Notation and Life...

I haven't notated any dance in a while. I haven't worked in any big pieces in a very long time.

This used to eat every spare second of my day. I would put off chores to notate. At work I would spend every second of downtime solidifying sequences in my head so I could notate them as soon as I got home. There was something thrilling about mixing little symbols together to create a record of a dance. It was beautiful, in a way.

But now, as I move into my mid-twenties and real life -- rent, food, counselling, training -- demands more money, I have to start either going somewhere with this or drop it and pursue something that does. And it's VERY apparent my original idea of putting together a dance company is not going to happen as soon as I hoped. I had hoped by now I would have twenty classically trained ballerinas at my disposal so I could realise works like Going Home, A Song In The Night, Rainbows, or even Sanctuary.

Unfortunately, I have only have one dancer -- me. And she's not even flexible. Strong, sure, but 'flexible' is on some other planet. Also, I choreograph WAY more complex turns than she is actually capable of.

So I've been doing tap solos because that's at least attainable in the here and now. I can make those into film projects and gather a bit of a following without the ability to developpé my leg up to my ear. (Well, I can as long as I can find a cameraperson...)

I'm trying to finish Elle G because it's been in my head for YEARS and it looks so beautiful in there, but I can't because I need to focus my time and energy on projects that have even a tiny hope of being seen. Elle G is for twenty-one (good) pointe dancers. That may not ever happen in my lifetime. So why bother creating this dance?

I don't know. I really don't know.

These are the things that discourage me.

A Rare Bug, A Dance With Excitement, And A Choreography Update

So after several years of sleeping an average of five hours a night and subsisting primarily on nachos and salsa, my body finally hit panic mode and crashed.

I've known for a while that something needed to change, but [insert excuse here]. To boil it down, I was probably just too lazy to change. I liked my routine, and I was sort of... proud, I guess?... of being able to pull off a nice life-like appearance on only five hours of sleep and barely enough calories to keep a dog alive. (And just to be clear, no, I'm not nor have I ever been anorexic... just too busy to make myself real food.) In the past couple of months, with an increased dance workload and the additional stress of a last-minute college application (more on that once I feel better), the boundary I was pushing finally broke and Tuesday morning I woke up with the fires of Hell in my throat.

I'm not kidding. I've had colds and sore throats before, but this thing is the Big Daddy, the sore throat to end all sore throats. Plus it also managed to infect both my ears (during Unofficial National Choreography Month, of course, when I'm supposed to be listening to music every second of the day), and mess up my lungs. There have been a couple slightly terrifying moments over the past couple of days when it felt like the muscles in my ribs forgot how to work and there was a second of panic as I tried to remember how to breathe manually.

I haven't gone to the hospital yet, but if this continues, I just might. I'm kind of trying to avoid it because the dance team's first performance of the season is this Sunday and... wait for it... my choreography is going to be in it!

If I'm healthy enough to perform.

It's a ballet solo (for myself) that I choreographed for the gorgeous White Heart song Eighth Wonder (more about the dance here). If I'm feeling well enough to do it by Sunday, it'll be the first-ever public performance of something I've choreographed. Unfortunately, I kind of need to be in top physical condition to pull it off. I don't know what it is, but no matter how warmed up and well-fed and well-rested I am, I can't seem to make it to the end of that dance without nearly collapsing in a heap of breathless exhaustion. And that was before I got sick.

And since I'm writing anyway, here's a bit of an update on the Unofficial National Choreography Month thing... no, I haven't given up. There's too much stubborn German blood in me to give up. Plus, I actually managed to choreograph the Guitar Solo From Hell (mostly), and was thus finally able to finish the never-ending two minutes and forty-five seconds that make up Youth With A Machine. (Just to be clear, the label Guitar Solo From Hell is purely from a choreographer's standpoint. From a music lover's perspective, it's a pretty stinking good solo. But it's almost impossible to choreograph.) The bad news is that it was Day Twelve by the time I finally finished the thing and I still had three more dances to do (four if we're still counting Going Public).

