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Checklist
Charlotte Jones
Choreography Checklist
April 24th, 2019 // Revisited May 10th 2019
SYMETTRY IS LIFELESS
In thinking about the arc of my piece, I agree with the advice of Doris Humphrey that symmetry is lifeless. However it is used consciously in my piece to exaggerate the lifelessness one feels when being controlled or pressed by a system or person. While Humphrey argues that “Beginners in Choreography behave exactly like children in their choice of choreography,” (160 ) I am compelled to think my choice for temporary symmetry is helpful in the storytelling of the art and breaking through of cathexis and ownership.
TWO DIMENSIONAL DESIGN IS LIFELESS
While flat design is sometimes effective as Humphrey points out with “Egyptian friezes and Greek vases,” I have been trying to use the three-dimensionality of both the space and stage you life-ify my dance, but also contrast it with lifelessness and submissiveness purposefully to make a point not only about the lexicon of womyn in Shakespearean text, but also in our works today, and with “acceptable movement” today.
THE EYE IS FASTER THAN THE EAR
While I have made the decision to incorporate text in my dance, movement will “take the spotlight” (161) as the eye is a more fully trained vessel, I do not want to overwhelm my audience or overwhelm their ears. Additionally I think the middle section of my dance which does not incorporate spoken text, but instead music with subtle and soft lyrics will allow the audience to more fully focus on the movement I have created and the power behind those sequences that require more visual attention than maybe the first section of movement.
MOVEMENT LOOKS SLOWER AND WEAKER ON STAGE
I will focus on my precision to emphasize my movements, and make a clear points with my body. This is also a HUGE part of musical theatre, emphasizing movements exaggerating gestures and I have kept this in mind that big movements catch the audience members’ attention, but even more so when paralleled with stillness.
ALL DANCES ARE TOO LONG
I am still trying to figure out how to respond to this prompt, I think our time-frame of 5 to 7 minutes is helpful and will push out movement to create enough instead of “a lot”.
A GOOD ENDING IS 40%OF THE DANCE
I completely agree; I want a powerful ending, possibly that utilizes the alienation effect to ask my audience to continue making connections. I though about using a prop; a water source, paint, costume, to crate a metaphor for the rebellion against the submissive lexicon projected onto womyn. I ended up deciding to use the water bottle which I have depended on throughout the creation and performance of the piece, from drinking from it, to engulf myself in water and the end. Hopefully this ending will compile the 40% it deserves.
MONOTONY IS FATAL; LOOK FOR CONTRASTS
Contrast is the crux of my piece. High to low, parallel to skew, controlled to spastic, slow to quick, internal to external, a contrast of if the dance is for the audience and making the dane for myself. This contrast is seen as sometimes I do not dance facing the proscenium, but rather facing the back. Or facing the side.
DON’T BE A SLAVE TO OR A MUTILATOR OF THE MUSIC.
I began the process with no music, however I found myself wanting to free myself from the text I have written, so I started improvising to songs in playlists found on Spotify. After improvising, I developed three sequences, with movements inspired by the word water, and sequences created throughout the semester. I then chose a song: Between the Bars, by Elliot Smith, which I felt fit the mood of my piece and contributed to the arc of my story, with phrases like “ forget all about The pressure of days,” “The potential you’ll be that you’ll never see” That I felt fit in with my feminist agenda. I then paired the music over top my sequences. Choreographing independently made me sure not to be a slave or mutilator of the music, but instead let both coexist and be presented simultaneously to my audience.
LISTEN TO QUALIFIED ADVICE; DON’T BE ARROGANT
I have enjoyed and benefitted immensely from the feedback process from all my peers and professor Miller. The feedback on accessibility and control has not only shaped my piece, but has helped me focus on what I truly want my message to be, on a performative and personal level. How this research has helped me grow as a person and dancer and how the audience members/ classmates have focused their attention would be completely different without the support, advice, questions, and statements of meaning from my peers and professor.
DON’T INTELLECTUALIZE; MOTIVATE MOVEMENT
I will try to simplify and distill my point. Movement again will be the main focal point, I want the language to be edible not performative or to show off. Hopefully distilling the text paired with the creation of my own will help me achieve this goal.
DON’T LEAVE THE ENDING TO THE END
Doris and I might just have to disagree on this one. While I have lots of ideas, I feel I cannot fully integrate them without establishing the rest of my arc. Do I want silence, stillness to scream, to get damp, to cover myself in paint or water? Or do I want something so simple the relationship between performer and audience fizzles away? Only time will tell…
Time has told, and I want a dramatic ending that makes my point clear as day: I am powerful, womyn are powerful.
Director’s Note:
I was inspired to make this work after a Text-to-Movement study that I worked on for class. For that project I thought about what text I was passionate about and why. I have always loved Shakespeare and though his stories are timeless and speak to topics of love and loss that are still apparent and applicable today, I have always found some of the language problematic. I memorized a monologue from Pericles that Marina recites when she is asking, begging someone not to rape her and she through a serious of unfortunate events has wound up in a Brothel. The language is so submissive and simultaneously powerful and I have always been drawn to this piece. She says “there is something that glows up on my cheek and the whispers in my ear going not till he speak” she says, I imagine firmly, “I said, if you did know [me and my past] you would not do my violence.” Yet she also says “my Lord” and refers to her male counterpart as clearly more powerful–possibly innately more powerful. The use of the phrase “my Lord” is present in every Shakespeare play and only highlights the divide between genders and the patriarchy in which we live in which we have a lived since the 1500s and earlier.
The phrases I picked from pieces that spoke to me, are intertwined in my piece, hopefully seamlessly with movement and text I have written on my own. I wanted to make the language accessible. I started the piece with three consecutive monologues as the base, but realized the language was rough and inaccessible, detracting from my point, so I wrote a poem instead, or co-wrote the poem, with Shakespeare.
I took my previous choreography study that was centered on one monologue and the movement which I took from feminist literature by Lauren Berlant and Laura Mulvey and Foucault, and started doing more research in a wider span of places that included Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Loves Labors Lost, and various sonnets. I wanted to make this work because it’s spoke to the way I feel about modern-day intersectional feminism as well as feelings and personal curiosities surrounding art and life and love and power.
In my own always struggled with my identity and power as a woman and I created this piece in part as a rebellion against gender inequality in the world in which we live.
I used the word and many forms of water as an inspiration and a source for my movement and as a prop in my piece because water is something, I depend on yet is dangerous; I can drown in water. It represents toxic relationships and cathexis. What happens when we concentrate energy into something that is not symbiotic is unhealthy. The physical prop is meant to represent the cyclical nature of life and death and is supposed to be a metaphor for oppressive regimes, and for the “My Lord” to which this piece is addressed, but not dedicated to.
Questions they drove my choreographic process were. Why water? Why womyn? Why now? And always: Who is my lord?
My lord could be the president who is the face of our nation who has been accused and allegedly sexually harassed and abused multiple women, some minors. My lord could be a partner, who has betrayed you in some way. My lord could be the self who needs a reminder that we are imperfect and all human.
I would like my audience to come away with the idea that language is powerful and that womyn are also powerful. Things that we view as necessary in life such as water or men should be challenged for their value and examined for their danger. We are all on the same team. Everyone can succeed together. No one should feel trapped or controlled in their own body and mind.
This work was catalyzed by
1) water
2) the repressive lexicon towards womyn in literature and reality,
3) me.
Enjoy.
Artist Statement (always in Progress):
Charlotte Jones is a student, actor, dancer, and consumer.
My work is centered in the art of contrast:
High. Low.
Symmetrical. Asymmetrical.
Focused. Scattered.
Delicious. Ugly.
For myself. For others.
Theatre. Dance.
Invite. Alienate.
Something. Nothing.
Comfort. Discomfort.
Not all of these are in direct opposition with each other but I am eternally curious in which the ways that movement can impact consumers and really engage them. Surprising the audience, giving them something to think about, making them know that the work does not end with the piece. Brecht has always inspired my artistic vision with his need to maintain the line between art and reality.
By Brecht:
Don’t expect the theatre to satisfy the habits of its audience, but to change them.
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
