Dance Film, Part 3

The dance film is done!

I'm most proud of this one so far. This is the first film I've made that actually looked as good as I pictured it in my head while planning.  There are definitely some things I would have liked to do differently (like have the thing properly memorised, and have an extra camera or two for B-roll), but I am also completely content with how this one turned out. It's beautiful to look at and fun to listen to. I think this is one of the first times I feel that I've properly showcased who I am as a choreographer and as a dancer.

This is also the first time I've worked with a separate audio track rather than using the in-camera audio -- well, that's not entirely true, as the audio I used is from my B-roll camera. It was positioned closer to both the taps and the music source so both were louder and the sync was better. I've also noticed that my iPhone 13 Pro (now my primary filming camera) is REALLY LOUD. At first I thought it was interference from my tripod light, but even when I don't use the light, it still makes this loud white noise in the background. The sound from the taps was also extremely dead on this camera -- much more resonant on the B-roll (probably because I had an umbrella behind the B-roll camera shielding it from the drizzle).

So I split the audio track off the B-roll and synced it up with my edits as I went. I'm comfortable with sound editing from years of converting my dad's records on Audacity (and from designing the sound cues for Sottovoce), and I think that actually helped me slog through the hour of footage that I shot for a four-minute dance film.

It's a simple, fun piece, and I think the choreography, the location, and the editing all manage to support that. This isn't big or flashy, and I like that. I'm not a big, flashy person. I feel this piece is the closest I've gotten to displaying my heart and soul on 'stage.' I don't expect this to make me viral or put me on the map or anything, but it's definitely my personal favourite.

Watch it here.

Fade

Originally written 13 February 2022, 12.31pm.

As I near the tenth anniversary of my first completed piece of choreography, I've finally overcome my mental block (college trauma?) enough to choreograph a large group again.

I took a couple of choreography courses last year that, while helpful, kind of freaked me out as I saw only too clearly how big the gap was between the ideal and my actual output. I let those simmer and continued doing solos. I hate choreographing solos and I always have, but in college, when I was trying so desperately to prove myself to literally every director and teacher in the province because none of them could be bothered to see the potential in me, I resorted to solos because they were quick to create, easy to learn, and easy to film. I put out an astonishing amount of solo dance videos because I felt this invisible whip on my back to prove myself, to show that I was, in fact, dedicated and a hard worker (things that I was consistently told throughout college that I was not). Posting myself dancing new choreography every 2-3 days with the difficulty level increasing exponentially each time seemed to be the only way to show anybody that I was actually trying (those words still threaten to take me to a very dark place even as I type them). I got good at choreographing solos as a result, but I missed the complexity, attention to detail, and the sheer elation that goes into choreographing a big group number.

I've since been banned from social media by my in-laws because I'm not happy enough (and yes, I told them about the 'unfollow' button. They figured banning me, a grown adult, from expressing herself was easier and made more sense), so in many ways, I've reverted back to that seventeen-year-old notating reams of pages by hand alone in her bedroom where nobody ever saw some of the brilliant things she came up with because they could not possibly have cared less and she knew it. This has given me time to focus in on unattainably big groups again. After all, if nobody's going to see it, why not lean into the impossibility?

This is actually bringing some level of comfort. At the time that I was choreographing big groups, before college, I had a whole list of songs I loved that I wanted to choreograph to that I simply never got around to. And now I'm revisiting that list.

Frequent readers of this blog (are there even any left or are they all dead?) know that the bigger the song, the more I like it. I love songs filled up with harmonies and '80s keyboards and big drums and deep, big feelings. Songs with one solo (usually mediocre) singer and an acoustic guitar about one's boyfriend are so small and boring. I like songs that take up space, sonically and emotionally. These songs are also usually suited to choreography that also is big and takes up space -- like big group numbers. Many of my very favourite songs in the world either are group numbers I've already choreographed or they've been languishing in the 'big numbers' queue for a very long time.

And currently I'm working on one that in my mind, ranks right up there with Daniel Amos' Sanctuary as 1. one of the best songs of all time, full stop, and 2. one of the first songs I ever wanted to choreograph to.

I've come back to this one off and on over the years, threw out some ideas, dreamscraped, scribbled bits of notation on envelopes and receipts, couldn't find the theme, threw it out, and repeated the whole process several times. Last year it started to really arrest my attention, but I still couldn't find the vibe of the choreography. I knew it was jazz dance, but I couldn't see anything beyond that.

Then one day while biking, I realised that this was going to be an arm-led piece.

