6. Composition and Structure

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 back to when synthesising phrases.

(Doogan Jones, 2022)
The piece opens with the first section, 'Whispering.' These phrases begin with Éabha walking onstage startled, checking behind her as if she was being followed by the ensemble following on stage, walking casually, not acknowledging each other, very pedestrian. Individual dancers will perform short, sharp movements, such as a head grab, before continuing pedestrian-style walking. This is the audience's first introduction to the piece's themes of intrusive thoughts. As the movements are so small, we hope to give insight into how it would be to see things out of the corner of your eye, second guessing if they had occurred at all and gently establishing the world we'd like our audience to enter. During the '6:79' section, the music changes to become more erratic and sharp. This is a pleasing contrast to the previous section's melodic and almost soothing music. The movement in this section develops the themes of paranoia and compulsions displayed during the last section, but in a harsher tone, as if Charnly's condition is worsening and becoming more frightening, hopefully giving a sense of light and shade to our piece. In the '6:79' section, we implement a fragmented version of a phrase created for the 'Visions of Gideon' section. As mentioned in blog four, we created the fragmentation motif when exploring the chance choreography method. Fragmentation entails separating a string of movements and rearranging or utilising them independently (Preston-Dunlop, 2014). This phrase accurately conveys the erratic nature of this section as you see movement that dancers previously performed in a sequential manner now danced in a way that looks almost unnatural, making you feel slightly unsettled. When allocating solos and duets, we began the process by thinking of how to work within our timeframe to complete the project efficiently. For Example, both Eabha and Olivia live together, so naturally, it would be easier for them to create their duet outside of school-allocated studio time so we could focus on group sections and linking in our studio time. This Duet we titled the 'Mind Body Duet' effectively conveys the power imbalance between Charnley's illness and his 'right' mind, with each dancer embodying one of these concepts. This 'Mind Body Duet' also acts as a repeating motif throughout the piece to visually represent Charnley's decline in mental wellness. During the majority portion of the piece, we use the ensemble in unison as this helps the audience experience a sense of overwhelm and unease, with an individual dancer occasionally differentiating from the group. Such as at the beginning of the '6:79' section when eabha takes the role of a confused and scared individual as the rest of the ensemble continues with a series of gestures. These gestures represent intrusive thoughts, with eabha displaying the confusion and fear an individual must feel when their mind is acting in ways they cannot understand.

Bibliography:

Doogan Jones, C. (2022) Structure and Musical Composition.

Preston-Dunlop, V. (2014) Looking at dances: A choreological perspective on choreography. 4th edn. Hampshire: Noverre Press.

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