Learning from the Master: Noa Wertheim

Noa Wertheim (center) teaching class. Photo Credit: Lori Teauge

On Saturday October 18, Emory Dance had the honor of hosting a master class taught by Noa Wertheim, founder and artistic director of Israel based Vertigo Dance Company!

Emory sophomore and dance student Emma Neish attended class and now shares with us what she learned from her encounter with Noa. 


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I have so much respect for the talented individuals who not only make art, but also incorporate it into their life. Noa’s movement and teaching immediately identified her as one of those gifted artists. 

Photo Credit: Lori Teague

In the span of a short morning class she helped me identify patterns in my dancing and aspects of my movement that I typically return to. While familiar movement can create a personal style, it can also be limiting. She first showed us how to continue with a movement. Instead of creating a snapshot image, we created a video. We began with a slow shift of weight and felt how one movement connects to another. Her movement felt very deliberate and grounded. She emphasized connectivity within the body, around the body, and between the body and the floor. By simply refocusing attention to my feet, core and the floor, I was much more stable- a key element in not only her movement but all dance. We continued with leaning and rolling, trying to make the movements feel effortless. Noa showed us that movement is simply weight transfer and if you can master and control your body in relation to gravity, the movement becomes “effortless”. 

Her advice resonated with me because after an hour of experimenting with weight transfer, rolling and falling I felt a new ease to my dancing. The feeling of effortlessness in dance is freeing and this inspired new movement and experimentation. Her suggestion to continue with a movement became clearer and instead of returning to my familiar affinities, I began to push the limits of weight transfer and balance. 

This class definitely inspired "aha!" moments and improved my self-awareness, creativity, and attention to connectivity.  ​
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What great insight!

For information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website or check out our Facebook page.

Restaging, Reflecting: Bebe Miller's "Prey"

Bebe Miller and the cast of "Prey"

This semester, Emory University students had the honor of restaging Bebe Miller's "Prey"! In a joint intensive with Agnes Scott College, students first learned the work from a Labanotation score, and later had the privilege of working with Bebe Miller herself! 

Emory University sophomore and dance major Talia Gergely took a moment to share her thoughts on the restaging process with us, as well as some of the wise words Miller left with her.

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Working with Bebe Miller was an experience beyond what I could have expected. I also loved collaborating with Agnes Scott Dancers. I always enjoy working with new dancers and these dancers contributed such a loving and supportive energy to the rehearsal process. In the work, 

Prey, I perform a duet with dancer Diarra Web, from Agnes Scott College. Considering the fact that I was working with someone I have never met nor danced with before, we had a really great experience moving together. The one thing we did have in common was the mutual language of dance and sharing weight. Like Bebe said, "you may not know who you are dancing with, but you know how much they weigh".

A small portion of the Labanotation score for "Prey"

Learning from a Laban Score was also a new experience for me, but I enjoyed it! Every question that came up in rehearsal had an answer that could be found in the Laban notation, and as Bebe said, the Laban notation should also be helpful in a way that it includes the intention behind the movement, more than just the gesture or physical shape of the body. The purpose of notating a work is to record the intention and essence of the piece, which, as Bebe said, is stronger than a video.

Talia Gergely rehearsing

Bebe reminded us that when we move it is important to distinguish the energy behind movement as opposed to simply placing the movement in the space. In her Creativity Conversation, Bebe stated that her inspiration comes from "an unexpected moment of beauty" and "moments that become artful and 3-dimensional are what make life worth living for".

Overall, I found so much depth in this three day intensive with Bebe Miller and I appreciated how she encouraged us to be more grounded and connected within ourselves and with the dancers around us.

I'm so excited to perform this work at both Agnes Scott College and Emory University!

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Thank you, Talia!

For information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website or check out our Facebook page.

EDC Spring 2014: A Few Words from our Choreographers (Part 9)

It's finally here! The Emory Dance Company spring concert, Pluto's Renaissance, is finally here!  We've also come to the end of our journey exploring the choreographic processes of our nine student-choreographers. Here is our last choreographer, discussing the inspirations, processes, and aspirations for his piece.

James LaRussa, Sophomore

The title of my work, Involuntary, spawned from my thoughts, experiences, and exposure to emotional manipulations.  Throughout my choreographic process of this work, I brainstormed different ways, reasons, and effects of emotional manipulation and control.  The movement in Involuntary explores the physical and mental effects of someone’s state of mind and self-control, becoming overtaken and misused by another.  Often times the victim of such control theft fails to realize what is happening until some tragic experience opens her eyes to the realization.  Other times if the victim sees the negative direction of the situation, what kind of heartbreak or betrayal will this individual experience after such intense deception, and how will she recover from living as a victim of dishonesty and deception?  Throughout the work, I experimented with different ways to embody these feelings and how to evoke an emotional reaction from the audience. 

