25 January 2016

Day Twenty-Five - What Is The Measure...?

Just finished the choreography for Steve Taylor's brilliant What Is The Measure Of Your Success?

This is a pretty emotional song. I found myself almost crying as I choreographed the ending. It's so haunting and hopeless. Taylor very much gets his point across, and it hurts a little more each time I hear it. Because the nature of creating choreography requires that I listen to the same section of the song repeatedly to get the vision and then to solidify the timing, I don't just hear the climax two or three times, it's more like two hundred times, each one on the heels of the other. And every time that final verse left me a little more tight in the chest.

I think my own choreography is part of that strong emotional response in myself. I'd long imagined this as a trio and I've had the blocking in my head for years. As usual, all I needed were the specific steps.

The trio is comprised of the first-person verse narrator -- a businessman, and two others who are equal parts bodyguards, henchmen, Greek chorus, and greedy young executives eyeing this businessman's power and wealth. The choreography is really simple, and that was intentional. It's loud, repetitive, and monotonous, which also happens to be my personal view of the business world. The two dancers move in perfect sync throughout, at once commenting and conniving, while the businessman displays his prowess at the front of the triangle -- until he realises that although he has gained the world, he is losing his soul. And then the sinister side of the other two comes out as they simply continue dancing, not noticing or caring about the hole that is left. It's just another businessman who lived and died in a dog-eat-dog world and no-one misses him. It's a lot like how Ebenezer Scrooge's end would have been if not for the fantastic events of that Christmas Eve.

And maybe what hurts is that the businessman in the middle, flaunting his skill and the heights to which he has risen, is me.

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