In Process: Fall Creation Period (Post 1 - Sarah Lochhead)

This weekend we started into a new creation period for two new pieces of repertoire. Apprentices Aliyah Gaines and Sheridan Martin began building phrases inspired by images of winter and I began to share movement ideas for a piece I've been collecting and researching for six months or so.

I’ve been experimenting with Pinterest to collect ideas or images.  I’ve been using my “board” entitled Creativity Capsule to collage images, quotes, videos and music in one place that is accessible for my dancers to view and follow as the collection grows.

Over the summer I had a chance to look back at Pinterest and find common threads.  The themes that seem apparent are: a longing for flight or birds, and speaking out and having your voice be heard. Another theme seems to be the feeling of being caught on a merry-go-round or in some kind of unbreakable cycle.

Upon further research I learned that most female songbirds don’t sing … I think there is something to explore in that.  The book When Women Were Birds: Fifty Four Variationson Voice by Terry Tempest Williams found it’s way by coincidence into my hands this summer and touched on many of the above themes.  This connection of birds, women and voice is not an uncommon connection and is prevalent in folk tales like The Crane Wife. What is this archetypal connection all about and how can I investigate and express it choreographically? ... and why do I want to express this theme? Why is it important to me?

In a lot of ways this work feels like it is picking up from where our show Woven left off as we had just started to hint at this connection between women and birds.

As usual I went into today's rehearsal with far too much movement material so now it is time to view the phrases, pull out what is needed, rework, revise ... and see how the pieces start to fit together.