Choreography is one of the most powerful and versatile places to explore questions, ideas and one's personal self. I feel that each piece shows part of who you are, which requires an increasing amount of vulnerability on the part of the creator and performer. Following are some of my personal choreography in various settings along with my thoughts/process while creating the piece.
Title: Son of Man (2013)
Choreographer: Daniel Carter
Performed by: BYU-Idaho Dance Alliance Dance Company
This is my most recent work that I was commissioned to do for a touring dance company in Rexburg, Idaho. I was asked to do a piece centered on a surrealist piece of art and after much searching I found the painting I wanted to use. I will let you watch the piece first and then I will talk more about it.
This piece was created from the painting The Son of Man by René Magritte. At first this painting looks simple and just a bit goofy, but as I began studying it more I began to find different nuances that brought meaning and depth to the piece. Some questions I explored was how the apple was floating in front of his face? Why does it seem he is staring strait past the apple as if it isn't there? Why does he have two right arms? Why a green apple? Why that particular setting? As I thought through these questions a whole concept began forming in my mind focused on the selling of our creativity in the sense of taking our creative freedom and turning it commercial. I think a question better shows what I am thinking, if Steve Jobs created the I-pod and stopped there because it was such a great invention and just focused his creative juices into that project because it makes him money...how much would have never developed from him mind? Same with many artists, when one finds success, does that commercial success bind that persons creativity to that one idea, or does that person continue to take risks and allow their creativity the same freedom that brought that original idea to light?
Shifting from concept to movement, I gave myself a few challenges in this piece to continue to stretch myself as a choreographer. Creating from a painting was one, having a prop another, but the main challenge that I felt would stretch me the most was the theatrical text portion in the middle with the auctioneer. I believe that as we create, these sort of challenges are important to take on so that we can discover different parts of ourselves that aren't manifest so often which allows more and more of our whole selves to be present in our creations, and in our lives.
Title: Win? (2012)
Choreographer: Daniel Carter
Performed by: BYU-Idaho Contemporary Collegiate Company
I was commissioned to create this piece in the Fall of 2012 and was given the freedom to create without guidelines, so I gave myself some personal guidelines. I always like to have a challenge when creating a piece so with this one I decided to only use text for the accompaniment and to try to use elements of Tanztheater, with a lot of focus on works by Pina Bausch. Before I talk about my process of creating the piece I would like for you to watch it so you don't have a my bias and thought process distorting your personal experience of the piece.
Many questions lead up to me finding the intent of this piece, but the main question I focused on was "how should we love in war?" This came from thinking about the pain that we experience in war, or even in contention within family, or school, or any sort of group or relationship, and how many times that pain is experienced because of the love that we have for someone affected by the situation. We don't know what the outcomes of that conflict will be, we don't know how we will be affected by it, but many times it is through loving another that we are burned the most. So is it worth it to love in conflict? and if yes how should we love?
That is what I explored in this piece, and I found a lot of understanding for myself and where I stand on that question, but one of the most intriguing parts of creating this piece was working with the dancers to help them come to understand the emotions of anger, love, and loss. I worked with many young dancers who were freshmen in their undergrad dance program, so they hadn't had the chance to really mature as dancers, which gave me the opportunity to challenge them and help them understand these emotions in contrast to each other. Anger was the hardest for them to grasp because many had never had reason for anger, their lives had been very blessed, so I took them there, and helped them understand that emotion which resulted in a truly passionate fight scene in the middle of the piece. This piece wasn't so much about having "dancy" movement, but rather striving for honest movement, such as we see in Tanztheatre. If you have any questions about this piece feel free to comment or send me an email, I just don't want to fill up pages with my thoughts on it. Hope you enjoyed it and I hope it was thought provoking.
Choreographers: Daniel Carter and Kamrie McCandless
Performed by: BYU-Idaho Dance Alliance
This was an interesting piece to create because it was the first time I was commissioned as a choreographer and had to fit the eye of the artistic director. My friend Kamrie and I got asked to make this piece for the dance company at our school because of a piece we had created a year before called Freak Me Out (which can be viewed further down the page). The concept and intent of the piece weren't that difficult, we were asked to create a piece about early and late marriage and the things learned during it. So we took a comedic approach and created a piece that we were very happy with and that was unique and just made you laugh. The challenge came when our director watched it and then wanted tons of things changed , and those things were what really made the piece a "Daniel and Kamrie" piece; luckily we got to do it and so we changed the piece and showed it again and more changes were asked...it was a very huge learning process that taught me a lot about myself and what it is like to work for an artistic director who wishes for your piece to match their vision and not your own. In the end it worked out great and was well liked by many, but I realized that it hurts to have your work changed and manipulated by others, because it is personal to you, and not an easy place to come from.
