Over, under, around and through…
The way I operate within my practice is usually defined by the context within which I am working. My contemporary choreographic practice is quite collaborative – I bounce ideas off the performers I am working with and frequently utilise their ideas and movement responses in the final piece. I usually brainstorm or research the intention I am working with, and then formulate tasks for my dancers or myself to do, in order to generate movement material. It is then a process of trial and error based on what it is the dancers have created.
Sometimes, I am wanting a very specific outcome from the task, and I keep working until I get that outcome. Other times, I get inspired by the dancer’s responses and I change my mind completely about what it is I thought the dance was going to be and create an entirely new section that I hadn’t previously imagined. There are also times where I have created something myself and it is me simply instructing the dancers what to do based on what I have created, with no contribution from them. The final outcomes of my choreographic works will be a mix of all of those elements and sometimes it is hard to remember who came up with the ideas – if it were me or the dancers.
I will always have a clear vision or plan of what I hope to achieve in the rehearsal studio – however it is easily discarded in favour of something new that may arise. It is vital to have that flexibility and to be able to see new potential and to let go of an old idea. Sometimes I have spent a few hours planning exactly what will happen at an exact point in the music or the script, and then will throw it all away at the drop of a hat when a new idea appears and suddenly, I am ‘winging it’.
When it comes to actually creating movement, my process and practice is also quite varied. If I am choreographing for a musical, sometimes I can just sit at my desk and create the whole thing without standing up to dance at all – but I write it all down with detailed diagrams and notes because I will never remember what I made! If I have a particular song I am using,
I generally improvise to the song for awhile and then try and lock down some movements that I liked from the improvisation. Sometimes I get completely stuck and desperate, and in those times I draw from a tool kit of default creative tasks that I have picked up over the years – using the letters of the alphabet; drawing the names of a body part and a descriptive word out of a hat; a task called ‘over, under, around and through’ etc.
Angela Barnard
April 2020