I hate arms. They've always been my weak spot as a dancer, and that shows in my choreography. Many times I leave the upper staves of my notation blank or just fill in standard classwork arms because I hate choreographing them so much and spend as little time as possible thinking about them. My choreography is typically very footwork-heavy because my brain just doesn't think in arms. But this time, that was the exact realisation that snapped the piece into focus. I choreographed a four-minute twelve-dancer piece in a week and a half because I focused on the arms rather than the legs.

This is the first large-group piece since Nachmo 2020, and before that the last one was 2016. The 2020 one was tap, which is a very different animal since it's less about formations and lines and more about rhythm and musicality. 2016 was the last soft-shoe large-group dance I've written. That's almost six years ago now. I don't remember much of the 2020 one because my college-trauma-induced memory loss wiped out that period of my life, but the 2016 one is a four and a half minute piece for sixteen people and I choreographed it start-to-finish in eight hours. And I loved every single second of it. There's a level of satisfaction that comes with creating a large group piece that simply does not exist in choreographing solos or duets.

This project brought me so much joy. I was actually sad when I finished it. Of course there was that rush of accomplishment, but I miss the joy of figuring it out. Maybe it's because I know I'm not likely to ever see it performed in real life, so my time with that piece is essentially done for the rest of my life.

At least I can still listen to the song and see it all in my head.

Investing

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have a fixed amount of money and that amount is rapidly diminishing.

I managed to peel the entire front off my vehicle, managed to land an audition with a fee that the company conveniently neglected to mention until I'd already committed to the audition, and probably should get counselling as I spent the last four or five days in a pit of suicidal rage. That will pretty well take care of my savings, and I haven't even paid rent yet.

What really annoys me about this (I realised while ranting into the void), is that I can no longer invest in myself. Self-care for me includes dance class, it includes driving around listening to music, it includes wandering shops, it includes photography, it includes writing, it includes auditioning, it includes counselling, it includes creating things.

But dance class costs money. And I need new tap shoes (again), which costs money.

Gas costs money. Wandering around shops usually costs money because I usually find at least one costume piece. Lord knows film and development cost money and my dear Pentax is in desperate need of service.

With Lila broken, my writing is severely curtailed. If I had an income, I could justify buying another word processor on eBay or something but I have no income so I can't.

Auditioning often requires me doing video auditions, and that requires me having a memory card for my video camera -- mine is full, so I went out and bought another but it turned out to be a piece of trash. A good memory card runs into the $100 range... I cannot justify that in my current financial circumstances. And heaven knows counselling costs money.

I can't create anything. I can't do anything. And as mentioned before, that makes me feel really useless. I want to make dance and writing and photos and art and maybe one day that will be a source of income. But right now I'm in a place where I can't continue with any of that until I can make these investments. But can I really justify these investments when I can barely afford rent and gas to get to rehearsals (I haven't really eaten in a week in order to cut down on food costs). I have no assurance that these investments will actually pay off... out of the literally dozens of auditions I've done so far this year, only two actually cast me (and one was with the school so they kind of had to shove me in somewhere though we all knew the director would rather have gouged out his own eyes than work with me).

I want to do all these things. I want to pursue these things, even though they're mere hobbies at the moment. I want to continue to hone my skills and develop my stage presence. I want to keep auditioning and making dance films and writing novels. I want to get counselling. I want to do and enjoy all of these things. But I can't -- I can't justify spending that kind of money on literally zero income with no assurance of return on my investment.

New Dance Video!

After nearly two full years of work (planning, practicing, shooting, editing), I have finished another tap video, much in the vein of Shades Of Green & Red this past Christmas.

While Green & Red was choreographed in a couple of days, filmed in two hours, and edited in a week, I have had this new one actively in progress since August 2016. Filming alone was five days.

This new project -- Rift -- has more personal meaning to it. The song (which I've discussed before on this blog) deals with emotional abuse, and I created this dance around the time my difficulties with my previous church were worsening. The institution that was supposed to love and care for me, my health, and well-being (emotionally as well as spiritually) was beginning to show their true colours and I did not like what I was seeing. I felt like I had been completely abandoned in my hour of darkness and I was angry. And all of that anger and frustration and loneliness went into this choreography.

From the outset I knew I wanted a stark, dimly-lit set. The fact that it ended up being shot in an old church felt poetic, as the church (as a general institution) makes up a decent chunk of who I'm addressing with this. Though the lighting in the venue was already terrible, I actually deliberately worsened it in post-processing to further create a cold, isolated, abandoned feel.

