CSU Fresno Day 2:

Expressive Movement Processing:
This is a group of students that have just started working together this semester. As I teach them how to dive into their subconscious, a frightening thing for many to do, they readily accept the challenge to learn to be comfortable in the discomfort that can arise when one lets go of conscious control and explores internal motivators. This is seriously frightening for many dancers, yet only by learning to be comfortable letting go of control can a dancer achieve the highest tenets of performance -drawing on multiple resources to disover and portray authentic motivations of the character being portrayed, even when those are outside of one's own comfort zone. In the movement research that we have done, these dancers have turned themselves over to the process and thus the dance -the creation of absolutely original movements that are authentic in their expression of both motion and emotion- has begun to take on a life of it's own.

Partnering:
In a 6 hour rehearsal I took the dancers through the basics of partnering -a course I typically would take 10 weeks to teach. We set some absolutely beautiful, original and creative partnering sections, and developed the basic movement phrases that will be the skeleton of the piece. They quickly established a level of trust that bonded the students as a cohesive group and they responded to my nudges to dive further into the abstract emotional content of the movement without trying to convey anything in specific, but rather allowing the movement to be real and to speak the truth in the way that only the language of the body can. I really enjoyed observing their professor (Kenneth Balint) as he watched the sections of the dance and saw new potentials in the students begin to be realized.

We ate dinner at Professor Balint's house with the department chair and enjoyed creative dialogue and great food, and then returned to the hotel to spend most the night creating the music.

Music:
I had asked the dancers to recall a recurring or vivid dream and during our lunch break I recorded their voices telling the story of their dream. Back at the hotel I created a score that includes sound effects, some beautiful cello music (I love the music of Zoe Keating, and will contact her through a mutual friend to get permission for the use of sections of her work) with effected sections of the voices of the dancers. The result is a vivid, textured soundscape that sets the stage for creating the dance in rehearsal today.

Costumes:
Professor Balint and I went through the costume inventory at the school to find various items that we could put together to create a pedestrian yet unified look for the dancers. We'll try the costumes on them today, then after rehearsal go shopping to fill in the blanks, get some dye and fabric paint. Then tomorrow morning the dancers will meet with me to create the pedestrian yet abstract, dimensional, textured look that I want for this dance.