So I plunged into Future Now (which really, really needs to show up on iTunes already so I can tell you in detail how freaking amazing this song is). It's supposed to be a jazz dance for six, but it somehow became very balletic. This amuses me, because seriously, listen to the link. Does anything about it suggest ballet to you?

But despite having the fires of Hell burning in my throat and threatening to blow out my eardrums (at least that's what it feels like), I've somehow managed to choreograph up to the second chorus of that one. I'm having a lot of fun writing this one, and I think it's turning out really well. Or maybe I'm suffering delusions due to illness.

What's scaring me a little bit is what's to come: Fade Into You and Sanctuary. I actually don't know the song Fade Into You all that well (it's a more recent addition to my collection), and I'm starting to worry that I won't have enough inspiration for it. I plan on doing that one next. And what scares me about Sanctuary is the fact that it's nearly six minutes long and I'm going to have to notate eight people for the thing. If Youth With A Machine -- half the length with half the dancers -- took me twelve days, how long is Sanctuary going to drag on?

So, there's your HUGE, once-every-couple-months post about my life and stuff that interests probably less people than I think it does. See you tomorrow for Music Day -- provided I'm not in the hospital...

Closer To The Dream...

Yesterday I showed the skeleton of the Eighth Wonder choreography to the 'head' of the dance team (there's two of them. I just realised this makes a really weird mental picture. Moving on...).

She seemed to quite like the choreography (I was actually pleasantly surprised at such an enthusiastic reaction), which was a huge weight off my shoulders -- a weight that I didn't even realise was there. I'd never really showed a decent contiguous chunk of my choreography to anyone, except the other head of the dance team back when Eighth Wonder was only a week old (she also had a favourable reaction, but the choreography at the time was rather disjointed because it was still so new even to me and I felt she didn't get a very accurate picture of it). To get such a favourable reaction to the sequencing and progression of it was actually kind of startling to me. I was definitely expecting something along the lines of 'bo-ring!'

That said, my technique sucks. I mean, I knew that already, but still. Part of it was sheer exhaustion -- what was in my head a slow gentle ballet is apparently in actual practice a full-on cardiac workout with oxygen deprivation provided free of charge. Either this dance takes way more effort than it should or I need to buy some stamina somewhere because I was ready to drop halfway through the first run-through.

Also, I definitely nailed my insane-beat-from-attitude-derriere! I had originally put in there forgetting I was supposed to perform this myself, in the very near future, with my limited abilities, and only once I had long since built on it did I realise how insanely complex that move was. Still, lacking any other ideas, I left it in, as a placeholder if nothing else. But today I tried it and I totally nailed it! I just can't believe it's even physically possible, never mind for someone as not-light-and-airy as me. Maybe my stuff isn't completely impossible after all... at least not for everyone.

So I need to work on turnout, being more light and airy, not overturning that one fouette in the second chorus, and not rushing the music (which in turn should help me actually stay on balance). Plus I need to refresh my memory on that part at the end of the second chorus that I couldn't seem to remember for the life of me and I need to figure out what I'm doing with that weird thing that was formerly a standing fouette (choreographed in the same spell of insanity as the beat-from-attitude). And I need to choreograph the last twenty seconds and add some actual arm movements to this thing.

And also, she liked the song. That alone pretty much made my day.

Man... it's really happening. This choreography-stage thing is seriously actually happening. Last year at this time I had only just finished my first-ever piece and now I'm getting (an apparently decent) one staged. Holy cow.

Music Day (Part Two)

This past Tuesday, my friend from dance team texted me and asked if I would be willing to be a co-choreograph/perform a trio to this song.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything earth-shattering. The friend who texted me has a music collection so diverse and eclectic I've given up trying to define it, but the other person in the trio seems to be very much into the current-CCM... stuff. I can't really blame her -- after all, that's all there is unless you're willing to invest some serious time into tracking down some of the older Christian stuff, and before that you have to know it even exists... somewhere.

So I looked the song up on YouTube, bracing myself for a CCM-radio-friendly, mushy-gushy, sappy thing laden with Christian-bookstore clichés. (Seriously, with a title like Arise My Love, what else could it possibly be except a bland song of plastic-happy fake 'encouragement' to all the depressed/suicidal teenage girls out there?)

