Thursday, March 15, 2007

I LOVE my dancer!!!

I had been getting worried as I hadn't rehearsed with my dancer since early February.... and my recital is in 9 days. You do the math...
Communication had been poor over the last month, but I had let it slide as I felt that this part of the recital will go well no matter what, and it's the shortest part of the recital... but as the gap grew, I started worrying...
Anyway, all worries are deceased at this moment and I don't think there is anything that could revive them.
Our rehearsal tonight was AMAZING.
We decided on a theme (Leaving).
We also nailed down a form that allows a LOT of flexibility, BUT creates a sense of unity and highlights the communication between myself and the dancer.

It's basically a basic set of structural decisions:
1)Entry-dancer places suitcase on ground
2)The middle will have 3 or 4 sections, each of which:
-she opens the suitcase, sighs, then takes something out of the suitcase and that section occurs.
-musically there will be a recurring theme/motif that will accompany this to mark the form.
3) the last time she opens the suitcase, then looks in it and then closes it and starts to walk towards the door, then making one last circle around the stage before leaving.

I'm not sure if it seems really specific or really vague.. all I know is that it works.
We did that exact form twice tonight after refining the basic concept. Once with 4 sections, then again with only 3. In each section we were able to explore completely different styles of music/movement. The great thing about having the repeated motif of opening the suitcase is that it allows for a sense of continuation between sections, which can translate as character development, or some kind of cohesion...

Anyway, I don't know if you can tell, but I'm really really really excited about this dance portion of my recital.

Ooh, about lesson today:
I sorta got the validation I wanted. Teacher is confident that I would pass if I played my recital as I did today. That means that everything I improve on today would be moving towards excellence(my words...not his). I wasn't even satisfied with my performance today, but he put it in perspective for me.
And therefore, I will not stop now and say "a pass is good enough" because even though I know I will never achieve perfection, I will always strive for excellence, and I will achieve it. I will!

Anyway, that's enough blatant optimism.. more realistically, I'm acknowledging the hard work that I've done and will continue to do!

No comments: