Apparently I’m not very good at keeping up with journaling if it’s on the internets either.  I HAVE been keeping up on my computer though.  Nothing was really really interesting to upload, I suppose.  Just makin’ stuff up.

This should have been entirely obvious to me. 

This dance isn’t about just any train ride.  It can be, but essentially, it’s about a specific train ride for me.

I guess I was trying not to make it about that.  And really, I’m not, and I don’t need or want the audience to know what I was going through at that time, that’s still not really what this dance is for.  But, for myself, the dance is about a specific train ride, which encompassed a lot of emotions for me: sadness, anger, strength, hope, and somehow happiness.  Happiness in independence and self.  Not happiness in the usual sense, I was still very sad, but there was still happiness. 

It’s like my brain knew what I was doing and got frustrated with my not realizing what i was making, and one day was just like, “This is what you’re doing! DUH!” 

So.  Now I know.  What to do with that information.  Go with it.  Or against it.  Or stay on the same track (ha. ha.).  Whatever i do, my intent is not quite what it started as.  

why my dancers are awesome:

 there are no “sections” in this dance, really.  the entire thing just sort of feeds into the next without clear divisions for memorization. 

also, I can’t start the dance from any point but the beginning during rehearsal.  in other pieces, you can say, “we’ll start at around minute 3 and continue to the end” or, “through ______ section”  but not with this one.  there’s no point like that.  

if you kids are reading this, great job, dancers. :)

I took a little hiatus while in California.  Well, I thought a ton about my piece and dance and choreography.  

Here’s some stuff I thought about: 

.abstract literal hands. 

opening a book

awkward things people do with their hands when waiting or standing

looking at watch gesture

typing

coffee

cell phone

texting

headphones

create a precise hand gesture section— in the beginning, and can develop into large movement and be spliced in for embellishment in the more “dance-y” sections

in order to make everyday things into interesting movement vocabulary

new title idea:

“from los angeles to santa barbara”

or 

“from austin, tx, to new orleans, la”

“LAX to [whatever santa barbara’s tag is]” 

depending on which projection i use.  hopefully i’ll get a cali one if my camera approves of the decision. more interesting landscape. though the tx one has a nice bird flight section, not that anyone would really notice it.  but i’d know about it. 

I wonder if I could layer them in some way, abstracting them.  

too much.  or not enough? i haven’t pushed my ideas far enough.  specifically the entrances and exits. 

choreography notes: in the air between denver and nola.  october 12, 2009

more awkward and hard to hold positions for abstraction of sitting. - needs to be more interesting.

what gets people off of the floor? 

what if only falon is ever pedestrian? rather than people being people and then thoughts, maybe everyone is falon’s thoughts, in the form of people moving around her… i think this was my initial idea anyway and it got distracted.   

this would also clarify the emotion within the piece.  why would everyone on the train be so damn emoting? 

i cant remember where or when i got this idea.  driving between NOLA and HBG I think. 

- why if they are on a train, are they spread out? squish into a single “pane” - the back curtain 3 (pushing out a little to 2 and 4). 

Piecing together everything I have last rehearsal was pretty hilarious.  I tagged on a little bit to what my 4 already on the train do, got Clara Grace and Josh on stage, and then they started from the previous beginning.  I really like the new musicality of it.  Before, I thought that the movement built too quickly.

But the hilarious part:  I felt like the Wizard Mickey in Fantasia directing water and making it splash all around.  Because no one knew what was going on, and I was pointing to who should be moving now, shouting which section came next, and sometimes dancing the movement that should be happening. 

That rehearsal was really funny in general.  

I asked Zurick to go off stage and come back a little bit later, and he retrograded (making the movement rewind) what he does to get on stage, to get off stage.  He was still moving, and I didn’t realize he was retrograding it and being funny, so I just kept trying to explain what I meant.

Then, when we were about to piece everything together and just “see what happens” (-me, duh) someone (josh?) goes, “and now we’re about to see what a train wreck looks like in a dance.”

And I made some super cheesy train pun, but I can’t remember what it was.  No one caught it but Falon.

Also, I need to make more notes of what I do in rehearsals (for my thesis yaaaay!) those this blog might get MIGHTY boring.   ex. “Asked Josh to do retrograded version of the jumping phrase to get to stage left instead of stage right.” 

… but maybe I’ll make those private?  We’ll see.  I’m still deciding how to approach this.  

I did make sure my cast knew that I was using my computer for note-taking and I wasn’t just like, playing on facebook during rehearsal.  

- martha graham 

I need to do this.  How do I do this?  There are too many thoughts for today and yesterday.  

I just rolled up in a meeting I was overhearing at the coffee shop about events at the train station.  They were planning a “100 years of trains in Hattiesburg” event.  I stood up in front of +10 people and told them who I was, what my dance was, and what I wanted to do with it. 

They seemed interested and gave me a phone number to call. Today might have proved productive after all! 

This just shows me how much I’ve grown as a person.  I’m not sure I could have done that even last year.  I definitely wouldn’t have even considered the idea of doing that two years ago.