Questions worth asking

I got some great advice after the unshowing this week. Visiting choreographer and movement analyst JoAnna Mendel Shaw generously spoke with me after a session of student feedback in comp class yesterday. For now, neglecting much of the feedback I got from others, I want to focus on what I got out of her advice to me.

I realized that my piece was very long at the time I showed. This meets my goal to create a lot so that I would have something to narrow down from. Now, I think that stage is over and it's time to make this "epic" into a haiku. Joanna talked about the logic of pieces: mine was switching logic and modes. I was using both measuring and feeling logics, and was switching temporal modes in what inspired different parts of the piece (memory/abstraction/aiming for present emotion). I clearly had several sections, and I agree with Joanna that each section could be its own piece. She encouraged me to focus in on an aspect of what I had, to make mini-pieces out of each section, or to generally cut down to the one I knew I wanted to focus on. While talking with her about how my intentions and inspiration relate to the piece, I began to realize what is motivating me and what parts of the piece actually speak to that.

I'm going to be eliminating most of the beginning (Trio A response phrases). It was helpful for me as an opportunity to practice defining how I wanted visual elements to be carried out by the dancers, but it does not have any emotional content as JMS pointed out. I knew I was getting caught up in "pretty" and I also want to move away from the wholly abstract mapping that it became. I was not very far from what I attempted to do last semester with similar mapping. It was a logic of measuring. I can use this, but not in the way the piece is now. I think I might use this idea of measuring to portray for a short time where one of my characters is coming from: she will represent the scientist in me, before becoming personally involved in the world of emotions.

Meanwhile, the language of emotions will be the focus of the other character and will draw the measuring character in. When the scientist meets the feeler, the feeler will ask "do you hear me?" drawing the scientist into that world of feeling. The piece will continue from there with their meeting and growing connection. The scientist will learn to bear the emotionality of the feeler, and may begin to share (weight) back. This will be the contact-heavy part of what I've shown, with some adjustments to answer questions of who is bearing whom.

The photographer, at the moment, I see as an extension of the scientist. As they are both measuring, she will methodically take images. As the scientist moves in, the images will also zoom in. As the scientist begins to feel, though, the photography will become more interpretive and involved and spurred. I want to figure out how to make it clear that the photographer is drawn in and no longer an outsider. It will represent the level of involvement that can be achieved by the scientist. In a way, maybe the fact that I feel like she may not be able to show full involvement will demonstrate the part of the scientist that will forever be disconnected at least a little through observation. I think now that finding a way to show a live feed of the images would be interesting

(Just to note, I don't think I'm considering the environment aspect of it so much. No more blocks. The setting will be something else... TBD. Maybe the CSEA lab or the CC.)

It's interesting, because I've heard lately about how psychologists are supposedly disconnected and not personal with others. I hadn't heard that stereotype until fairly recently, and I rejected it until I kept hearing it- it started to get to me. I know that I personally have been working on connecting more with others, and I've become better at sharing that understanding- an important aspect of true empathy. So how is it that people believe that counselors are unfeeling? My training says otherwise, as does my personality, given my career goal.

I'm considering my scientist/feeling self as I think of this dance now. Rather than narrow it to only one of these languages as JMS suggested, I believe for me it's necessary to acknowledge them both. But one will be the focus, the other must still have it's hints of presence. This duality is why this project came about for me. Rather than abandon it in the effort to focus, I can take it into consideration and use it as I focus.