Emory Dance Company Spring 2015: Inside the Choreographer's Mind

It's the final dress rehearsal for the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert "Searchlight"! The dancers and choreographers are all excited to present their hard work as they go through last minute notes and adjustments, and eagerly await opening night!

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Carolyn Whittingham

Senior

Japanese and Anthropology

Since I came into the semester with pretty solid ideas about my music choices, my process has been strongly driven by creating movement to complement the sound I picked. As a result, my choreographic process has operated in a very linear fashion, where I start choreographing from the beginning of a piece of music until I feel like either the musical or movement idea has been exhausted. For inspiration I would sit down and listen to my music, make note of significant rhythmic or qualitative changes and decided which points made sense as entrance or exit cues or when I would incorporate a transition. Therefore my piece currently has very structured, architectural feel to it based on the systematic approach I have taken to choreographing thus far.

​I always knew I wanted to make a darker piece incorporating physically intense and powerful movement. So far I have been fairly faithful to my original intention, and I have been thinking a lot about how to evoke fierceness from my dancers while maintaining emotional detachment. In doing so, I have ended up including some subtle (or maybe not-so-subtle) motifs revolving around power plays, manipulation and violence. So now my new focus is to continue playing with these ideas without wandering too far into the realm of being overly preachy or political.

My greatest challenge has been building confidence and just going for those difficult movements, subversive thematic elements and complex formations. Vetting my ideas through other members of the choreography class and dance teachers and peers has been extremely helpful in encouraging me to be tenacious and try things out before I tell myself that something is impossible. Consequently, my greatest triumphs have been witnessing the successful manifestation of the parts of the piece I was doubtful about. I hope I can continue to confidently proceed with my choreography and put something on stage in April that impact audiences profoundly.
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Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert, Searchlight! Click here for more details. For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website or check out our Facebook page.

Emory Dance Company Spring 2015: Inside the Choreographer's Mind

The programs have been sent to the printer and Searchlight continues to make its way from process to product! Read about what our student choreographers have been working on as they enter into the final stages of their rehearsals!

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James LaRussa

Junior

Dance & Movement Studies, Biology

The concept of my work deals with complete loss of control.  I’m not referring to some sort of intentional, personal manipulation, but rather to the notion of someone losing her perception of self as a result of her devotion to another.  I came into this spring’s choreographic process with little more than this idea of unconscious loss of self-identity.  I don’t have any idea or expectations for where my work is going to end up at this point.  I’m enjoying the choreographic process and trusting that everything will come together the more time we spend with the choreography. 

The women in my work play an instrumental role in contributing their choreographic ideas, allowing us to mold together the quality of movement that I wish my piece to embody in order to reflect my indented concept.  Our first rehearsals together consisted of the dancers choreographing individual solos that they created using a choreographic phrase of mine as a template.  After compiling and molding their choreography, we created duos and trios to establish a backbone that we can build from as we rehearse throughout the semester.  This approach also gave me an idea of where their movement tendencies lie.  The duets and trios employ fluid movement in which the dancers constantly drop their weight into another’s body, establishing total physical dependency.  I plan to continue exploiting this idea of growing dependency leading to loss of self-identity throughout the progression of the piece.

Feedback sessions are always valuable when creating a new work.  Any different opinion brings up new ideas that can sway your vision for the work.  I also absolutely value my dancers’ opinions of the work I’m creating for them.  I do the best I can to create choreography that they enjoy performing but that still challenges their technical abilities.  Furthermore, I’d like to thank my cast for their dedication and support, the other choreographers for their constructive critiques, and George Staib for his choreographic mentoring and advice.  

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Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert, Searchlight! Click here for more details. For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website or check out our Facebook page.

Emory Dance Company Spring 2015: Inside the Choreographer's Mind

Only two weeks stand between now and the premier of Spotlight, Emory Dance Company's Spring Concert! Lights have gone up, costumes are being fitted, and the choreographers are putting the final touches on their works as we head into the last week of rehearsals!

