Gunpowder Mill Dance Rehearsal Preparation and Rehearsal 1

After auditioning and selecting our dancers we then arranged to begin releasing with the two dancers in January after the christmas break as all the Dancers were returning home to other countries over christmas. Unfortunately when we got back and were arranging rehearsals Kat received news that one of the dancers had to pull out due to personal issues. This left us with only one dancer so Kat has spent a lot of time trying to source another dancer to work with however the short notice of the project is making this difficult. While she was trying to source another dancer I prepared for rehearsals none the less as we decided if we still didn't have a dancer by the rehearsal scheduled for Friday 12th January then we would have to start choreography with just one dancer to work with till we found another dancer.

To prepare I went over my research I had completed prior on the themes and looked at more Pina Bausch 's dance style through videos. I then decided to start mipmapping features, assesses and styles of each character in the dance using emotive and stimulating language that the dancer could interpret well:

I highlighted in orange the words which associated to the character at the beginning ad then the starred words as those that appear as the piece/character builds.

I then began thinking into motifs as this seemed like a good way of working so that we can then take these motifs and adapt them once in the location. Here are my ideas:

I then started to think about the structure of the piece/dance and how best to make it move along and develop while approaching the themes well. Here is a rough and basic story outline/structure I wrote out:

I used all these materials to help me organise the dance and help in the rehearsal allowing the dancers to look at these while I talked them through it.

We ended up completing our rehearsal on Friday with only one dancer as Kat still hadn't found another yet. The one dancer we had was Abdel and we had chosen him to play the army/PTSD presence as he was very strong and fitted this role well. We were booked in to rehearse with him for 3 hours however because he had issues with transport so we ended up only having 2. This is how the rehearsal flowed...

We began with Kat showing him some material she really liked on the internet and having a discussion with him about his role with in the piece and the effects of PTSD. Once he was clear with all this I then talked him through the paperwork I had prepared trying to stimulate him as his character with emotive language.

Kat then began by setting a task where she asked him to try and intimidate her  (as if she was the other dancer) through his army figure without touching. We got him to do this several times pushing him and his character further each time. We got him to be slower and more controlled and deliberate like an army presence using control and force to intimidate rather than speed. We also got him to add more jarring sharp moments to again link to his army presence. We then developed this onwards further by asking him to get more animalistic as the task progressed. Eventually we got him to be acting exactly how we wanted the character to be in our piece.

I then began by looking into the beginning and how we can introduce this character successfully. I set the task of having him begin in a corner very small and fragile as if not sure who he is and where he is. I then asked him to start exploring the space coming out of the corner building from low levels to slightly higher. As the task progressed I directed him to try and get him to build from this nothing into his army character. We  repeated this developing it onwards getting hit o express through all his body and adding little army elements like marching at first then into more forceful movements.

We then liked this marching element so much that we started to build a motif solely on this. We asked him to walk back and forward but each time he changed direction we got him to increase his strength and begin marching more and more forcefully. We then got him to approach this same task but tried to get him to think of it as a sudden glitch where he remembers he needs to march suddenly but this then glitches back out again. This approach looked a lot more effective as it made it sharper and more jarring which is what we wanted.

We then began to think about how we can approach some of the interaction between the two dancers. As we only had Abdel here we had Kat stand in the place of the other dancer playing the worker. I came up with the idea that when they first acknowledged one another physically that they should start by doing the same movement parallel to each other almost like a mirror. This would help to link them as characters and also let us see how differently they both complete the movement one being fragile and one being strong. The moment I chose to use was a salute as I felt this was a very good staring indication of the themes of the piece as well as visually interesting. We then used this salute movement to begin some push and pull moments which we choreographed all together which would begin the confrontation but also the emotional journey the two characters take. We completed this short section of interaction and all really liked it.

This was all we managed to complete in the rehearsal however we are very happy as we feel we already have a lot to work with now once we get onto location and pre-light gives us and the dancers time to test all this and create more choreography. Here is a video of the basic marked out moments we created towards the end of rehearsal:

Overall I am very excited to get to pre-light now and begin setting this dance into the location.