A Dance Bursary Working Diary

Welcome to Fixed Motion, a blog exploring the connections between still photography and contemporary dance. 

This year I was fortunate to receive a bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland which bought me some time to develop some ideas in a studio environment with dancers. This first post will detail the process I developed during the period of the bursary. The Bursary enabled me to spend a couple of weeks researching locations, and compiling a database of images with which to begin the choreographic process, combined with studio time working myself to begin some movement research to then take into studio with the dancers.

I was then able to have two weeks with the dancers, divided up between studio and location time.

Week One:

Dancers: Megan Kennedy and Karen Gleeson.

I had decided that we would be working around a theme of 'Lost Things'; I had a series of images of things that had been lost or discarded in the street, which we were to use as initial sources for generating movement material. My idea was to begin with the specific, a lost shoe, an old enamel bath rusting in the woods, a wheelchair standing alone on a driveway, and from these extrapolate up to more general, emotion-driven ideas of loss: lost love, lost freedom, the loss of innocence. 

A selection of the 'seed' images

We began by selecting images from the series that provoked a strong personal reaction in us, and then writing some text based on those images. I then extracted sections of the text that we used as the basis for generating some initial movement material, selecting words and phrases that gave some kind of physical impulse or directive. We took this idea a stage further: we created a visual alphabet by labelling each of the images with a letter from the alphabet.We then selected a phrase from the text, and 'spelled' it out with the images that corresponded to the letters in the phrase, and then created a long phrase of material using those selected images in the order that they occured in the phrase.

This process was repeated several times and we found it to be a useful and demanding means of generating some fairly complex initial material with which we could begin to work. What I particularly liked about it was that it was intellectually and emotionally engaging, so that the dancers were constantly having to think and question and feel; in this way, it became less about the material generated, with the emphasis moving from the external to the internal, so that the body and it's activity became a vehicle for the thought process and the emotional landscape assumed a greater importance than the choreography itself. We began, quite naturally, to work from the inside, out instead of the other way around.

Some of the original text

The next stage was to develop the material further, working it into duets, cutting up the phrases and re-assembling them in other orders etc. We also began a process of improvising based around significant elements in the text. One particular example was a couple of phrases that we cut from the text and put together: 'grasping palm, shielded eyes'. This was a strong, clear physical signifier, and became an important building block in the improvisations through the whole process.

On the second day of working, we took the material generated from day 1 on location, to a Bagots Hutton, a wine bar on South William Street. They have a network of 200 year-old wine cellars that are wonderfully atmospheric, and the proprietors, Giovanni and Brian are enthusiastic about allowing artists to utilise this amazing space. It was, from a photographic perspective, extremely challenging: There is a complete absence of light in the cellars: underground, no windows, no electricity! The cellar tunnels are also narrow, with little space in which to position a light. But this is exactly the kind of environment I love working in; by embracing the limitations engendered by the space, a certain creative freedom can be found.

We brought the material generated in the studio into the cellars and continued developing it in the space, allowing the limitations and opportunities of the environment to influence the choreography, in particular focusing on the resonances the cellars provoked in us to inform the development of the movement vocabulary. We also continued to develop the improvisations we had been working on in the studio, experimenting with the constraints of the space and being sensitive to the ways in which the environment could develop the improv into new directions. 

Images from the first location shoot

Once we were back in the studio, I brought in a selection of the images from the cellar shoot and we began to use these as 'seed' images for the generation of further material. In particular, I was looking at the images for movement impulses and emotional cues, focusing especially on the dynamic present in the image between the two dancers and taking that dynamic as the basis for further exploration.

This could take the form of building structured improvisations directed by an emotional or physical aspect from an image, or applying the resonances from the image to already generated material. 

We also began experimenting with introducing prints of some of the images into the movement material. Sometimes these were used as physical props in the material, or as 'markers' delineating a map or pattern on the floor. 

At this point, we also began introducing spoken word into the material; using the images as the starting point for improvised spoken text in the performance of the movement, either as literal description of the image or reciting a story provoked by the image. 

The introduction of voice was a significant turning point in the process. I felt that when the dancers began to speak, it took their focus away from the body, from the choreography and freed them from the emphasis on doing things well or getting things right. It shifted their attention from the outside to the in, to their thoughts and feelings and breath and consequently the material took on a deeper layer of truth.

On the Friday of this week we had our second location shoot, this time in St. Anne's Park, Clontarf. As with the first shoot, it brought it's own technical issues as it was a miraculously sunny morning, which was great for keeping the dancers warm but not so great from a photographic perspective. We were working for much of the time  under cover of trees, which meant that we were mostly in shadow but with odd patches of dazzling sunlight scattered through the scene.

We brought the further developed material into this new environment and again looked to find ways that the location challenged the choreography to move in unexpected directions. We also worked with the structured improvisations, incorporating the voice-work explorations.

It was clear that the process that was developing was becoming increasingly circular; the initial images had provoked a response in text which had lead to the generation of movement material. This material was then influenced and changed by the location in which we shot. These new images were then provoking further textual, vocal and movement development, before this was in turn further developed by exposure to a new environment, which would result in another series of images. The process was satisfyingly symmetrical and seemed to be feeding into itself with layer upon layer of meaning and resonance.

Images from the second location shoot

The Friday of the first week was the last day that I would be working with Karen and Megan as neither of them was available for the second week. This was going to be quite a challenge, as by this stage we had developed quite an involved process with it's own internal logic and consistencies and I had concerns as to how starting again with two new dancers would work, given that I wanted to develop the process  further rather than simply starting again.

Week two was also the period when we would be really focusing on looking at ways to integrate the images that had been created during the process into the material as performance elements in their own right.

Footage of Week 2 process