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Dance Dance Revelation

Posted by DCA Theater on March 19, 2012 in January - July 2012 Season, DanceBridge Showcase Winter 2012

Submitted by Madeleine Reber, participant in DanceBridge Winter Session 2012

For me there is often a distinct moment in the process of making a dance at which something starts to come together, or a “something” starts to be there. It is the transition from many scattered bits of movement, ideas, experiments, phrases, and images, to something more like a dance. It’s not that the dance is finished; this is a rougher, earlier stage of the process, but it is the moment when I can believe that there will be a dance. I can see more clearly and have a stronger awareness of which ideas are really going somewhere, maybe simply which bits are the most interesting to me and that feel potent for development. Usually I get to this point in my process later than I would like. There is an anxiety, maybe a healthy artistic anxiety that pushes one to create, to care about the process, to strive for something meaningful. It hovers around the earlier phases of the process, like a little bird (or a whole flock) sitting on my shoulder, asking what I am doing, why I am doing it, if I am creating what I think I am creating…

The voices sometimes continue into a deluge of doubts: “It just looks like a bunch of movement. It is not very interesting. Are you sure you know how to do this? Where is the flow of creativity? Where is the clarity of vision or image? Nothing is HAPPENING HERE!” And then something shifts and something is happening (of course something was happening before, but with less certainty, less speed, less diving forward). This part of the process has more energy and a sense of direction; there is a hint of a path to follow. This happened yesterday morning as I was listening to music in my living room and thinking about the work, contemplating what kind of music might serve it and craving some sound to give another dimension to my ideas. Something clicked, some movement, some different image, and as I improvised I saw a glimpse of where the dance could go.