03 June 2013

Unofficial Choreography Month - Debrief

And so ends another thirty-one days of my life (and when the heck did it become freaking June? We seriously just had Christmas!).

In terms of quantity, Unofficial Choreography Month was a dismal failure. Out of the five songs on the list, only two of them actually got choreographed. But believe me, it wasn't laziness. I lost a week to strep throat (and the accompanying Tylenol haze that I needed to be in in order to even sip water), plus performance season is extra loaded this year, meaning extra rehearsing. And, of course, there was this little matter of staging my own choreography in that showcase a couple weeks back...

But in terms of quality, it was quite satisfactory. As much as I hated actually working on Youth With A Machine, I have to admit the dance that came out of that was very cool. It was a lot less restrained by my ballet training (more honest-to-goodness jazz), but still technically dazzling. It's a very 'tight' dance too -- lots of quick canon work (which is why it took FOREVER to notate). I don't think there's a wasted count in this dance. It's pretty hardcore.

Future Now -- I love how this thing turned out. Going in, I was a little bit terrified... see, I had this idea of having four dancers at the back of the stage following the beat, and then two other dancers in front of them following the lyrics. I didn't anticipate much trouble with the lyrical pair, but I was seriously concerned that the line of four at the back would either look stupid or not really have anything to do. But it worked beautifully. I even managed to work in some concepts from Prodigal's original music video.

The line-at-the-back-following-the-beat thing was actually sort of a 'test run' -- I want to use the same idea for the Swirling Eddies song The Twist (which had been in the top eight for the month's playlist), but since Future Now was a slightly smaller scale, I decided to try it with that one first. Now that I know it's doable, choreography for The Twist may not be too far into the future...

What's next? Actually, I don't know yet. Sanctuary is still a very viable possibility. During April, when I was supposed to be writing a novel and leaving the choreography till May, I came up with about half the dance (each) for A Sigh For You, Shadow Catcher, and Memory Lane (all Daniel Amos). I've had a good chunk of White Heart's Raging Of The Moon already in my head and sketched out on basic notepaper for quite a while now, but not notated. Same also with White Heart's Let The Kingdom Come. In addition, I've been listening to Terry Scott Taylor's Changeless quite a lot lately, and it captivates my kinesthetic imagination more every time I hear it. And Strong Points, Weak Points (also DA) is half-composed.

I guess it depends on if I feel I can take on a mammoth project after pushing myself so hard through Unofficial Choreography Month (all but two of those dances I mentioned above have eight or more people). If so, any one of those is in the running, but if I decide I want to take it easy for a week or two, I'll probably be doing Changeless.

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