It's weird to be finished this project. It's consumed my thoughts and planning and practice time and downtime for so long that my life feels a bit empty now that I've released it to the world and don't have to think about it anymore, in any way. In total I probably put in at least a hundred hours on this project between choreographing, rehearsing, location scouting, sound recording, filming, and editing -- not counting all the hours of staring into space daydreaming about what I wanted this to look like and how to achieve that.

On to the next project, I guess... still trying to figure out what that is. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one.

New Video!

After years of dreaming and overplanning, I finally bit the bullet and created a dance video.

I'd actually tried to film this piece last year, but couldn't get the lighting right. I set it on the back burner for school, then work, then school again. At the end of November, my roommate and I had a conversation that inspired me to move ahead and film one of my other overplanned limbo projects. That one proved to be more complicated than I anticipated, plus there were about a thousand other people trying to rent the filming venue at the same time. So I set my sights on something shorter and simpler (and quicker to film). I wanted one video done by the end of 2017. A friend and I cobbled together as many lights as we could find and shot this in about forty-five minutes the Wednesday before Christmas break. I edited it in the week between my return home and Christmas.

Here it is: https://youtu.be/27qAVyz8B7k

Enjoy!

Choreography Ramblings

13 December 2017, 5.46pm.

That thirty-day choreography challenge has been SO good for me. I am in a MUCH better place mentally and emotionally right now, and I have momentum and motivation for at least one aspect of my creative life (my writing is still pretty dead in the water -- one of the reasons I haven't posted here much lately). I'm starting to tiptoe into the next phase of my choreographic dream... I don't want to get into too much detail until I'm in the final stages of this phase.

This is probably the phase of this whole dream that intimidates me the most. It's the phase where I have to start getting other people involved. For someone like me, who has spent her whole life trying to be independent, trying not to be a nuisance, trying not to need other people for even a few seconds, it goes completely against over a decade and a half of self-discipline even just to ask if my friends would be willing to help with this. I feel more vulnerable asking my friends for help than I do filming myself doing brand-new (raw and unedited) choreography on my phone and then posting it all over social media.

I've already been planning National Choreography Month in January. I am more excited for this thing this year than any other year I've done it. I blame the thirty-day challenge last month for that. Usually for Nachmo (that's what it's called...) I do something like, 'choreograph X number of dances this month.' This January I was going to modify that to 'thirty-two (or sixty-four) counts per day,' but having just done that this November, I want something a little more challenging than that. I haven't settled on exactly what that looks like yet, but I have a few viable ideas.

The other problem is I don't do a lot of solo choreography. Most of the music that inspires me is more suited for groups (or at least two or three people). I used up everything that inspired any kind of solo dance in November for the challenge. So now if I want to show off anything I choreograph, I'm going to need to find other dancers. This terrifies me, for the same reasons mentioned above -- I hate imposing on people, to the point where I will go without if it means I don't ask anything of anyone. People have such busy lives now that asking for a mere ten seconds of their time is often intimidating -- never mind days or weeks.

Dancing At The Edge Of Time And Memory

23 November 2015, 12.08am.

On Sunday we got a call that my grandpa -- already in frail health -- has been diagnosed with a superbug.

He may die.

Apparently the last couple of weeks he's been talking about how he's so exhausted and how he just wants to sleep and not have to wake up.

At first I took this news fairly resolutely -- he's been ill for several years now and it's always kind of in the back of one's mind... this Christmas could be the last.

But then suddenly I remembered that he's been asking for months for my sisters and I to come and do a dance performance in the nursing home where he lives now. I didn't have anything prepared and I wanted to wait until I actually had several pieces in a danceable state. And then life happened and I forgot. When I remembered today that I had said I would -- and especially how he's been looking forward to it -- I cried as if my heart would break. What if we don't get it together in time? What if he never gets to see us dance? He's been so excited to see us dance and I haven't given it to him yet. And maybe now it's too late.

Plus, there's this matter of living on the edge of time, knowing it's coming but not knowing exactly when, walking on pins and needles, knowing he can't live forever but not ready to live without him yet. And what do you say to a person who's close to death? With the three deaths earlier this year, I had no warning, no time to say anything I might have wanted to say. They were just taken and I had to live with the fallout. But now I have the chance to say anything I want -- but I don't know yet. And the stupid thing is, I probably won't know what -- if anything -- I have to say to him until after it's too late.