I am rehearsing with 8 women regularly who embody the choreography and physically devote themselves to the movement.  I find it important for my dancers to connect emotionally with the movement, so that they may better evoke the emotional depravity of the work.  This spring I have been choreographing around this main vision; however, I highly value my dancers’ input and choreographic techniques as well.  Often times, the dancers and I collaborate on different movements and effort qualities, adding admired variance to the work.  Because of how devoted my dancers have been throughout the semester, I haven’t found any major challenges or obstacles that halted my flow during my choreographic experience, which I am greatly thankful for. 

I value the feedback sessions I attend every week as equally as I value my dancers’ dedication to the movement I create.  Watching the developing processes of the other choreographers allows me to remain aware of possible ways I can develop my own choreography.  During these feedback sessions, I also receive student and professional feedback on my created movements.  I highly value my peers and professors’ opinions and recommendations of my work and in what direction they see it moving.  I do my best to incorporate everyone’s critiques and to constantly reevaluate my work to produce a mature piece of art.  I’d like to give a final thank you to my cast for all your hard work and dedication, as well as a thank you to my fellow choreographers and professors who helped guide me toward my finished product.

Thanks, James!

Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Showcase.  Click here for more details.

For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website.

EDC Spring 2014: A Few Words from our Choreographers (Part 8)

This is it: only two more weeks until the premier of "Pluto's Renaissance," the Emory Dance Company's spring showcase! Our nine student-choreographers are setting the final touches and preparing to bring the Emory community an amazing show! Let's continue our journey into the processes of our student-choreographers and hear what they have to say about their works for "Pluto's Renaissance." 



Sarah Beach, Junior

I began my work with the notion that I wanted to explore the concept of nostalgia, particularly when one thinks of a happy memory that brings a feeling of sadness because it's over. I like the contrast between the two, and from that idea created a phrase of choreography. I tried to incorporate many level changes while maintaining flow with abrupt accents.  Upon watching my dancers perform this bit of choreography in rehearsal, my thoughts for the piece completely shifted. It was like watching the waves of the sea shift and crash and flow and fall. 

This image influenced the rest of my piece and took it to a completely different place than I initially intended. From there on out, I thought of other images related to the ocean: waves gently rising on the shore, the soft rocking of a boat on the water, riptides silently but aggressively pulling something under, or the morning fog that slowly rolls in on a bay. I used those as inspiration for my choreographic choices, both movement-wise and spatially. The sinusoidal motion of the dancers is largely representative of the movement and depth of tides. 

When trying to decide on a title for my piece, I asked my dancers how they felt while performing it. My dancers are so incredibly talented (and patient!) and I love hearing their feedback and opinions, especially when I've hit choreographer's block. One responded that she felt as if she was wandering, as if she was reliving a memory. This lead me to realize that even when I thought I had completely left my initial idea behind, it still lingered in the undercurrents of the piece I ended up creating. This lead me to the word adrift, which worked for both the ocean imagery, the feeling of wandering through a memory, and it added a sense of buoyancy. 

I'm so grateful for all the incredible resources that we have access to through the Emory Dance Program, such as professional lighting designers, costume makers, and seasoned choreographers who offer valuable feedback.  They've allowed me to create a piece that fulfills my vision, something I never thought i would have the opportunity to. Most of all, I'm thankful for my five beautiful, intelligent, and talented dancers, who all work so hard to get everything right and deal with my insane analogies, like "egg-rocks" and "hatching kelp creatures." I'm so excited to see it on stage so soon!


Thanks, Sarah!

Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Showcase.  Click here for more details.

For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website.

EDC Spring 2014: A Few Words from our Choreographers (Part 7)

This is it: only a few more weeks until the premier of "Pluto's Renaissance", the Emory Dance Company's spring showcase! Our nine choreographers are refining their pieces, their works coming to conclusion, but we still have a few more to hear from. Let's delve deeper into the processes of our choreographers and gain some insight as to what they'll present in "Pluto's Renaissance".  

Lu Arechiga, Senior

My choreographic process is very jumbled: there’s an array of ideas that intrigue me that I want to incorporate. Incorporate, not highlight—I don’t want any idea but the main one to dominate the others. With that being said, it’s been a struggle to try and discretely incorporate everything and stay focused on that dominant idea. In the incorporation of multiple ideas I’d like to think that my main concept has morphed rather than shifted.  Rather than portraying something fun and jumbled with a performance mind set, it has shifted to setting something on stage that doesn't belong there while still performing. I want to have a party on stage that disregards the audience for the most part and let’s them just sit back and experience a “dance” in the wrong context.