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Loris Takori

Senior

Neuroscience & Behavioral Biology Major, Dance & Movement Studies Minor

I think that I am a very spontaneous mover. Lately I have been finding myself making up bits of phrase work in the elevator as it takes me up to my apartment. Then, when I am in the studio, I will elongate these fragments into actual phrases. I think this shaped my work because it set me up to think in a non-linear way. I don't necessarily have a story I am trying to tell or phrases that build off of themselves; but rather, distinct sections of material that I am having to put together in some way.

Currently, I am working with the idea of "overcoming." I think everyone is so set and ready to put forth a facade of 'togetherness' in order to navigate successfully in their day to day interactions. I am interested in what happens when you are forced to break that barrier within yourself for whatever reason. Each of my dancers was told that this piece was about "the struggle" and I wanted them to have their own interpretation of that in the beginning stages of the work. Now that we are a little further into the process, I will ask them to get more specific with their motivation behind the movement. The questions will now ask them to define the theme of my movement, : Are you struggling to prove a point? Are you trying to win an argument with yourself or someone else? Do you want to overcome an insecurity or self-doubt?

My hope is that this probing will allow the dancers to connect more to the material and bring forth a sincerity and expressiveness in their movement--without which, my piece's theme will not be able to thrive.
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Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert, Searchlight! Click here for more details. For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website or check out our Facebook page.

Emory Dance Company Spring 2015: Inside the Choreographer's Mind

Now that we're in April, the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert: Searchlight is just around the corner! With only two weeks until the beginning of tech rehearsals, our choreographers are beginning to bring their pieces to a close and starting to fine tune their works!

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Elyse Schupak

Junior

Business

I began this process with the concept of sentimentality, the idea of recalling moments of the past that are filled with meaning, but are nearly impossible to communicate to someone who wasn't there. I have taken on the challenge of trying to communicate some of my own deeply personal memories through choreography and I have called upon my dancers to do the same. Central to this idea are personal connections and relationships. Fond memories are often so, not because of the time or place or important event experienced, but because of the people or person the moment was shared with. Translating all of these ideas into movement has presented so many questions and challenges already, but I look forward to finding as many answers as I can.

The choreographic process started for me in a logical way. I created phrases in chronological order, and in true Type A form I came into each rehearsal with a typed out agenda. But as rehearsals progressed, it became clear that in order to explore the emotional themes I was interested in, I would need to relinquish some control. I started allowing myself to improvise more and encouraged the dancers to discover movement and ideas with one another. I am not used to letting go in this way, but the movement my dancers have created has been so impressive and so important in making the piece something personal for all of us. As the semester progresses, I am trying to value the process as much as the final product. I have the opportunity to take ideas that have been swirling around in my head for so long and turn them into something real. What an incredibly rare opportunity!

Looking forward and thinking about seeing my piece on stage in front of an audience is exciting and extraordinarily scary. I told my dancers in our first rehearsal that I want to make someone in the audience cry (and my mom doesn't count). Although I wasn't totally serious when I said this, I do believe in the sentiment. I want the audience, or at least someone in the audience, to feel an emotional connection to the piece, to the dancers, or to the choreography.  Emotional connection is what engages me in dance and I would love to offer this to someone else.

As we get closer and closer to performance time, I am excited to see how it all comes together. I am also incredibly excited to see how the work of my peers continues to develop and progress. This choreographic process has been a community endeavor and I can’t wait to see what myself and my fellow choreographers produce!

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Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert, Searchlight! Click here for more details. For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website or check out our Facebook page.

Emory Dance Company Spring 2015: Inside the Choreographer's Mind

The Emory Dance Company Spring Concert is only one month away! As the choreographers have begun to find endings for their works, they have also discovered a title for the concert: Searchlight.

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Briana Keith

Senior

Anthropology & Human Biology Major, Dance & Movement Studies Minor

My creative process all started with a simple poem I wrote a summer ago. I entitled my poem, “Dream” because it discusses how I have battled the constant stress of being visually impaired and using glasses and contacts as crutches in my life. 
The poem continues on about the perception of reality and how life is not black or white, just grey. 

