“A Body, A Body” From influence of external sources, Noah and I are creating a dance, exploring the concept of bodies and body image. We decided in our first meeting on November 15th that we will set boundaries for ourselves, as I have written in my Pilot journal. We decided that we would perform in Arts Bash and that our piece would be 7 -15 minutes. We wanted our dance to be “directly inspired by something”. Our next meeting would be 20 minutes of dance improv to the media piece we brought (either a video, song, podcast, essay -- first deciding to read/listen/watch or go ahead and dance simultaneously). Then, we would have a conversation for 15 minutes.
So, for our next meeting we spent 20 minutes playing a podcast that Noah supplied and a video I supplied. Then we talked at our desks for about 15 minutes. We decided that the topic that really resonated with us was the relationship people have with their bodies and their body image. Noah recommended a performance space he had his eyes on for a little while, the back stairwell near the pilot room. Since then Noah and I have had some conceptual meetings, researching, watching, and reading media we have found that deal with bodies. This has been partially due to the fact that sickness can get in the way of the motivation to feel well enough to dance, for Noah has been sick. Now we have our next meeting on Wednesday the 20th during last band. Then we will establish a more specific shape of our performance. We will try to decide the audio we will use, the movement we will explore, and the capabilities for our space in terms of set up and movement. We are still in the midst of this project so there is not much to determine yet or what could be done better. However, I can say that setting boundaries and choosing a topic that Noah and I both feel we can connect to will help us be successful. I do not think the Arts Bash will be the end of this project. I predict that we will be able to adapt and develop this piece further after our first performance. I know we have mentioned finding other performance opportunities for the dance we create, so that is something we will probably pursue.
Note: Noah and I took a video of our 20 minute improv session, however he has yet to upload it so we are unable to view it at the moment.