I often create movement I really like and then try to manipulate it to fit in with the rest of the piece. Even though I like my choreography it is a challenge to translate it onto other dancer’s bodies. For example, I know I have to articulate my movement super clearly because poor phrasing creates entirely different choreography. Sometimes I inspire movement within my dancers that brings out their individuality and sometimes I just modify their ideas or use them as inspiration to fit them better into what I want. My dancers have collaborated and created sections of movement together that I manipulated to intertwine with mine. My dancers have had the greatest influence on the piece by expressing their individuality and highlighting their own personal movement quirks.

The feedback sessions during the Choreography II class have helped me stay focused on my goal by making me realize what I definitely don’t want even when I’m not sure of what I do want. These sessions have also made me realize that you can’t please everyone with the final product, so the main purpose is to please yourself.  My cast is great though, a little too gentle for my taste at times, but I think rehearsal is always fun! When it comes down to it, I trust my dancers will perform how I want them too because they trust me to put it all together and create a really abstractly enjoyable piece that comments on stereotypes I hope to convey!

Thanks, Lu!

Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Showcase.  Click here for more details.

For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website.

EDC Spring 2014: A Few Words from our Choreographers (Part 6)

As we rapidly approach the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert, we have the opportunity to hear from more of our student choreographers about their works in progress. They will give us some insight to their choreographic process by detailing their challenges, triumphs, and aspirations for their pieces. 

Mary Rose, Junior

This semester, I have strayed away from my typically science-heavy course load and have immersed myself in the arts. While choreographing for the Emory Dance Company spring concert and dancing in other choreographers’ works, I am also taking History of Western Concert Dance, choreography II (required for first time EDC choreographers), and modern IV with George Staib. I think that being immersed in the dance world has helped me generate many ideas for my piece and hone my choreographic process.

My experience choreographing has been full of surprises. My biggest struggle so far has probably been generating too many ideas and needing to narrow my focus. The feedback I am receiving from the Emory dance faculty and eight other choreographers has helped remind me to keep the focus of my piece clear and allow my ideas to fully develop.

I am working with a cast of three very talented and hard-working dancers. Unfortunately, I lost my fourth wonderful dancer to an injury a couple of weeks ago, but I wish her a speedy recovery, so she can come back to dance in the fall! Due to this change in the size of my cast—I have found that working with three dancers is spatially and conceptually much different than working with four—I've been struggling to solidify a concept for my piece. At the moment, I am inspired by idea of relationships and interactions between the different elements (energies) in nature. This is a relatively new idea, so I’m curious to see how it will evolve.  Though I’m not married to the concept of different elements in nature, I know that I want to highlight each of my dancers’ natural movement affinities. I love the way that each member of my cast has her own strength and energy that she brings to the choreography. Hannah moves with a sense of quiet strength; her movements have a soft, breathy quality, but can also be very powerful and sharp. Julia turns with a sense of seamless fluidity. Movement flows continuously through her body; even when she’s still you can sense that something inside her is still growing. Julianna is a firecracker. She’s full of spirit and has no fear when it comes to taking risks and trying new things. I didn't want to suppress these unique strengths. Instead of trying to teach each of my dancers to evoke the choreography in the same way that I do, I want to celebrate their individual movement qualities. 

Thanks, Mary Rose!

Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Showcase.  Click here for more details.

For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website.

EDC Spring 2014: A Few Words from our Choreographers (Part 5)

As we rapidly approach the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert, we have the opportunity to hear from more of our student choreographers about their works in progress. They will give us some insight to their choreographic process by detailing their challenges, triumphs, and aspirations for their pieces. 

Nathalie Angel, Senior

The inspiration for this piece I’m working on came after I had sprained my ankle badly and ended up on crutches for two weeks. In the weeks that followed I found myself on the phone for hours trying to reach the billing department at the hospital, the insurance company, the doctor’s office etc. It was frustrating being put on hold one call after the other and being subjected to listen to awful call waiting music, which really only made the wait worse. This piece is investigating these everyday, mundane situations where we are forced to wait. I initially also wanted to experiment with the concept of weight itself through using contact improvisation as a choreographic tool, so this may (or may not) be incorporated along the way.

 

Working with a small cast of four has been extremely rewarding in that we have really been able to have meaningful exchanges during rehearsal. My dancers are eager to learn and embody the movement, which I really appreciate! When movement isn’t working they are also great problem solvers and give a plethora of suggestions on what we can do instead. Each of my dancers has a unique movement style and I want to give them the opportunity to contribute to my piece. At our last rehearsal they each manipulated a phrase using different choreographic tools, which we will work on piecing together to create a duet and two solos. 