Title: Will Fatigue (2012)
Choreographer: Daniel Carter
Performed by: Bianca Wilde, Louisa George, Sydney Smedley, Janae White, Jennifer Franzen
This was my first deep modern group piece I choreographed, and it was this piece that came to teach me so much about myself initially as a choreographer. One technique I experimented with while creating this (and continued using in later group pieces) to find movement was for the first rehearsal I brought a camera and set it up on a tri-pod and recorded the whole rehearsal. The content of the rehearsal involved a lot of experimenting as well as tons of solo and contact improvisation. I then went home and watched through all the footage and marked movement in the footage that resonated with me and the intent of the piece. I then clipped it into one video and watched these movements...until a dance started creating itself in my head. I have come to believe that through this method of harvesting your movement from your dancers you come to not only have movement you know your dancers can do, but also will be personal to them. Then, as I teach them movement sequences I will refer to the sequences by the name of the person I got the movement from which brings a sense of ownership to that dancer and I believe weaves my dancers more thoroughly into the choreography.
One of my major influences for this piece was the movie Pina (2011) about the choreographer Pina Bausch. I loved the risk and honesty of her movement, and it was really my study of her that brought about my deep love for Tanztheater which influenced some of my other pieces. So enjoy the piece and I will talk more about it after.
The question/concept I explored for this piece was based around the Golgi tendon release, but in life. In other words "at what point in life/trials will we fatigue to where we literally can't do any more?" So in other words, we release because it would kill us to hold on (like the Golgi tendon release for the muscle). Then with that I explored how much further we can go if we have someone else to support us at that point, and the fatigue that can impose on the supporter. Many paralleling concepts in life include death, break downs, addictions, upholding moral stand points etc... I believe the need for that support is something we forget because we are so wrapped up in ourselves, or we are too scared to fatigue ourselves, but if we aren't supporting others, why should we expect others to support us?
Title: Willing (2012)
Choreographers: Daniel Carter and Louisa George
Performed by: Daniel Carter and Louisa George
This piece came as a result of a series of movement studies done by my friend Louisa and me of the course of a semester. We decided to start working together to discover what amazing movement we could accomplish together because of our strength. We had recently become fascinated by the dance company Pilobolus and wanted to see how weight sharing combined with solid strength and technique could accomplish. The first form of movement we studied was pure muscle shapes, basically what shapes we could create with her total weight on my body as we shifted to create different poses. The second was constant contact; we focused on continually shifting my weight to her and then her to me to see what structures we could make from the architecture of our bodies with each other. Third we focused on weight shifting while rotating, focusing on how to get from high to low, from vertical to horizontal etc... without stopping the rotation. Fourth we studied movement we like to call "Weaving" where both bodies constantly are moving through the negative space created by the other body without touching. Fifth and last we studied risky transitions and how to keep them safe through co-understanding the mechanics behind them.
This is probably one of my favorite partnering pieces I have created because it was all about the movement, we did not create the piece out of an intent, rather from study and research of movement. This is a form of creativity and choreography I would like to pursue more for it can really teach you so much about you physically and how you truly function, and what is possible and impossible.
**Much of our movement came from things that were technically impossible because I would create the movement in my head and forget about gravity (which Louisa would remind me of), but instead of accepting "impossibility" we found a way to make it work. Impossible is only in your head**
Title: Voice a Scream (2012)
Choreographer: Daniel Carter
Performed by: Louisa George
This piece shows the influence of my Social Work background the most out of my early works. I created this at the beginning of 2012 just after I had finished a 4 and a half month internship working with youth who were sex offenders. One thing that fascinated but also hurt the most from that internship was delving into not the abuse those children had inflicted on others, but the abuse many of them had received themselves. I came to really feel for those who are abused, and realize many of the psychological traps they are pulled into from the abuse they receive, many of which hold them in the situation far longer (if not forever) than an observer would believe. Or the bind that keeps them experiencing the abuse even after the abuser has been removed from their life. The desire that burned in me during the creation of this dance for film was to somehow give a voice, or bring to light the choice that all victims have to change their situation. I know this is easier said than done, but I feel as you watch the video you will see more of where I was coming from.
This was my first dance for film that I created by myself with doing all my own editing and everything, and I would have to say it was an amazing process. I loved trying to mix the world of symbolism, dance, and reality to bring to life the understanding I came to have of the world of a victim. It was quite an emotional process for I had to do my best to visualize myself in the victim as well as the abuser's shoes, which was a very uncomfortable and sometimes enraging place to go...but I learned a lot...and I believe my heart grew to be able to love and support both sides in overcoming their struggles and trials.
