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*
No comments:
Post a Comment