 

The greatest challenge in the development of my piece has been trying to figure out the message I want to convey and how to go about expressing that. I have many ideas and trying to narrow them down has been difficult. Additionally, since this piece will provide commentary on everyday situations, such as awkward elevator rides, I’m trying to find ways to balance pedestrian movement and theatrics. I have no background or previous experience in theater so it is path I’m hesitant to go down, however I do acknowledge that it may very well assist my piece.

 

The feedback sessions with other choreographers have been extremely helpful in providing possible future directions for this work. Moreover, living inside the piece, my dancers and I know where we are coming from and what we want to convey. At the same time we are not always the best at evaluating if our message is getting across. Being able to share my choreographic process with my peers and fellow choreographers has been extremely helpful in this regard and I am very grateful for their honest feedback and commentary.

It has been very interesting to witness how this piece has morphed, which is very different from what I had imagined it to be at the beginning of the semester. I'm excited to keep working on this with my dancers and to see the final product in April!

Thanks, Nathalie!

Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Showcase.  Click here for more details.

For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website.

EDC Spring 2014: A Few Words from our Choreographers (Part 4)

As we rapidly approach the Emory Dance Company Showcase, we have the opportunity to hear from more of our student choreographers about their works in progress. They will give us some insight to their choreographic process by detailing their challenges, triumphs, and aspirations for their pieces. 

Kevin Huang, Senior

This choreographic project was originally inspired by the word ‘plunge’. I began by creating a core phrase based on imagery related to the word plunge, including the phrase ‘taking the plunge’, water imagery from ‘plunging into water’, and the suction mechanisms of toilet plungers. I then asked my dancers to manipulate the movement with different dynamic and spatial qualities to create additional material and to add structure to my piece.

As we create and manipulate movement, the piece is beginning to drift away from this original idea of plunging. Nevertheless, traces of this idea still run through the piece and perhaps only time will inform whether or not this project takes on a completely different image.

I have previously choreographed solo material, but have, until now, never set choreography on other dancers. Thus, my biggest challenge for this project was putting movement together in a way that made sense to the audience and gave the piece some kind of structure. Feedback from the other choreographers was especially helpful in this regard, as they were able to pinpoint specific things that enhanced and detracted from the feel of the work. Finding music has also been a challenge. Nevertheless, these challenges have made this process very rewarding and I am incredibly excited to keep developing this work with my amazing cast and alongside the other awesome choreographers!

Love,

Kevin

Thanks, Kevin!

Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Showcase.  Click here for more details.

For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website.

EDC Spring 2014: A Few Words from our Choreographers (Part 3)

What makes spring so special for the Emory Dance Program is that the works featured in the Emory Dance Company spring showcase are created by the students of the Choreography II class.  As the semester progresses, we'll hear from each of our nine choreographers about their processes, challenges, triumphs, and aspirations for their pieces. 

Sarah Freeman, Junior

I've been coming up with possible themes and inspirations for this piece since I decided I wanted to choreograph for EDC last year, so there have been some pretty crazy ideas bouncing around in my head. (I did eventually abandon the Land Before Time direction, luckily.) What really intrigues me in this piece is the boundary of when an object or an idea is ready to discard: is it used up, is it boring, is it just too much to handle? Through movement, and with a lot of everyday props, I want to examine that tension between value and trash.

I chose dancers who I thought were creative and brave as well as technically skilled, because in this piece it’s important for them to make their own decisions about how long or in what manner to continue a phrase or gesture. Or do they just feel like walking offstage? What I love about dance is that almost anything possible is within the realm of possibility in this microcosm of a theater, and the most interesting choreography to me is the most surprising. Sometimes I worry we have a little too much fun in rehearsal, but I think it's just the joy of taking risks and being unafraid to try something completely off the wall that puts us in such a good mood. And some of my ideas are definitely ridiculous, which occasionally works, but more often means we just crack up and throw it away...hey, see what I did there?

My biggest challenge is definitely going to be honing down all of the scattered images and phrases I keep coming up with into a cohesive and clear, but also wacky and unpredictable piece of work. As a writer and English major I am constantly editing and condensing my writing, but it's so much harder to do in dance when there are other people embracing and jumping in to the insane directions you throw at them. This is an amazing opportunity for me as a student to have access to professional quality theater space, music arrangement, costume production, lighting and sound...The list of resources goes on forever and I want to take advantage of the chance to produce a multi-dimensional and challenging piece of artwork. I am enjoying every moment of this process, because I know that when the show is over, when we've used it up, there's no choice but to just let it go. And that's the best part of creating choreography to me!

