I was checking several pages for auditions today and found a variety of companies defining themselves as “ground breaking” and “pushing the boundaries”. Now, I understand how important defining what we do is, there is this pressure to categorise and fit yourself into one of the drawers of the contemporary dance cupboard. I don’t necessary agree with it but I understand the need.
What is the point, however, of defining every single company (specially the newest and with young founders) as ground breaking? Is it true that every work being made now is pushing the boundaries of performance? I don’t think so… So maybe “ground breaking” is now just another of the categories, and doesn’t actually mean anything other than “in the manner of the most recent fashion”.
I’m wondering if someone could explore exactly the opposite. A company that will return to the very first boundaries, to find “pure” classical (not in the sense of balletic but of classicism) dance, to limit what dance is and how it’s made.
Obviously, at least to one point, this can only be done as a philosophical debate, but I still think it could be very interesting.
The ground breaking moments (and artists) of the past, studied carefully, could help us understand more what we do and advance the field.
I’m thinking Forsythe here, there must be a reason for that 😉
But I’m also thinking of lots of things that have been done before, and yet people present them today as new. (I have to find clear examples of these, right now it’s only a vague idea).
Maybe I should take my own advice!

I have been out of training for a bit due to a back injury, I’m only just starting to come back to classes and not even doing the whole thing… I know it is quite common to feel down and find it difficult to do the rehab exercises (or I hope it is, otherwise there’s something wrong with me!).
What I find quite surprising is that I find it equally difficult to do anything dance related (i.e. Updating the blog more often, applying for things…). And above all, thinking about new choreographies!
I’m really glad our next show is an improvised dance installation, I’d be in trouble otherwise.
So I guess it’s only fair to be thinking about the reasons for this… And apart from the general blues and the fact that the back is quite a central part of the body and can feel like the whole body is achey… The only thing I can conclude is that we’re so used to thinking with our bodies that when the body is in no condition to do anything the rest would only follow.
I hope this gets better with time because what a business otherwise!!

I know… it’s taken me ages! But technology and I… anyway!

So the second week I was on my own preparing things for the third one, in which I received our lovely Spanish dancers Carol and Marta to work on the individual and group violence.

We worked on several ideas for the first part of the piece; peer pressure and how it makes it difficult to recognise individual ideas or choices, the effect this individualism has in the group when it starts to show, this idea reversed: the effect that a group can have in a person to make her/him act in a different way (in a violent way in this case), and other similar ideas.

It was quite difficult to work on group pieces without the whole group, but we have the whole piece more or less defined, and all the movement made, so the whole piece is pretty much finished (the only thing is that not all the dancers know it, and we still need to check spacings and things of that sort).

The last part of the piece will be about another kind of violence against the individual: the one that we impose ourselves, influenced by marketing campaigns or cliches about how or who are we supposed to be. This part is, however, still in the definition process, and even though I have a clear idea of set and structure, I’m not so sure about movement… I’ll tell you more when, well, when I know it! 😉

Again I’m leaving you with rehearsal footage of bits and pieces of this third week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK5fQmC1fJI

The most difficult part of this part of rehearsal was… you won’t believe this… rehearsing in Spanish! I don’t know how to anymore, all my dance vocabulary is in English… So I bet Marta and Carol had a great time laughing at me for speaking weird!

Well… So it’s taken ages to write something about DDG’s time in Galicia, but here I am finally!

I did try and post a video, but it didn’t work our as well as I was expecting so… My idea now is to write three posts about what we were doing… First one is this, about the first week, second would be about the second and third weeks, and last one about the future of the project!

I also have very good news, Sara Accettura, co-director of DDG, just got funding to start a new, and very exciting youth dance project in Italy (in Bari). DDG will also be involved in the project somehow, we’re still working on it. In the meantime, I’ll try and convince her to post a bit more about the project as soon as she’s got the time for it!

So the first week…

I had the lovely Sara and Riccardo Vitello over for rehearsal and we were working in the domestic violence part of the piece. My idea for this was to create a duet with them in this period than then will be turn into a quartet (reversing the duet in another couple and then making them interlace and playing with time and speed).

I want to tell the same story twice, more or less, in one case (the one I was working with Sara and Riccardo) from the present to the past, in the other one (the new one with the same movement but reversed) with a normal storyline. My idea as of now, however, is that the two endings will be different to reflect different possibilities of these situations.

So I started working with Sara and Riccardo in a beautiful rehearsal space given in kind by the council of Oleiros, in A Coruna (they give it for free to choreographers in the mornings, can you imagine??! :)). And it went really well, in 5 mornings of rehearsals we finished creating the movement and even had time to polish some bits. It’s at the moment a bit longer than 8:30 minutes but I’m thinking that the whole piece once it’s put together with the other duet will be around 10min.

We also had one of the ladies from the choreographic centre coming to an open rehearsal and she said she liked what she saw, so 😀

A couple of problems I encountered…

The nice part: When the relatinoship was coming back to the nicer areas (the falling in love, the getting to know each other) I ran out of ideas… which comes back to my usual problem with choreographing nice feelings… I’m starting to think this is some kind of psychological blockage of some sort!

The impossible lift: I had a lift in my head before coming in to rehearsals, and it looked pretty cool in my head… But when trying to explain to the dancers how to make it it was basically impossible! Probably it was me not explaining very well, will have to try again! (NB: the one we did instead looks pretty cool too ;))

And to finish I leave you a couple of minutes of bits and pieces of the rehearsals, as always, any comments more than welcome! 😉

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKR_fyW3qKQ

UPDATE: the video now actually works 😉

So it hit me the other day…
Ok, I’m not generally a bubbly person, nor the image of positive thinking, but really I am not that bad either! I’ve been very surprised to hear so much how my best choreography is for the dark and sad themes.
Then I realised, it is exactly when I can’t understand something that I start a new piece. It’s always something that I’m trying to process in an alternative way…
So I might be able to say that when I don’t understand something, I choreograph it.
It might be that I am not the twisted person you might think I am when you see my work :p
Or this could make no sense at all, but at least it’s a very romantic hypothesis!

It is difficut to write anything dance related these days and not refer to the funding cuts… Sad news for all.
However, maybe something other than panic and horror could come out of this. I know we mostly hate it when people from the funding bodies say that it’s time to start collaborations… But maybe it is! Ok, we are in a very individualistic time, where most artist put their own names to their companies because that’s what counts and that what people want (or is it?). But we should not forget that it has happened before that in difficult times artists get together to rebel and find that it is much more productive.
Maybe the funding cuts will make us all a little bit more careful about the budget for a production and maybe we can remember that dance is much more than super special effects and amazing costumes. And maybe we will all emerge from this difficult time a little bit wiser and with lots of artistic collaborators.
Or maybe there is a reason why the Southbank Centre Move test called me an idealistic mover…
😉