Digital Echoes - Resource Ideas
Preparing for and being at the Digital Echoes symposium gave me the opportunity to consider my research so far in to my own practice, through critical reflection and documentation, and how this might provide ideas for the DECO resource.
So much of the impetus for the project was my frustration with existing texts and resources on choreographic practice that either focus on the specific processes or practices of a particular artist, or generic processes and methodologies (more in project information here). I decided to consider the flip side of this to begin considering the form and content of the DECO resource – what texts or resources exist that I find useful in terms of choreographic practice? The answers in terms of my practice are Jonathan Burrows A Choreographer’s Handbook (2011) and Twyla Tharps’ The Creative Habit (2007). Both texts approach practice from a (semi) philosophical standpoint, and don’t try to dictate a way of working but rather provide advice and questions/tasks for reflection.
A Choreographer’s Handbook is frustrating to students because Burrows’ refuses to offer fixed answers or solutions to problems – in his section on habits, for examples, he encourages readers to be aware of what their habit are, and to make a conscious choice either to work with them or against them (Burrows, 2011: 7). The overall ethos of the text is that there are multiple ways of working, and that there is no ‘right way’. In the epilogue to the text, he asks readers to ‘forget all this’ and not to work too consciously with the ideas presented in the book. To do so would mean a regurgitation, he says ‘[w]hen you have forgotten these ideas they will have become yours and ready to use.’ (Burrows, 2011: 209) Find the usefulness in the text when it is not regurgitation – when it is a considered response to a situation in your own practice.
Tharp’s tome deals with creativity more generally rather then choreographic practice specifically, and provides a variety of different reflections and practical strategies for working creatively – including how to ‘scratch’ for ideas and how to deal with creative blocks. I blogged about the text last summer on my website, focusing in part on insecurities and vulnerabilities of making creative work. I found her own questioning of the value of her work hugely comforting – even the most prolific and experienced choreographers are scared. Some of the practical strategies for collecting ideas and inspirations, of establishing rituals of practice, were also hugely beneficial and have informed development of my won practice this year.
The qualities I want the DECO resource to reflect are to:
• Provide advice and guidance
• Contain reflection on what it means to make choreographic work and to have a practice
• To present multiple options and strategies So…to content. I want nuggets of material from texts such as those by Burrows and Tharp (appropriately referenced), and I am already beginning to collate some of these on the project blog. In terms of other content, I have begun a list of ‘ideas’ for posts and/or content sections…
• You can learn from dancing in other people’s work – pay attention to how you are asked to engage to what you are asked to engage with, as this gives you more insight in to process. Don’t just copy and mimic other people’s working processes, consider the purpose or why they are used. • Make material that challenges you and your dancers.
• When approaching structuring your work - don’t imagine, do. You have to try things out to see if they work, and to see possibilities. Try multiple options.
• Identify how you move and how to engage with your dancers with/in this.
• Identify the skills needed to engage in your practice (identifying how you move will help here) and how to facilitate your dancers skill development or engagement. In making Fall and Swell, I paid little attention to improvisation skills, as the work contained no improvisation. However, the skills involved in improvising were crucial to the performance of the work. William Forsythe and improvisation technologies is a well established example from professional practice.
• Watch your dancers as they dance and make, observe how they learn and problem solve – this will help you help them to navigate your work.
• Present options for structuring and patterning based on Matt’s blog post – but be clear about the use of these for particularly performative or thematic purposes, not as a get out of a) making a volume of (interesting) material or b) for the sake of it.
I also want to be clear about Matt’s influence on the resource, through his mentorship of me as an artist. The presence of DanceUoN needs to be clear in the resource, and that it is a reflection of the innovative work we do here in terms of choreographic practice and blended learning.