Thanks, Sarah!

Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Showcase.  Click here for more details.

For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website.

EDC Spring 2014: A Few Words from our Choreographers (Part 2)

What makes spring so special for the Emory Dance Program is that the works featured in the Emory Dance Company spring showcase are created by the students of the Choreography II class.  As the semester progresses, we'll hear from each of our nine choreographers about their processes, challenges, triumphs, and aspirations for their pieces. 

Luna Vorster, Senior

My choreographic process has been rather eclectic. I drew inspiration from Wikipedia articles, finding descriptions and verbs that interested me. I then used this text to create movement, sometimes trying to stay as literal as possible and other times working creatively so that the movements barely show their origin. The topics ranged from describing the coloration of birds to mathematical equations that map 2D into 3D. A common thread is that the articles all aimed at describing how things in the universe work. This has informed the ideas in the piece, but I am trying to allow the piece to evolve organically, rather than force it to fit these concepts.

I created a few core phrases based on these descriptions, and my dancers have been manipulating them and drawing new ideas from them. I have a cast of six enthusiastic dancers who are willing to try my wacky ideas and contribute many of their own. The piece has definitely evolved into a collaborative work, and my dancers have taken the movement and morphed it into a series of interesting duets and trios. I have also taken some of the material they have manipulated, and used their new ideas to create further phrases. This exploration of the material is exciting for me, and I am grateful to have such a creative group of individuals to work with.

I am also incredibly lucky to be collaborating with my brother, Jean-Luc, who is creating the musical score for this work. He’s taken the same Wikipedia articles and is turning those ideas into a musical piece that will accompany my choreography.

My greatest challenge in this piece is to take these phrases and images that my dancers and I have created and assemble them into a cohesive work. We are currently playing with transition material and ordering the piece a hundred different ways. The feedback sessions are key to working through these challenges. George Staib (the course instructor) and the other choreographers all notice something different about the piece, and their comments help me understand what is working and what parts may need further attention. I’ve noticed that while developing the piece, I get so invested in particular aspects that I neglect to see other things. The feedback sessions help me see my piece through the eyes of others and point out the parts that I overlook.

I love working collaboratively so I’m excited to have a cast and group of fellow choreographers who are all willing to provide input and share their ideas. I’m excited to see how all these ideas come together in the final production.

Thanks, Luna!

Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Showcase.  Click here for more details.

For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website.

EDC Spring 2014: A Few Words from our Choreographers (Part 1)

What makes spring so special for the Emory Dance Program is that the works featured in the Emory Dance Company spring showcase are created by the students of the Choreography II class.  As the semester progresses, we'll hear from each of our nine choreographers about their processes, challenges, triumphs, and aspirations for their pieces.  

Natalie Eggert, Junior

I was hesitant to take on my first choreographic project. Creating an entire piece intimidated me; maybe it still does. But with every rehearsal, I gain more confidence in my choreography, my ideas, and the direction of the piece. Since this is my first choreographic project, I came into it with an open mind. I have discovered that letting the piece develop organically is much better than trying to fit it into certain expectations. I believe my most successful rehearsals have been the ones in which I go on a tangent unrelated to what I had planned for the day. I have decided not to prescribe how the piece should look; I want it to decide for itself. One of my peers referred to my choreography as “a series of pleasant surprises.” Believe me, no one is more surprised than I am when I watch the movement I created transform into something unexpected.

I was also lucky enough to snag the best cast. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to make a duet. I was thrilled when Kim and Sarah signed up for my piece! The chemistry between these two is so tangible,they are a really playful duo and I always look forward to rehearsing with them. I believe that if they enjoy the dance, the audience will, too. I hope that the piece keeps the audience on their toes. I like that moments take the viewer by surprise and then in a flash are gone.

I was not prepared to feel so personally attached to this work. Showing my choreography to other people has been my biggest challenge thus far. I remember one day before modern class, I saw Kim and Sarah running through my phrase material. Most choreographers would be grateful to see their dancers practicing but I turned bright red. I think it was that feeling little kids get when they see their parents kiss in public. It’s like “stop doing that you’re embarrassing me!” Emily Hammond, a senior at Emory who choreographed for EDC last year caught onto my reaction and reassured me that choreographing is a vulnerable experience for everyone. However, as time goes on I feel more comfortable showing my work in progress to others, especially the other choreographers. I now look forward to the showings because their feedback always gives me a new perspective. Watching my piece develop has been really exciting and I can’t wait to see the final product in April.

 Thanks, Natalie!

Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Showcase.  Click here for more details.

For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website.