music now. Once I realized that the dancers could maintain the rhythm in the accumulation section without an outside sound aid, it seemed like adding music on top of what we had would be imposing a meaning that wasn't there. And as Richard pointed out, performing the piece in silence would force the dancers to take full responsibility for the movement and the sound of the piece. Instead of following something, they would be in charge of the whole thing. The process of weaving the material came pretty quickly after the comments on Sunday. It was mostly a question of what the movement through line was and what were the human moments that could be explored. Along those lines, during a conversation with Marisa, one of my dancers, I realized that the dancers for the most part didn't know how to relate to the movement in a meaningful way. So we spent an entire rehearsal exploring the relationships of the dancers by having them talk while they danced. It was a great rehearsal, with everyone laughing and connecting to each other and to the movement. Right now I am playing with keeping some of the talking. I like the way the talking makes them move and I like it as an addition to the sounds that they are making when they dance. In the last section, the trees, I am having them whisper and the effect is very satisfying and interesting. I think I want to keep talking in other certain sections but I don't really want the audience to clearly hear what the dancers are saying so we need to play with volume and what they are saying. The piece has taken on a life of it's own which is very exciting and the dancers are beginning to understand the entirety of their part in it.

Daniel Charon '09 CPF - Week 2

Week two at Summer Stages was eventful. We had a good rhythm to creating the piece as we continued to rehearse. I had to concentrate on staying focused. It’s so easy to settle for something that seems right but doesn’t make sense in the context of the work. I find that it is about stripping away at the movement, often making more subtle choices... always focused on the context and how it fits into the piece as a whole. This is easily said but hard to accomplish. I see the ideas in my mind, imagining the piece and what I will try at the next rehearsal. So often, it doesn’t quite work and I have to keep playing. We shape timing, trying things faster then slower. The material changes. Then it changes again. A solo becomes a trio which becomes a quintet which becomes a solo again. Again, trying to always remember the greater context. I’m at a crossroads in the piece now. A very challenging moment. I think it’s a moment that defines the rest of the piece. I have to make sense of where I’m headed and I have to make sense of making sense about it. I have to earn where I’m headed. There has to be a progression. So I go into tonight with ideas, hopes, and thoughts. I will give it a shot with my focused and ever eager dancers and we’ll see what happens. I thought about skipping to the end but I wonder how I can presume what that will be, having not gotten there. We’ll see what happens, maybe I’ll work on the end!

I also need a title which is always most challenging...

The drama of the week was one of my passionate dancers cracked her chin on the floor and needed a few stitches. She was a trooper and appeared to take it very well. My assistant Meredith handled the situation quite well as I am not the best at those kind of things. Also, the fabulous interns stepped up and took her to the ER. She has already gotten them out and has seemed to move on. It was a good rallying moment I think. Perhaps she will always have a tiny scar that will remind her of her summer at Summerstages and being involved in this piece.

Kelli Edwards, 09 CPF, Week 2

The showing on Sunday afternoon was very helpful and a little excruciating. After a week of rehearsals I had a lot of stuff--messy, disjointed stuff. After helpful feedback I realized that I needed to work on the quality of my movement with the dancers so that I could start to see what they would look like doing it. Up to this point, I had been solely focused on making and manipulating material, waiting to work on quality later. Well, later is now. I took a deeper look at the accumulation phrase. It was either fix it or chuck it and I chose to stick with the challenge of making it work. Taking it down to eight dancers and keeping a strict formation, it is starting to build more gradually and take shape. It is also starting to have a tension that it didn’t have before. I also think I have found some music (Branca, thanks, Richard) that will work nicely with it, propelling the dancers into more visceral energy which it needs. Last night I started to put all of the pieces together into an order. It was helpful to see material strung together but right now it just seems like a string and I want more of a weave. The dancers were excited by the music (Nico Muhly) that I tried with it. I still don’t have a definitive take on the music, but the Muhly was great because it doesn’t dominate but it provides energy and flow and a frame for the dance. We’ll see. I have been wanting to see an image in this piece and just today I began to understand one way to do it. The image is of two people dance partially hidden by trees. I have come up with a gestural phrase that can be performed extremely slowly and I think having all the dancers standing scattered like a forest doing this phrase will be a nice frame for duet material. I feel like this dance is unfolding slowly, that the movement material is leading me down a certain path rather than my choosing a path to take. I discovered a nice moment with Marissa and Mitch in their duet material in which Marissa tries to grab at Mitch’s head while it bobs and I want to find more moments like that, surprising human moments.

Ian Spencer Bell, 09 CPF, Week 2

In rehearsal, my dancers and I listen and watch carefully. We are perfectly still. We practice filling space with color.

Risa Steinberg’s class is beautiful and humbling. I have so much more to learn as a dancer.