I did not get a mushy-gushy, sappy thing laden with Christian bookstore clichés.

What I got was this:
Title: Arise My Love
Artist: Newsong
Album: Say Yes
Year: 1987
Label: Word Records
iTunes here; YouTube here (apologies for the crappy sound quality... it sounds way better from iTunes, but you'll get the general idea).

What really sold me on this song was the fact that it includes actual theological concepts. Nothing heavy, mind you, but enough to prove that these guys know what they're talking about -- they're not just cashing in on the 'clean music' cow. They know what actually happened on that cross. They don't take you through it step-by-step in the song (for that, look up Lecrae's fantastic song Truth), but they probably could explain it if you asked them.

It's still not completely earth-shattering -- it's definitely radio-friendly, meaning it's not real musically creative -- but it's pretty, with a nice musical progression, and the sheer passion in the vocal makes up for the potential blandness of the soundtrack. Timeless? Not likely. But a great soundtrack for Easter weekend.

Day One Recap - National Choreography Month

I have some catching up to do...

National Choreography Month (the official one) is in January. Hence, it started the same time 2013 did. And after two weeks of agonising and listening and re-listening and imagining and narrowing down (and trying desperately not to get any more really fantastic ideas), on 11.54 pm on 31 December, I finally had an official setlist:

Climb The Hill -- White Heart (Ballet for two)
Unchain -- White Heart (Faux jazz for three)
Fly Eagle Fly -- White Heart (Ballet for two)
The Dance -- Servant (Faux jazz for six)

This works out to just less than a minute of music per day throughout the month of January -- or just under one dance per week.

So, at approximately midnight, I started work on Climb The Hill. After erasing most of the first page and starting over (I forgot I was choreographing for two people -- not one), I ran into a different problem.

The same rhythm structure that makes the song so breathtaking is a devil to try to count.

I didn't even attempt to count the first fifteen seconds -- it was long synth notes anyway, and the dancers are holding their opening poses throughout, so it didn't really matter.

Then the phrases are as follows (as far as I've gotten): four, three sets of five, seven, another three sets of five, six, eight, seven, two sets of four, and six. Seriously. Yes, they're dancer's counts, but seriously.

Also, that Servant one is freaking me out. I've been wanting to do it for a long time, but two days ago it suddenly hit me... My vision for that thing is full of ripples. I hate notating ripples. It makes my brain hurt. Also, turning. That also makes my brain hurt and I almost always get them wrong the first two or three times. What's more, person-to-person contact. I have never notated person-to-person contact in my life. And I think sizeable portions of the dance are made up of everyone doing something slightly different than everybody else. Meaning I have to notate each person separately -- six times as much work. Not that I can't do that, just it takes up so much more time...

It so freaked me out that I nearly substituted White Heart's Jerusalem at the last minute (hey, that one has a different lead singer!), but after listening to both songs, decided to stick with The Dance. I may or may not wind up regretting my decision...
(I just realised something -- all of those White Heart songs in my official setlist actually do have a different lead singer; they're just all from the Florian era. Jerusalem was from the Scott Douglas White Heart.)
(/music nerd)

However, there are good-scary things happening too. I choreographed David Meece's Early In The Morning and One Small Child in December. Both turned out fantastic -- far and away my best work (to date).

And the same night I was just finishing off the last couple of phrases of One Small Child, my friend from the dance team emailed me, asking if I would be willing to choreograph a ballet solo to round out their setlist.

I was going to say 'of course I will,' then I looked at the papers beside me. One Small Child is a solo. Sure, it's a Christmas song, but it's still a ballet solo. And I already had a dress in mind, one I already owned. Long story short, it looks like One Small Child may get staged in the near future.

Holy cow. Holy cow.
That just started to sink in. Holy cow.

I didn't have any of this a year ago.

Anyway, weird 'what-the-actual-heck-are-you-trying-to-do-here?' rhythms aside, Day One of National Choreography Month produced one minute sixteen seconds of choreography. Not bad. Of course, that was mostly soloist stuff, but it's definitely a nice number to start the month with. Hopefully I can build on that...