This poem encouraged me to create a piece of movement and place it on bodies other than my own. In this piece, I work through the constant battle of looking at life as black and white even though everything can be a blur, almost grey in a sense. Grey is a mixture of the good and bad, the right and wrong and the true and false. Grey represents the answers to many questions we have for ourselves like, “What is our true purpose in life?” “Why am I here?” “What should I do?” There is hardly ever a clear or right answer. Sometimes it is a mixture and maybe the answer is not an answer in itself. In this piece, I have incorporated the poem along with my dancer’s perspective on life and their daily struggles, like waking up and not being able to see clearly. I want to attempt to answer the big question of, “What is reality?” and through movement show how we perceive movements and gestures, through seeing, hearing, observing and grabbing hold of life itself.

Through this process, I have had the pleasure of receiving feedback from the other choreographers and our professor, George Staib. The feedback has not only helped my piece grow, but has also humbled me as a choreographer. Watching my piece over and over can often times numb my eyes to what is actually being perceived on stage. After each feedback session, I take a step back and review each piece of constructive criticism, advice and approval of my work and rework my piece bit by bit. For me, the creative process never ends and I guess I will only stop changing and reworking my piece on the opening night of the show.
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Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert, Searchlight! Click here for more details. For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website or check out our Facebook page.

Emory Dance Company Spring 2015: Inside the Choreographer's Mind

Emory Dance has returned from Spring Break and is back in the rehearsal process! While we are glad that all of our dancers and choreographers were able to get some rest, we are so thrilled to have them all back in the studio and moving.

Let's find out what our next choreographer has been working on this semester and learn about what has inspired them!

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Lauren Lindeen

Photo Credit: Lori Teague

Junior

Dance & Movement Studies and Psychology Double Major

This semester, I began my movement research by exploring the different aspects surrounding human connectivity through movement- What creates distance/closeness? Why do some relationships blossom while others falter? I think that communication is one of the largest factors that influences human relationships, so I began my process by asking my dancers to explore communication and connect/disconnect within their own lives.

One of the first choreographic methods I employed was asking my dancers to create two phrases centered around the idea of communication. The first task was to create a phrase expressing “what they would say to the world at large”. A few weeks later, I asked them to compose a phrase embodying “what they would like to say to an individual”. As I began to incorporate my dancers’ source work into my own phrase material, I noticed a distinct difference between the two tasks. While the “world at large” phrases felt very open and outwardly directed, the “individual” phrases reflected a level of deeper intimacy and introversion.

Noticing this difference lead me to reflect on the difference between interpersonal and “extrapersonal” relationships and how these identities affect the self. Is the individual defined by internal or external factors? The abstract or concrete? What exactly causes the disconnect between who we are and what we are? What forms the barrier between what we say and what others hear? Bearing these questions in mind, I seek to explore “the space between” human connectivity through movement from both a macroscopic and a microscopic perspective of human relationships.
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Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert! Click here for more details. For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website or check out our Facebook page.

Emory Dance Company Spring 2015: Inside the Choreographer's Mind

Ah, it's that time of year again. The midterms are flowing, dreams of Spring Break are soon to become reality, and the nine students of the Choreography II class are composing relentlessly as they prepare for the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert! 

We're halfway through the semester and the choreographers are well into their creative processes. Over the next few weeks they will share with us the challenges and rewards of making a new work, as well as their inspirations and aspirations for their pieces.

Let's find out what our first student-choreographer has been up to in the studio!

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Mary Rose Branch

Senior

NBB Major, Dance & Movement Studies Minor

My piece this spring consists of four separate duets. I was originally inspired by the idea of physical and psychological distance versus connection. Though I can’t say for sure whether this idea will eventually evolve into something else, I am working with an unbelievably talented and creative cast of dancers. I am excited to see where the relationships they develop while working with each other through manipulating various phrases of movement will take the piece. 

I consider myself an experimentalist and I like to approach my work with an open-mind, and try not to wed myself to any ideas or concepts right off the bat. I think that allowing the piece to evolve and go in unexpected directions is one of the most rewarding and exciting aspects of choreographing. My first time choreographing last spring, I was more anxious about trying to find a meaning instead of giving the work time to develop on its own. This time around, I feel much more at ease and confident that everything will fall into place and all come together in the end.
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Don't miss the Emory Dance Company Spring Concert! Click here for more details. For more information on the Emory Dance Program, please go to our website or check out our Facebook page.