The first 2 days of the creation process have been fruitful and challenging.
We have made a substantial amount of material and I have already begun to play with and shape it into around ideas. At this stage only some material has been cut altogether.
The main challenge that has arisen for the dancers is how to work from and with characters. The dancers have no previous experience of character driven work, and there is an apparent gap in their understanding of how to embody a character, internally and externally, and how to create material that has derived from such stimuli. The dancers have to be able to generate material from characters (real or fabricated) that communicate (initially) clear signs externally through the movement and give a sense of something internal of the character through the performance: achieved by maintaining a personal connection to the character. Once clarity of the signs/meaning of the movement and its performance have been found, the dancer is then able to play with/abstract the movement and begin to explore the complexities of the signs and meanings within the material.
Some breakthroughs were made today during the creation of on-screen/off-screen leading lady solos. The dancers used silent film footage of Chaplin’s leads and research into the real life women as stimuli. One of the dancers commented that mimicking the on-screen movement made her realise that she had completely confused the movement quality of her chosen character. Once the on-screen movement and gestures were found in the dancers’ bodies, a coherent understanding of the character was finally achieved and rich material created.
A similar process was used when creating off-screen solos by using human gestures as starting points, and stripping back movement to more simplistic forms when meaning became lost. I also spent time with each dancer discussing the real characters, including personal histories, character traits, emotional states, what had drawn them to the character and how some of the processes shared on the workshop day could facilitate a physical exploration into the character. And when information on the character’s emotional state during certain events or relationships were unknown I encouraged the dancer to imagine how they would feel in that situation.
All the dancers had a strong willingness to understand and connect with their chosen ‘real’ characters. However, difficulty would ensue when trying to maintain the meaning that had inspired the movement. Attention to the use of facial expressions, posture and gaze helped to overcome these issues.
The next level of development to this work for the dancers will be how to take on the character of Chaplin, whilst already embodying their off screen character. Matt advised the dancers to try and understand the character of Chaplin to be able to engage in this task. We also discussed that it would be helpful for the dancers to address in more detail how to work with characters and try to build a shared vocabulary on these issues. We also agreed that using terms such as character (for on-screen and Chaplin roles), person (for off-screen roles), characterisation and personalisation would potentially aide their understanding of the processes they are being asked to engage with.
Today several important questions have emerged. Firstly, working with 9 performers is extremely exhilarating, but will this number be appropriate for the piece? For me each character should have equal importance, and therefore it is of great importance that each dancer that remains has a strong enough role in the work.
Secondly, can this piece reach its full potential with found music? Over the past five years I have collaborated with live sound artists and composers, where the music/sound has been created simultaneously with the movement. Today I experimented with different types of found music as accompaniments for some of the material and found it very problematic. In conversation with Matt we both agreed the found music could be limiting on how the work is viewed by an audience.
Matt also shared some perceptive thoughts on the similarities between dance theatre an silent film, including the themes: society and the human condition, and creative processes utilised by both art forms. As expected this commission continues to raise new questions and areas of interest for me.
Lorraine
Silversmith Dance Theatre 