Experience and Creative Process

         Nowadays, there are some choreographers like to work with a plenty of movements. There is nothing wrong in that occasion because performing arts work is about creating our own identity, characteristic, or sometimes habit. From my observation, some established, huge names or companies in the dance world were also had their own 'habit', they create choreographies with similar elements. Look at Alvin Ailey, Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, and others. However, it is still a long journey for the young emerging artist to achieve that level. What should we do? One of them is watching examples from Youtube. But some people are too dependent and misunderstood what is learning or stealing from example. Nevertheless, stealing is totally fine if the choreographer is intelligent enough to make some improvements until the audience could not realise between the original piece in the Youtube and the new made piece. How to do this really? From my experience, the situation is the same on how to investigate a movement. As my course director of M.A Contemporary Dance Performance Mary Nunan said, "You can do develope, but do not do it like you did in a ballet class. There are many things you could explore, the tempo, the movement's flow, the shape maybe". And we should question ourself, do we really need the develope, is the hinge would make our piece better, or does 'beautiful' proper shape is important? Who told us 'beautiful' shape will make us a creative choreographer. Think out of a box, well-known choreographers like Cunningham took risk to blow his creativity. Are we afraid, or we do not know what to do? Mary Nunan said terms (not sure where she got it) traditional modern dance to clarify the modern dance era in United States in our discussion. In my opinion and observation, a choreography that has obvious modern dance or ballet movements like hinge, piruoette, grandbattement, grand jete, and others could be categorized as  modern traditional dance. Anyhow, it reminds me to  the process of my M.A's final project. In my feedback session, one of useful feedbacks I got was that I have to avoid usual way of pas de deux male and female which is the male dancer will be the supporter to the female dancer. Thus, one of options to avoid generic movement is try to break the usual way; think out of the box in every aspect of the creative process. Ultimately, the choice is depends to the choreographer. People has their own choice if they want to follow the development of the dance's world or just create they work with their own way, there is nothing wrong with it really.

         In creating work, we could explore 2 areas, one is the part that has narrative where tend to relates with stories, imageries, or situation. The other part is investigation and exploration of the movement itself (some people call it abstract or pure movement section). Interesting enough these two aspects are overlapping and not isolated (polarized). Thus, there is a movement in narrative part, and there is movement that really has no connection with any story or situation but the audience thought the movement is narrative content. In my opinion, it is good to read and use the tools or methods that we got from choreography books, however it will make the creative process 'by the book' situation. Therefore, it is good to go and join workshops because it will give us many interesting tools (perhaps not always), some more what I personally like is it would give me a lot of possibilities that blow my mind and trigger my creativity. But, I am not saying that we should turn back all those methods in the books. I am totally agreed and appreciated all the knowledge in those books. I am sure there are many other ways to improve our creativity. Last year, I joined Step Up program and I worked professionally with Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre for five weeks. The choreographer did not know what to create, but he did workshops for four weeks and just started creating choreography in week five. Ultimately, the choreographer wants us the participants get his style of movement from the workshop. I felt the process was interesting because he did not teach the step for us to get the style in conventional way; students/dancers follow instructor front of the mirror. In that workshop, we follow his dancers in a circle and eventually we understand how they move from imitation like the indigenous people dancing in the jungle. More interesting because he did not told us his real intention during the workshop, just simple and direct instruction only. Besides, there are many interesting things happened during the improvisation workshop that most of them based on theatre exercises. When I ask him, "What is this exercise for, is it from dance or theatre?" Then he said, "I do not know, but the exercise good for performer and I just created the exercise myself". I was shocked. Now I realise we can create or develop exercises our own as long as it is relevant and make sense.

         It is extremely hard to create one hour of piece with only movement as the material. It would be silence, heavy, and might be dull (depends on situation). So, how to overcome this situation? Did you had any experience felt so tired while watching choreography although it has 'beautiful' movement and performed by excellent performers? In some occasion, the audience needs some 'rest'. What does 'rest' means? Besides movement, sometimes voice, expression, videos, singing, and text could give the audience moment of 'release' from watching heavy presentation. The same situation we could apply it for piece that really tense and full of narrative content. From my own experience, one of Ireland's pioneers choreographers John Scott said, "The reason I put the movements in that diagonal and repeat several times is to give the audience 'rest', because the other parts was so tense and strained". Yet, in a piece called 'Bow' from Korean University of Arts in Tari Festival 2014, it has a section that full of repetitive movements. But, I personally did not feel bored while watching that section because the choreographer capable to recurr movement motive and made the performer get the extraordinary quality in a very depth level (I assumed the movement has release technique/quality). The quality of the movement made me did not realised it was a really long movement sequence. For me, the choreography is stick with the pathway or direction because the movement is compact (not too many movements) and attached by the motive. Somehow, some choreographers just throw out movement but do not put attention to the movement motive as the main key.