One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Kelli Edwards, '09 Choreographers' Project Fellow - Week 1

I have begun this process of making a new piece having absolutely no idea what I’m going to do. I have no music and no idea or theme with which to begin. This is unusual for me, but I’m glad that I am trying something new. I make a phrase on Sunday for the audition. It’s a pretty good audition phrase, a little idiosyncratic but not too hard to pick up, and incorporates a couple of different movement ideas. Monday night was our first rehearsal in the Gym. I make a phrase earlier that day with the sprawling space of the gym, and the depth of our future stage, in mind. It’s an accumulation phrase based on running forward that back, downstage and upstage. It’s not my favorite thing in the world, but it has some nice little nuggets in it and it is somewhat structurally satisfying. So for the first rehearsal we review the audition phrase and I teach them the accumulation phrase. It’s a fair amount of disjointed material. Still no music, but the beginnings of movement ideas have begun to emerge.

I am writing this after the second rehearsal, and a very entertaining one it was. We began by taking the accumulation phrase and extracting all of the running, ending up with a softer, gestural phrase. My assistant, John, and I had worked out a duet based on this new gestural phrase earlier in the day, so we taught most of that. I like it because the two dancers are mostly relating to the audience, even though they are dancing together and in close proximity. The feeling is simple, sensual and intimate, but there is something emotionally disconnected about it. The entertaining part of the rehearsal came next when I asked the dancers to make a movement phrase of their own writing their names with their butts. We played around with this for quite awhile as it was most amusing and interesting. I placed dancers in different groupings based on whether or not their phrase traveled and we tried these groupings with different music. First a Russian tango from the 1930’s, then a 1950’s style all girl Japanese surf band, and finally a Bach cello suite. It’s the 6th suite, my favorite, and I’ve been listening to it consistently for a number of years. It is the music I turn on when I need to lose myself and just move. It worked nicely and I think I will pursue, at least for tomorrow, developing a bigger moving butt phrase to this music.

My third rehearsal is surprisingly productive given that I’ve started to feel sick. My skin hurts and aches are taking over my body. John and I taught the new material and then I started to make a quartet (it may eventually be bigger) based on the slow duet material, layering in two other dancers one at a time. It’s only a beginning but I like it. I am beginning to feel that the music might not work. Because I have started with movement, and it has it’s own value in time and space, it is difficult to fit it to music in a way that makes sense to me. But it is only the third rehearsal. I think for tonight’s rehearsal I will give the dancers more movement assignments and see what they come up with. I have given them quite a bit of material to learn, which they have done quickly, but now I need to watch more and start to play with fitting it together.

Ian Spencer Bell, '09 Choreographers' Project Fellow -- Week 1

I found a couple of hours Wednesday afternoon to feel lost. I was at 51 Walden. I love that space that is like a barn or a church or the Met rehearsal hall. I made a solo.
I feel I must keep busy making work. Alexis, the dancer I work with from New York, keeps me on track. I want to choreograph something beautiful for her and my eight wonderful dancers.
I’ve been reading the Elizabeth Bishop poem posted below. I admire the invention, the color, the language, the opposition, and the sense of space.

Electrical Storm
by Elizabeth Bishop
Dawn an unsympathetic yellow.

Cra-aack!—dry and light.

The house was really struck.

Crack! A tinny sound, like a dropped tumbler.

Tobias jumped in the window, got in bed—
silent, his eyes bleached white, his fur on end.

Personal and spiteful as neighbor's child,

thunder began to bang and bump the roof.

One pink flash;

then hail, the biggest size of artificial pearls.

Dead-white, wax-white, cold—
diplomats' wives' favors

from an old moon party—
they lay in melting windrows

on the red ground until well after sunrise.

We got up to find the wiring fused,

no lights, a smell of saltpetre,

and the telephone dead.



The cat stayed in the warm sheets.

The Lent trees had shed all their petals:

wet, stuck, purple, among the dead-eye pearls.

Daniel Charon '09 Choreographers' Project Fellow - Week 1

I entered this process with some choreographic goals for myself. Mostly, I want to develop new and unique choreographic processes. I'm really eager to not make the same dance every time but to create something that is unique to the moment. Summer Stages offers two integral things that allows me the opportunity to try. The first is the gift of time and space, away from NYC. This gives me mental space to think, write, listen, and work. I have time to walk and bike! Secondly and hugely, is the opportunity to work with such talented and willing dancers. Their creative contribution is immense and really energizes my imagination. They try and trust and seem to have a good time which creates an easy and open environment to explore in. It makes me realize how important art is as we develop in our own lives because this young and amazing group is smart, sensitive, and able to work together. These dancers remind me how important dance is in education and society. No other art relies on one's body as the main tool of exploration. It asks us to consider ourselves both mentally and physically. It pushes us to challenge our boundaries and get in touch with what it's like to be a human being. These young artists will always be made up, in part, by their experience as dancers. They grow into good people because working together to create a piece incorporates many positive life lessons like working together to achieve a common goal, trying to get along, compassion, trust, support, and compromise, among many other things. This is what I've thought about since arriving here in Concord. So, with that being said, we've been in the studio playing games, improvising to get to know each other, learning material, lifting, talking, and working very hard. We pretend we are rocks and play hopscotch, sort of. Everyone has an unique phrase they made up based on a series of words and thoughts. We've also been faced with the demons and delight of locomotion! I've been pleased and frustrated but after only three rehearsals, things are right on schedule. More questions than answers. I guess if all the answers we're laid out in front of me that would take the fun out of it!