I do this all the time. Going to the doctor is an exercise in frustration because I have a whole big list of questions going into the appointment but when they ask if I have any questions, every single one of those questions is completely gone. And I don't remember until I get home and start coughing again and go, oh yeah -- I cough until I can't breathe for nearly a full minute. Is that a problem? Same at the bank -- "Do you have any other banking?" "I DON'T KNOW MY BRAIN DOESN'T WORK WHEN I'M IN A PROFESSIONAL BUILDING." And it terrifies me that I'm going to think of something I wanted very badly to say to him two minutes after he dies. And then I'll hate myself for the rest of my life because this time I actually had the chance to put a sentence together and I didn't because I totally forgot every word in the English language and what if that was something he really needed to hear?

30 December 2015, 12.52am.

Against all sanity, I arranged this performance. Yes, over Christmas. Yes, despite not having rehearsal space. No, I have no idea what the floor is actually like in the performing space. No, neither dance piece is really in great shape. We perform in fourteen hours.

I'm so done with everything. I had set aside today for rehearsing, particularly my solo, which I have yet to do full-out all the way through (also I remembered that I still HATE solos). Instead, I have spent thirteen hours going over the house with a fine-toothed comb looking for the power cord for my video camera.

This may not seem like a big deal, but the fact is that if I want to get into the performing arts, I will eventually need a portfolio of my previous work. In dance, that's video footage. This performance will be particularly valuable as it will be me performing my own choreography -- that counts double. It shows both my skill as a dancer (don't laugh) and my style of choreography. This doesn't even include the educational factor for me -- if I have footage of myself performing my own work that I can review later, it will provide invaluable feedback on what worked and what didn't and I can use that information to refine what I do and how I do it.

Except, of course, I can't use the video camera because it can't be charged because I can't find the stupid power cord.

So as a result of this fruitless search I am now frustrated beyond words, I haven't practiced at all, I've lost an entire day of my life that could have been productive, and I still don't have a useable video camera. To buy a new cord for my perfectly good and now utterly useless six hundred dollar camera? $125. For the cord.

My grandpa had better enjoy this show. He's going to be the only one lucky enough to see it.

Music Day (Part One)

I had a different song planned for today, but at the Good Friday church service this morning, they showed this video.

It completely wrecked me.

Seriously, go watch it. You will almost certainly end up in tears, but please, go watch it. It will stretch your brain like it has never been stretched before. Go ahead. This post will still be here when you're done.

Watched it? Good.

I don't know how much you know about what happened that day, so I'll try to explain it a little. Then the video might make more sense -- in its crazy seemingly-backwards way.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In six literal days. (I know most people refuse to believe that, but then again, you could believe all you want that grass is orange and that wouldn't make it true. I'm not going to get into the debate here because it'll detract from the point I'm making.)

This God is a powerful God -- think about it. He spoke and the entire freaking universe showed up. We can't even find the end of this universe, and God holds it all in the palm of His hand (you know what that means? We can't even measure the span of God's palm, never mind God Himself. That's how big He is). This God is a holy God -- perfect in every way, even ways our brains can't even think about. This God is unchangeable -- He has been and always will be the same. And this God is a just God -- crimes against His holy law (based, by the way, on His own perfection) are punished justly.

And the just punishment is death.

God made us so we could bask in Him. But rather than basking in Him, we spat in His face. We continue to deliberately and repeatedly break His law (as laid out in Exodus chapter 20 -- commonly referred to as the Ten Commandments). So we are now under the death sentence. This death is worse than anything else imaginable -- complete and eternal separation from God (and that is what actual Hell is). We will have no access to Him. The momentary pain of physical death is nothing compared to being completely cut off from the source of beauty and meaning and purpose and everything wonderful (namely, God).

But... God is also a God of love and grace. He forgives.

But how can a unchanging and flawlessly just God just up and forgive somebody? The crime has been committed and the guilty party must pay. If God were to just turn a blind eye to it, He would no longer be just and He would no longer be unchangeable. God would then be weak and worthless.

He is forgiving. That cannot change. He is just. That cannot change.

Now what?

Somebody had to pay. So God fathered a baby (Jesus) who had a human mother (Mary). Because the holy unchanging God was Jesus' father (rather than a human father who automatically carries the sin nature), Jesus was completely untainted by sin. And Jesus was going to pay the price for the crimes of we the humans so God could then legally be able to forgive us while still serving perfect justice -- after all, the price would then be paid.

