Week 3 - Class

This week in class, the Black Butterfly piece began to come together in a fairly cohesive fashion. We still have choreography to learn, but what we do have is now fairly ingrained within the dancer's movement and melding with the music.

The score we are working with is quite beautiful. It is unlike music I have danced to before. In some ways this is quite excellent. I am able to move in creative ways with this music and it speaks quite loudly to the piece and to myself as a dancer. The challenges I have with both the music and to some extent the method of choreography is that the music doesn't really work with the standard 8-count method that I have been taught. I am attempting to feel the music and the choreography as one, but I am still getting lost. It is helping me to grow as an artist, though. I am finding that I am not dependent on strict, ritualized methods of dance, which will contribute to my flow, emotion and creativity. I will grow as a dancer, but until I feel comfortable with this way of working, it will continue to be a challenge. I am truly trying to feel the music as part of me and part of the dance. I'm getting closer.

We didn't have a rehearsal this week, as none of us could find a time where we had the theatre booked that worked for the four or even three of us. Rehearsal won't work if we are down two butterflies.

We got to see the beginnings of the shawl dance this class and I can't wait to see it in its entirety and when it is completed with full costuming and the music that will be used with it. It is going to be quite beautiful. I am also really looking forward to the hoop dance and interested to see how Sly Old Bag comes together. All in all, the whole performance is going to be something. I'm just pleased to be able to be part of the cast.

Week 2 - Training

This week in class was a very good work out for me. Not necessarily that I found the physicality difficult, but re-training my body from mostly classical Western dance tradition, particularly ballet, into alternate movements is proving a challenge. I started ballet when I was two years old and continued my training through my most formative years. I took a pause in the middle, but I did continue with modern ballet and shortly took up classical ballet again. So, as a child, learning how to move, balance and interact with the world at large, ballet was a pivotal foundation for forming my movements. I can still tell other dancers like me by watching the way they move around.

I have wanted, particularly through the past few years, wanted to try my hand at forms of dance I haven't had formal training in. Which is part of the reason I wanted to enroll in this class. Other forms of movement fascinate me, and using the body as a vehicle of communication that is rigid and structured as opposed to instinctive and enculturated forms of body language is an interesting phenomenon that appeals to the anthropologist lurking inside my brain. Not that much of the movements we've been practicing, particularly in warm up, have been rigidly structured. I am enjoying the freedom implied that I experience within the loosely directed movement. I feel able to discover movement and that I can communicate emotion, whether mine or felt within the music or in the simple movements given to utilize in many ways.

The difficulty I have seems to center around my balance point. In ballet, the balance is very specific which means that posture and ways of moving are strictly defined and carried out. It is the Foucaultian theory of docile bodies that explains some of the training that I have been through. It has been quite a positive thing in my life, and has enabled me to function well within my world, physically. I have had good posture and kept healthy in part due to the docility I was trained in at such a young age. However, the rigid structure and form of ballet has made it challenging to adapt to other types of movements. It is taking me a few tries to find the new center of balance for each move and to work my body in different ways. I have to consciously think about the manner in which my body is moving, rather than having it be an unconscious act.

I am glad to be training my body to move in new ways - to reassess my notions of center, balance and flow. My body will work even better and move well with these new ways of acting and reacting. I will eventually find my own flow and stop having to think about this. I am enjoying the consciousness of the new movement though, but when it becomes unconscious, it will be part of my muscle memory and therefore part of me.