The Emory Dance Program Presents: Honors Thesis Concerts

This weekend (March 23rd-March 25th) the Emory Dance Program will present honors theses by seniors, Rosie Ditre, Cherry Fung, Clara Guyton, Julianna Joss, and Eliza Krakower! Theses projects include the explorations of dance on screen, political relationships, poetry, identity expression, and the intersections of dance genres. 

Check out one of our featured theses choreographers, Julianna Joss, as she shares insight on her concept and process!

Photography by: Erin Baker

The Moving Identity: Explorations in the Body’s Capacity for Communication, Expression, and Understanding

By: Julianna Joss

“It’s not what I am, it’s who I am.”  Back in September 2016, during the first official rehearsal of this thesis concert process, I asked my dancers to talk about their identities.  One of my dancers, Alfredo, responded with these simple, yet powerful words.

The process of creating dance about identity began as a daunting and overwhelming task.  Who am I, as a privileged, white-passing woman, to create art about one of the most complex, controversial topics of the human experience?  How could I do this topic any justice?  With so many people creating about this topic right now, how could I possibly add anything original or meaningful?

Photography by: Jake Rosmarin

But with this one sentence about the who rather than the what, I let go.  This process would be about my dancers’ stories and my story.  This discussion about identity would not about categorizing, labeling, and drawing lines in the sand.  Rather, it is deeply personal and unique to each individual, the culmination of experiences, relationships, histories, and values, and I would find my humble voice in this conversation by honoring that and simply that.  I conducted my research on movement and identity in two separate branches: a four-part group piece exploring individual identity, relationships between identities, and group identity, in addition to a solo I created based on my personal identity. 

           

Photography by: Jake Rosmarin

The process of working with my five wildly talented, bold, and intelligent dancers, Ruchi, Hannah, Sara, Ben, and Alfredo, was highly collaborative. While this may be “my” thesis, I firmly believe that the group piece, To Be Seen, belongs to all of us equitably.  My method is I would give my dancers a prompt or an idea to work with and they would create movement, by themselves, in duets, or in larger groups.  “Create four movements that suggest ‘affirmation,’ such as ‘following’ or ‘noticing’ actions.”  “Find a moment of protest within your solo movement.”  Then I would massage and finesse the material usually by asking dancers to indulge or expand upon certain ideas or clarify intentions.  Organically, our process yielded dozens of snippets of movement moments and it was my job to look at this material and find the connections, themes, and patterns.  And the mystery of the creative process somehow revealed itself.  In the final weeks of my rehearsal process, I started to understand how I could tell this story – the story of five humans in four, interconnected parts. 

Photography by: Erin Baker

The most challenging part of my thesis process was creating my solo, The Space Between.  Ironically, in dealing with the complexity of myself, the best tactic was simplicity.  I used all my choreographic tools, clearly, but directly – proximity, repetition, focus, gesture, dynamic, and use of space.  However, within this functional framework, I have found the emotion, feeling, and uniquely personal nature of self.  I discovered a woman who exposes, who reveals, who touches, but also a woman who wrestles, who fights, and who struggles. 

The words that come to mind as I close my reflection on movement and identity are witness and nuance. 

Photography by: Jake Rosmarin

Witness. We are who we are because of how we relate to one other; how we see one another and bear witness to each other’s lives.

Nuance.  We are complex, the space we individually occupy between all our identities is what makes us, uniquely us.

The Emory Dance Program Presents: Honors Thesis Concerts

Next weekend (March 23rd-March 25th) the Emory Dance Program will present honors theses by seniors, Rosie Ditre, Cherry Fung, Clara Guyton, Julianna Joss, and Eliza Krakower! Theses projects include the explorations of dance on screen, political relationships, poetry, identity expression, and the intersections of dance genres.

Check out one of our featured theses choreographers, Clara Guyton, as she shares insight on her concept and process!

Whispered Conversations: The Act of Making via Translation between Poetry and Dance 

By Clara Guyton

I can never tell

if I am a dancer who loves poetry

or a poet who loves to dance.

In my Junior spring at Emory, I took a class called “Poetry via Translation”. The professer would hand us a poem in another language and ask us to translate it. During these exercises, I created poetry I didn’t even know I had inside of me, using tools that called upon all of my senses. The process of translating the poems reminded me of how I choreograph on myself in the studio — the sometimes (seemingly) imposible task of transmitting what MUST be expressed to the physical body with succint clarity while not sacrificing emotion.

I realized the concept that the poem is the vehicle through which an idea or emotion or memory or thought or exclamation (etc.) is carried IS what a dancer is to the dance. A dancer’s body is the poem while the movement vocabulary is the idea, together evoking through performance the essence of the work (or world).

And so…I began my work on this project. This project that explores and challenges the boundaries of bold translation between the mediums of dance and poetry. This project that has shaped me as much as I have shaped it. This project that I am so grateful to nourish and share.

My process in the studio has always included writing. I usually carry about 6-7 books with me (usually poetry and NOT for class) to bring to the studio. About 4 of these books are often old and current journals.

(I like to call upon memories, for I believe that we cannot understand

what we are trying to say before we understand what we have said.)

In addition to researching these old journals and reading the poetry I brought, I write every rehearsal. I always leave time before or after each rehearsal to write about whatever came to mind during time in the studio, allowing me to inscribe what intellectual process occurred in conjunction with the physical experience.

It is a very private, personal process for me. Which may be why I prefer to choreograph for myself, on myself (at this moment in time).

 

Though my process in the studio is private, I think about my work in public very often. Outside of the studio, I (surprise!) write. I write in different sites that relate to the poem I am working with or I write a letter to the person I think of when I read the poem. I also scavenge for poems that relate to the poem I am working with, inundating myself with various perspectives of the same thought.

I really just bury myself in poetry when I make dance.

And I bathe in every lavish minute of it.

Some excerpts from journal entries in the studio:

(August 2016)

the ghost of what is not

            at the end of time {forever one step ahead of you}.

(September 2016)

You had written something illegible of the grieving rake,

             the secret one,

that grapples for an edge somewhere in the soft fleshy walls of your most

raw

need.                                                                                                   

(October 2016)

i said hello instead and scattered passion like seeds on the snow.

(December 2016)

every ending is broken

every ending lingers

*all photography provided by Clara Guyton*

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