And the price was separation from God. So God, the Father, and Jesus, the Son, would have to be separated. Understand that they had been together for eternity past, up until that point. Father and Son had never, ever been separated.

But when Jesus was in His early thirties, around the year 30 A.D. they were separated for the first time. Whenever we humans have trouble here on Earth, we can always call out to God. We know He hears us. But on the day when Jesus' entire weight hung on a cross, supported only by three measly nails, after He had spent all night being shuffled back and forth as a political pawn in a sham trial and beaten and mocked multiple times, after all His friends on earth had abandoned Him, He could not call out to God. God would not listen to Him. In fact, God was pouring out all His just wrath that was meant for all humankind on Jesus. Not only was God watching Jesus die, He was actively crushing Jesus to death Himself. (Are you seeing the parallel to the video now?)

God knew even then that the overwhelming majority of the people on that proverbial train wouldn't care. They would remain angry, bitter, and selfish. They would remain addicts and thieves and liars and cheats. They would continue to spit in His face and actively try to destroy the knowledge of His very existence. How easy it would have been to not pull the lever, to save his son and let the passengers on the train die.

But then, of course, He would no longer have been unchanging and perfect.


I've been exposed to this knowledge for my entire life. But watching that video today, feeling, however vaguely, the emotions of the father, suddenly this whole thing perplexes me. Why? Why would God do something so seemingly crazy?

Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful God did it. I'm thankful that I have the option of new life, life with Him rather than forever separated from Him. But... why? What would drive Him to save the addict on the train, who thinks of nothing but where she's getting the next hit? What would drive Him to give a second chance at life to the people who wouldn't care -- if they even knew at all -- that He had had to kill His own Son to do it?

All I could see as I watched that video was me -- the addict on the train. Because I am an addict. I'm addicted to having people think nicely of me. I'm addicted to getting things my way -- oh, I'll be 'polite' about it, but woe betide you if you 'ruin' my plans. I'm addicted to my downtime. I'm addicted to my pride, my reputation. I'm addicted to the need to have everything perfect, whether or not I'm actually responsible for the project. I'm addicted to the need to be right, to win an argument. I'm addicted to the need to be everybody's darling. And you already know of my music addiction. And there are so many others. I will do almost anything to get -- or keep -- all of this. If I'm brutally honest, God is just barely in the top ten on my priority list, below all this other stuff. And still He crushed His Son so that I may live.

I still can't wrap my head around why He would do something like this. I don't know if I will ever be able to.

I don't have any children, but if that had been me in that father's place, I would most definitely have let the addict (and all the other comfortably seated people) die if it meant I would get one more chance to hug my child.


Well... like I said at the beginning of this post, I had a different song planned, but ever since watching that video, this song has been running through my head. This is the state I'm in right now.

Title: Broken
Artist: Altar Boys
Album: Against The Grain
Year: 1987
Label: Frontline Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

I've done what's evil in Your sight
And my heart is crumbling.

Life (A Long Rambling Update From The Creative Mind)

You may or may not be wondering by now -- besides geeking out over eighties music, what else have I been doing lately? (In other words, I just realised I haven't posted anything other than Music Day for... months.)

To answer the question... more choreography. Give me a second to look through my stacks of notes and I'll tell you what I'm working on.

*removes half-inch thick stack of paper from clipboard and shuffles through it*

Okay, here we go...

Eighth Wonder (White Heart): Back in December I was asked to compose and perform a ballet solo for the local dance team. I was originally going to perform my choreography for David Meece's One Small Child, but after some rehearsing, discovered that the stage in my mind is much, much bigger than most stages are in real life (unless we're talking hockey arenas). Since we aren't quite booking hockey arenas at this point, I would either have to re-work One Small Child or come up with something else. I chose Plan B, and Eighth Wonder was pretty much entirely choreographed within a week. Performances start in May. (I say this so casually, but inside I'm jumping up and down and squealing like a five-year-old.)

Raging Of The Moon (White Heart): I've been dreaming about this one for a long time, probably from the second time I ever heard this song. I'm finally working out some visual motifs and I've got formations and basic choreography figured out until about the three-minute mark. It's a lot like what I did with Speechless (big epic formation dance with intricate visual 'harmonies'), only this one will be actually danceable by humans. I'm excited about this one. It's going to look so cool.

Hollow Man (Daniel Amos): I'm hoping this will actually become a joint choreographic venture with myself and the other two choreographers on the dance team, the idea being that each of us choreographs our own part in a different discipline from the other two, and then we put the individual parts together on the stage. This would be an attempt to build on the haunting almost-discord of the song -- it looks amazing in my head, but it remains to be seen what real life will do to it...

