thoughts on process from 2010 choreography fellow Ana Isabel Keilson

There is nothing like a lot of time and a lot of people to work with

I am here for three weeks, I have come from New York City with two of my dancers, and while we are we rehearse every day, four hours a day. In the evenings, I am making a new dance for ten dancers—they are from all over—and we rehearse five nights a week for two and a half hours. This is magical time: slow, paced rehearsals that are not rushed, that go on day after day, that develop and crescendo and feed into one another and allow me the consistency to create and make choices.So many different bodies to be with, so many different faces, and voices, and rhythms, so many different ways of being in the studio. In both sets of rehearsals we are crafting vocabularies, sifting through the idea of “casting a spell on the audience,” both as a literal and metaphorical frame for a dance. We spend time casting spells with our bodies, imitating witches, chanting and whispering and singing songs (tonight we 13 made the storm break, lighting struck, we became one giant voice under the rain). I am greedily racing into the studio every day, lost in a forest of physical and intellectual stimulation. The people, the hours, the work has cast a spell on me