There are many, many ways to approach emotion in dance. This study is just one approach. It consists of three parts. Part 1 involves drawing, Part 2 involves sculpting with a piece of paper, Part 3 involves creating choreography.  Study adapted from Diana F. Green and Eugene Loring.

Part 1: Recall a time, recent or in the past, in which you could say you had an emotional response. Happy, sad, irritated, ebullient… this could be a small moment (discovering that a friend brought you a cupcake back from the store) to a more intense moment. In order to do this exercise, it is not required that you have to go for the most intense – unless you want to.  Get a large piece of paper (I will have paper for you to take from the studio) and a husky crayon(s).  Lay the paper out in front of you. Set a timer for 10 minutes.  Conjure up the memory. Take a deep breath, put the crayon on the paper (anywhere) and start to draw abstractly (lines, circles, dots, slashes) the emotional sequence/timeline of events.

Part 2: Look at the drawing. Take a blank 8.5 x 11 piece of paper,

and create a 3-d version of the experience. You may only sculpt. No writing or drawing on the paper. No glue, tape or scissors.  Just you and the paper.

Part 3: Create a movement study that reflects the entire experi

ence. Use the drawing and the paper sculpture to give you movement ideas. Remember to use body shape, floor patterns and movement patterns through space. Think about how to translate the sculpture into energy, space and time. The sequence of your experience should be the sequence of your dance. Pay particular attention to the transitions in the experience, the points where your emotions change.

Bring your drawing and sculpture to class with your study.  Post a photo of the drawing and the sculpture with your posting of the video of your study.

Noah- Emotion

The emotional event I chose was the time when I discovered a herd of ants in my room crawling all over the floor. I tried to draw my emotional/bodily reaction of spiking arousal and confusion and then a general return to baseline and finally a collapse from exhaustion. I tried to draw and sculpt the trajectory of my reaction. I had tons of fun with the dance especially when I tried to embody squashing ants, the audience enjoyed that part a lot I think 🙂

Emily: Emotion

In this piece, I play with my 2D and 3D representations of an emotional journey from introspective anxiety to gratitude.

Joel Choi: Emotion

My experience was the last round of video game I played with my friend before the end of winter break. Mix of nervousness, joy, excitement, and sadness.

Esther Hwang: Emotion

I played with the feelings of the moment of creation. In step 1, I was feeling ecstasy and pleasure, so I played a video of SoHyang singing Arirang and drew my feelings with oil pastels. In step 2, I explored texture by manipulating paper through folding, creasing, crumpling, biting, and twisting. In step 3, I went to the studio and chose a motif, a sequence of events, and a score I could follow and adapt.

Naiya/Emotion

The moment I chose was when my mom bought me and my sister a car. I tried to incorperate anticipation, gratefullness, glee, and satisfaction in this piece. My drawings informed the way I wanted to move, but my sculpture was just something physical to represent the keys my mom gave me on Christmas.

Zoë—Emotion

I called this piece “September 14th, 2018” because that’s the night it was based on. My drawing captured the shapes of the emotions I was feeling that night, from anticipation to fear to joy to relaxed happiness. My sculpture ended up representing symmetry and asymmetry between me and the person I was with. I tried to base my sequence of movements on the sequence of events in the evening and the actual movement on the shapes I drew.

Obuchi: Emotion

In this piece I focused on the excitement and ultimate disappointment of going to an interview for an internship that I did not get an offer from.