Choreography for Group Performance (MU503740)

When we began this project in September, we set out to create a piece centred around a portrait series by artist Bryan Charnley.  These seventeen works were Charnleys' attempt to authentically convey his internal experience while reducing and eventually cutting out medication prescribed for treating his paranoid schizophrenia, creating a self-portrait and journal entry for every day of this journey  (Charnley, 2022) (Charnley, Bohannon, 2022).   We aimed to show a person challenged by schizophrenic delusions descent into becoming increasingly paranoid and disconnected from their 'self' and how isolating this experience can be.   When researching for this piece, I focused on the specific delusions and intrusive thoughts Charnley was suffering from.  The concept of thought-broadcasting is depicted heavily in Charnley's portraits and regularly mentioned in his journals.  This delusion is when a person becomes paranoid or convinced that others can hea...

As the date of assessment comes closer, our group has been allocating extra attention to working on the final section of our piece and the impact we want to leave our audience with. This last section begins with a 'mind/body duet' between Naomi and Mia. Like the previous duet, this sequence starts with a scene of one dancer being consumed and manipulated by the other but newly with an underlying melancholy tone. However, as the duet goes on, a sense of surrender develops. The two performers transition from power struggles, such as pushing each other down or grabbing the other's head as a reference to the disease gaining control, to leaning on each other as equals with many elements of high release. There is a strong sense of tranquillity as Charnley gives in, accepting the disease. The section continues with fluid and calm movements while still implementing motifs from throughout the piece and occasional sharp dynamics that contrast the music. Originally the ending to the p...

When creating choreography, it can be helpful to draw inspiration from the work of other practitioners. Often choreographers who have been in the industry have years worth of knowledge and experience behind their creative process, so I find watching interviews to be a valuable tool in learning different devices as well as how they choose to convey their stimuli in the movement. I also enjoy seeing different industry trends and what makes them so popular with the public. It can also be interesting to observe aspects that are similar to my own group's work and how the differences between them affect the impact of the piece.  After watching excerpts from several artists, I found Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite's work to be most useful when comparing and inspiring our own practice. I admired how Pite  clearly and respectfully conveys modern-day issues through her choreography.   In particular, her 2009 work  'Emergence.'   When Pite first created th...

Composition is the act of creating a work; the structure is how you give pattern and organisation to a piece. The structure of the piece is designed to show how an individual like Charnly's symptoms can worsen over time and to establish a descent into becoming increasingly paranoid and disconnected from their 'self' due to these delusions and how isolating this experience can be. When composing a structure for our group piece, we first went through our chosen track music, found distinct musical composition changes, and marked off the timestamps for those transitions. We then brainstormed words and concepts associated with these musical phrases; For Example, during the 'Visions of Gideon' section, we associated the words paranoia, overwhelmed, and anxiety. Progres sing from this, we created links between these word maps and our stimulus to create movement. This process ensured we constantly linked our movement to our stimuli by providing quick buzzwords to refer bac...

A motif refers to a small choreographic unit, such as a gesture, movement or phrase that links strongly to the stimuli. Variations of the motif can be repeated throughout the piece through choreographic devices such as inversion, rhythmical modifications, amplification, minimization, ornamentation, and deconstruction. Repeating variations of a motif in this way can be used to show progression or change either in character or in the world of the piece.   (Preston-Dunlop, 2014) Detachment motif: This motif stems from a duet created for the '2:09' section by Eabha and Olivia. The original solo was created to show separation and power struggle, with each dancer representing either the disordered mind or Charnley's own self. This structure allows the audience to see the disorder take hold effect and manipulate the rational mind. When developing this further, we plan to have short phrases of this duet repeated later in the piece to show the progression of the illness taking ...

Chance method choreography  is a technique/device created by Merce Cunningham. Chance method refers to choosing material through randomisation. For example, throwing dice to select from an index list of movements is traditional. I find chance method to be a helpful tool when facing a creative block as it is a way of overcoming the limits of imagination at the time and redistributing the predictable choreography. (Preston-Dunlop, 2014) (Barbican Centre, 2019) (Merce Cunningham Trust, 2022)  When making our word motif, we went through our music broken down into sections and the words we associated with those sections. Split into pairs and worked on a short sequence associated with each chosen term. Jessica and I were working with the word Anxiety In relation to the 'Visions of Giaeon' section just before Olivia's solo. When making these 16 counts Jessica and I considered different aspects of experiencing Anxiety that we could incorporate. Due to the sequence being e...