Title: Cold Water (2011)
Choreographer: Jane Jackson and Daniel Carter
Performed by: Jane Jackson and Daniel Carter
This was a part of my friend Jane's Senior Capstone project for her undergrad degree in dance. She decided she wanted to create a documentary to help show some of her philosophies she had developed about dance (that is why in the middle a British lady pops up and talks to you, and a guy talks about losing a film festival at the end), so the concept of the piece is all her, I helped with the movement and adapting it to the water.
Our process was interesting because we started creating the dance when it was still snowing outside, so even though we were doing a site specific piece, we had to create in a studio. We did our best to imagine the water and to create as if the water variables were there, and because of this some very interesting things happened. For one I feel that we were much braver in our movement because we were in a familiar place, so when we moved to the water, we were amazed out how our movement translated, and the effects the water gave to the movement. I never knew water could create so much emotion. Our movement became slowed and shaped more in the water, which was challenging since our balance was also compromised from the constant shifting of the ground. This piece made me fall in love with site specific choreography.
Title: Freak Me Out (2011)
Choreographers: Daniel Carter and Kamrie McCandless
Performed by: Daniel Carter and Kamrie McCandless
My journey into the world of comedic dance began here. Most of my pieces had a very serious nature before this, so venturing into the realm of lightheartedness, awkwardness, and cuteness was a huge shift for me. At this point in my dance development I was still pretty new in the realms of modern and jazz dance, so I think what made this so successful was that Kamrie and I moved so differently, which made collaborating on this piece one of great learning because we typically didn't see things the same, but we both understood the humor we wanted to get across. Because of these differences we had to really come to trust each other in our judgment calls, but it was that trust that allowed such a great diversity of movement and character to be in the piece. This piece was a great success at our university and was a transition point for both of us into being sought after to create dances rather than just doing it on our own accord.
Stalker, yup, that is what it was about =) The twist is she actually gives him a chance and...it worked out. It was pretty great to not focus on some deep intent, instead we focused on making the audience laugh and connect easily with what was on stage, which is quite different from how I usually approach my choreography, but it has a place in me for sure.
Title: Lullaby (2010)
Choreographers: Daniel Carter and Dara Gleed
Performed by: Daniel Carter and Dara Gleed
This was a miracle dance. We had just finished performing Endless Night (below this one) which had taken us a few months to create and we weren't planning on creating another piece for a while. One day we decided to get together just to move together and improv for fun. What happened is movement just started coming together on its own accord, we weren't even trying to choreograph, but our movement with the music resonated so strongly within us that we felt that we needed to create a work out of the movement we were finding together. There was an audition for a performance opportunity happening in about a week and a half, and amazingly in two weekends we completed it (we figured if God wanted us to make this piece He would help make it happen quickly), auditioned with it, and then got to perform it that weekend. So from start to performance was about two weeks, quite amazing. This is a very cabaret piece and shows my movement back when I had a stronger ballroom background than modern, yet I was still doing my best to create through movement that spoke to me.
For us we really felt this piece resonated that peace that we feel from protection we receive from others, and in this case from angels about us. We are safe when we trust in God and His angels to protect us. In my early choreography I was working on just getting a message across and experimenting a great deal with new movement, so our intents and portrayals of them were quite simple, we were more searching for new ways of bringing it across instead of through the typical lifts that we saw in other pieces.
Title: Endless Night (2010)
Choreographers: Daniel Carter and Dara Gleed
Performed by: Daniel Carter and Dara Gleed
This is my first non-ballroom cabaret I created (sadly I don't have any recordings of pieces I created before this) and this was before I had any modern/jazz/ballet training at all, to this point I just had lots of ballroom and a small bit of clogging. So when my partner and I decided to create an African/Contemporary/Cabaret piece it was a huge endeavor for us. I would have to say this was the piece that I cam to start believing in myself as a choreographer and a dancer, where I realized I could trust my instincts, and that I had a talent in choreographing that needed a lot of development, but that could be developed. So in the creation of this piece we stuck with the music, not exactly dancing the lyrics, but staying the intent the musicians had created.
This piece, is the real beginning of my love for choreography, and as you view my future pieces above you will see a progression and change happen within the choreography. I have come a long way and in no way do I claim to have made my best work, far from it. I am still learning, but I am not afraid of making mistakes, for it is from them that we learn the most. This is why we study the choreography and philosophy of others, so we may learn from their mistakes and successes, so don't be dissuaded by struggling through choreography, rather seek for learning and progression.
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