National Choreography Month - Day 17

Finally finished Unchain on the 15th. It was supposed to be finished no later than the 14th. My pacing earlier the previous week had indicated that I should have been able to finish on the 11th or 12th. I had the entire ending sketched out on paper by then, all I had to do was notate it. And the 'to notate' list somehow expanded with every passing day, making sure that I never quite got it done that day. Or the next. Or the next. Or the next. It required me to pull a 4.30 am bedtime to finally drag it across the finish line. I do believe it was kicking and screaming a little too.

I can't complain too much though, because I adore that song. And the dance turned out pretty great too.

Actually, I was surprised how long it ended up being, page-wise. I knew it was a five-minute song, but there were only three people in it, and the first verse was mainly solo. Last night I was cataloguing the statistics for all my completed dances (because I'm a nerd and because my notating brain wanted a break). I was quite surprised to find Unchain had 1,675 frames. Even Speechless, that grand five-minute symphony of movement for twelve dancers in their intricate patterns and slightly staggered rhythms, only came out at 1,932 frames. And that wasn't even the biggest number, though the dance is definitely my biggest and most complex to date -- Glory To The King (remember that one?) has a whopping 1,981 frames. It's only four minutes and it has half the dancers Speechless does.

Anyway, back to the actual work being done (or not...).

Right now I'm working on Fly Eagle Fly... just notating the second verse now. I'm officially two full days behind, thanks to the miracle of the endless Unchain. And I am officially freaking out about The Dance now. I had hoped that with that rocking start on Climb The Hill, I would wind up picking up speed with the other two White Heart tracks and thus wind up with an extra three or four days at the end of the month to dedicate to The Dance. Unfortunately this doesn't appear to be the case...

I'm kind of apprehensive about Fly Eagle Fly. For the first time, I have some semblance of a story that the dance is portraying -- well, not so much a story, more like trying to capture a few fleeting moments of connection between two souls (which makes the concept all the more tricky to nail down). But while having a fairly definite pattern to follow is great, the fact that said pattern even exists and I'm not just flying blind and seeing what happens (like I usually do) is unnerving... especially under this timeframe. What if I completely destroy it? What if it doesn't turn out as beautifully as it currently is in my imagination? Will I wind up cutting corners just to get the thing done by the 21st? (Also, apologies for the adjective abuse in those last couple of sentences.)

It's the growing pains of my craft, I guess. Either this will fail horribly, or it will be a huge leap forward in my ability to capture a moment.

Second Piece -- Done

Just knocked You Are The One off my to-do list.

That's two dances finished in just over two weeks. Sing Your Freedom took me ten weeks; You Are The One (from the time I started working on it in earnest after I finished Sing Your Freedom) took me exactly two weeks. Round up to two and a half if you like -- that's probably about all the work I'd put in on it before I finished Sing Your Freedom.

Granted, Sing Your Freedom was far more of a challenge -- the main rhythm (that I followed, anyway) was five beats per measure for the verses, four for the chorus. During the breakdown I actually had one part where half the dancers are working in five-beat measures (following the lead guitar, plus they were dancer's counts*) and the other half are working in eight-beat measures (following the bass guitar) -- simultaneously.

Add to that the fact that it was my first ever piece in BMN and the dance kind of took on a life of its own as I worked on it... honestly, there are steps in there that I don't think I could even perform. (But oh, do they look good on the stage in my mind...)

After such a steep learning curve in Sing Your Freedom, I'm not actually surprised that I cut my composition time down to a fifth. Not only am I far more comfortable with the notation now, You Are The One has half the performers of Sing Your Freedom, plus it's two and a half minutes shorter.

Still, it's a nice feeling to be able to tell myself yes, I can compose an entire dance in two weeks.


*Dancer's counts -- When you count to the music according to the timing of the dance step, not the actual number of beats per measure that would be written on the sheet music. We have one exercise in our ballet class that's actually (from a musician's perspective) in 9/8 time, but we dancers count it as 1-2-3-4-5-6, because that's the timing of the steps.