As I observed Line Up’s rehearsal this weekend I quickly learned how complicated the process of a reconstruction is. In the hour I was there the eight dancers watched a video recording of Line Up stopping every few seconds to recreate the movements they were watching. Each dancer had a person in the film to watch and pay attention to their movement. They then would go through the movements bit by bit until the section exactly followed the video.
While watching this, Lisa Kraus came over to talk to us about how difficult it can be to breathe new life into very strict choreography. This made me wonder why is it that a reconstruction is harder to connect with than a new dance? Is it because the dance was made for other dancers who move in different ways? Is it because it was made for a different time? Why isn’t it the same as learning any other choreography?
Because I am performing in Line Up, I have had some of the same struggles with the choreography that Ali is discussing. As we were watching the video bit by bit to learn the exact choreography, I found some of the movements difficult because there were times that the dancer who I was studying moved in a very different way than I do. When learning a new dance, there usually is not an instance in which you have to copy a person's movement EXACTLY as it is being performed. In learning the choreography of a reconstruction piece, there is absolutely no liberty in the movements we are performing in a few of the sections, especially the sections that we studied from the video. It was sometimes difficult for me to embody the movements of another dancer from film- to get the way he held his arm just right, to take the same strides as him, and to simply feel the movement the way that he did. In this particular section that Ali is talking about, the dancers were performing set improvisation. I think this is also difficult for me to reconstruct because it is almost necessary to get into the heads of the dancers and try to understand what they were doing as they were improvising.
ReplyDeleteFrom personal experience as well, I have discovered that it is extremely difficult to take movement from a video and replicate it exactly. However, videos are a wonderful resource for reconstruction and can provide the dancers with a lot of material to understand.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting contrast, however, to when I was observing rehearsals, as the dancers were creating their own movement during my hour. I found this interesting--the ability for the current dancers to have some influence and input into what is performed, but still remain true to previous performances of the piece by creating their movement from the same paragraph that the original dancers did. When I asked Kraus about this, she said that it was a choice they had made during the Reconstructive process--they could have chosen to reconstruct the dancer's original interpretations, but instead chose to have the current dancers create their own. I truly appreciated this.
I observed this difficulty, as well. I believe that the most difficult part of perfecting someone else's movement, especially sections like the one we watched, which originated as improvisation and was then set, is finding the motivation which the original dancer found within themselves when they were first performing. This is a difficult thing to determine from notation and even from watching film. I think that Lisa is an excellent resource to, as Emily said, "get into the heads of the dancers."
ReplyDeleteThe subject of reconstruction came up in a notice from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company today. This is a video and discussion of the reconstruction of Cunningham's 1983 work, ROARATORIO. He discusses the matter of putting movement created for one dancer on a different dancer, as do others involved in the process. Here's the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://dlib.nyu.edu/merce/mwm/2010-11-01/
I viewed most of this video and I noticed that Merce Cunningham described reconstruction as "trying to do exactly what it was even though you know you can't". I thought this related to our past discussion on Tuesday, and the difficulty of embodying a past dancer's movement that you are unfamiliar with. This same challenge occurs with putting movement created for one dancer on a different dancer, however, this reminded me of Merce Cunningham's idea of chance procedure where dancers were asked to reverse and alternate movement. Maybe working on a reconstruction has a similar effect since both forms require thought and determination.
ReplyDeleteThe reconstruction of a dance is not easy. Just imagine performing the dance more than once. Every time a dance is performed, something slightly changes. It can be the way a dancer is feeling, the spacing, or a slight change in the specific movement.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the body does not move the exact same way (or else we would be robots), reconstruction is possible. It is the overall meaning and experience for the dancers. If I were to replicate a move from Line Up, I would not have a special connection to the piece, the way the my peers who were in it.
-Eloisa A.