Montana Sky (White Heart): I haven't touched this song in over a month. It started out slow anyway, but the actual dance was turning out rather nicely. I just seem to have lost my ambition for this one. I'd still like to finish it sometime, as it was shaping up to be really pretty (soft, gentle ballet trio), and I was already past the halfway point anyway...

Shedding The Mortal Coil (Daniel Amos): I kind of doubt this will ever get staged. It's bubblegum Junior Jazz One at its finest. But it's so much fun...
(Yes, the linked video does cut it off, but there's only like five more seconds in the song after that. Basically he holds the note for 'coil' and the guitar reverberates for a few more seconds.)

Going Public (Newsboys): Seriously, does this song not have 'tap dance' written all over it?

Answering Machine (Prodigal): I'm not seriously working on this (yet), but the other day I was brainstorming ideas for it and I think there's some potential for this one. This would be another tap dance.


Other stuff I've been doing...

Photography -- just did a snow photo shoot with my sister yesterday. I waited nearly a week for cloud cover before I finally gave up and figured I'd just have to make it work with the sun's harsh glare coming off the snow (before it all melted away). Those pictures had better have turned out (I haven't looked at them yet).

On a side note, I, unlike everyone else in this province, am LOVING the snow. We got a mild blizzard here last Thursday... it was awesome. Except for the people in the 100-car pileup, but it sounds like they were all pretty much okay anyway. (If the idiots in this province would just learn that the speed on the highway is 110, not 300 gazillion, this wouldn't have been a problem.) Since I'm on my soapbox anyway, listen Albertans, you have no right to complain. It's MARCH, people. March. You have no right to be whining about missing spring yet. For crying out loud, it's March! What do you expect? Crocuses in your underwear drawer? Spring around here comes in May. IT. HAPPENS. EVERY. YEAR. Do you people not pay attention?

*gets off soapbox*

*abruptly changes gears*

So to make a long story short, I just became aware of a really cool old abandoned house literally a two-minute drive from where I live. Can you say 'video/photo shoot location?' Only one problem -- it's being demolished in two and a half weeks. But I really, really want to get something artistic out of that house before it's destroyed and forgotten. There isn't too much there for a photo shoot, but it has the best music-video lighting ever, especially in the basement.

At first I was thinking of doing a 'music video' for the dance to the aforementioned Hollow Man. However, as I thought about the logistics of choreographing, perfecting, and shooting the whole thing in two weeks, I was forced to admit defeat. There is no way I'm going to be able to pull that off, even with the other two dancers on spring break. I kind of doubt I'll ever be able to not regret getting that committed to film while I had the chance -- that basement, that lighting, is so so perfect for the mood, the sound, the dance of Hollow Man. I had camera angles figured out and everything.

So now I'm considering (hopefully) the next best thing: an already-choreographed piece that requires only one dancer -- me. Eighth Wonder. It won't pull as much creative awesomeness out of that basement as Hollow Man would, but under such a tight deadline, it'll have to do. I just hope someday I'll find another basement as aesthetically brilliant as that one with less of a deadline on it.

There's really only one problem with doing Eighth Wonder in there -- well, two -- but both would have been present no matter what dance I picked. One is I need someone to run the camera. I know almost exactly what kind of camera work I want, but I also need to be doing the actual dance. (What I really need to do is clone myself. That would make this whole creating-art thing so much easier because I would know what I want and I would always be available the same time as I am and then I could be in two physical locations simultaneously.)

The second problem is the fact that the basement floor is unprotected concrete -- a bit of a dancer's nightmare, and especially for one who's already showing signs of knee trouble. (And guess what makes the lighting in that basement so amazing? Yep... the light-conducting properties of bare concrete.) I have a bit of a temporary floor solution in mind (though it might kill the lighting a bit), so if it's possible to get in there and get the footage at the exact angles I want without any superfluous messing around, I should hopefully come out of there mostly unscathed. But it's gotten me thinking -- at what level does safety trump aesthetics/perfect lighting/space/opportunity? For me, just me, that's one thing. If I want to be potentially stupid and trash my knees, that's my problem. But even when I was seriously considering doing Hollow Man, I couldn't get it out of my mind -- would it really have been fair to ask two other dancers to risk it?


The Twitter-friendly version of that wall of words? 'Creative brain is exploding.'

And that's what I've been doing lately. How about you?