A MULTI-MEDIA PROJECT BY MAIA STAM
I am lucky to have had the luxury of working on this piece for two semesters, or roughly six and a half months, giving me ample to time to experiment, create, analyze, and rework material. I used the first two months of rehearsal largely to create movement in collaboration with my dancers, and to experiment in different ways of manipulating that movement. During this time, I rehearsed twice a week - once with a small group of six of my cast members, and once with my entire cast of thirteen. This structure was an asset to my process in the sense that I was able to create a more intimate, personal atmosphere for those six dancers who were experimenting and improvising alongside me in our rehearsals, but was also a challenge when it came time to “set” choreography on the whole cast. In this stage, some dancers already had a deep understanding of the material while others were just learning it. To overcome this challenge, I tried to use my cast members as teachers as often as possible, allowing them to explain the material to their cast-mates with a combination of imagery, demonstration, and explanation. In this way, the whole cast grasped the movement material in an equally mature way by the end of our first semester. Then, in the second semester, I could arrange and choreograph this movement material without having to spend a lot of time coaching dancers on the quality or meaning of the movement.
When my rehearsal process started, I was so overwhelmed with ideas and images that I was often a little disorganized in rehearsals. There were multiple occasions when I would come into rehearsal with images and improvisation practices to work on with my cast that did not take as long as I anticipated. The first few times this happened, I was unprepared to extend the rehearsal process and use the improvised material in other capacities, so I let the dancers leave early or had them wait for too long before I came up with our next activity. My dancers were very patient throughout the entire process, but I would have liked to have been more efficient with my time. My shortcomings in early rehearsals were evidenced by survey results from my dancers, in which I received comments such as, “Allow more time to break down combinations,” and “set aside [a specific amount of time] to go over material…each week.” This survey, the first of three I sent to my cast throughout the process, gleaned mostly positive results, with twelve of thirteen dancers answering “yes” to the question, “Does the director foster adequate understanding of material - both physically and thematically - through the rehearsal process?” Despite the positive statistics, however, I received a number of suggestions from my dancers on how to improve my rehearsal process, including raising the volume of the music, giving certain dancers more material to work with, and reviewing material more completely. In my second semester of rehearsals, I made sure to take these suggestions to heart. I purchased a louder speaker for use in rehearsals, I was more clear about the role of each dancer and his or her movement, and I spent more time reviewing material on my own time so that I could be very deliberate when reviewing it with the cast.
In the second half of the process, my approach to rehearsals became much more organized and specific. With the movement material created, I was able to explore different ways of expressing the narrative and characters within the movement. A large benefit of the second semester of work was that I had a full three hours of rehearsal with my entire cast each week. Because of this, the piece started to take form very rapidly at the start of the second semester. Once sections of choreography started to come together, I was able to show sections of the work to different audiences and receive feedback. This gave me a sense of whether or not the narrative and images were coming across, and how I could clarify them. The dancers also appreciated the additional feedback, as it gave them an added sense of accomplishment and and motivation. My second survey result, received halfway through the second semester, yielded many complementary comments such as, “I like how the director splits up the time…” and “Very committed. Very productive.”
Once I had completed the choreography for the piece from start to finish, I had ample rehearsal time to coach movement for things like timing and uniformity of lines and angles. Some dancers struggled with the timing, so a portion of almost every rehearsal was committed to reviewing counts, timing, breaths, and cues so that the dancers could stay together. Because I had over a month to rehearse the piece after the choreography was finished, I was able to use a variety of approaches to clarifying the movement and themes, which was very helpful to the dancers. I also continued to make changes to the piece to clarify the narrative and intent. I tried to bring in a variety of guests to view rehearsals so that I could receive a diverse array of feedback and understand how my piece was read from different perspectives.
The dancers responded well to this process. Not only did they give a stellar final performance, but they again gave overwhelmingly positive feedback in their third and final feedback survey, with all thirteen dancers confirming that they felt artistically satisfied with both process product. A couple dancers suggested that I should have spent more time working on “acting” and “developing character.” Because the piece was finished and the characters were established in the movement by the middle of the final semester, I did spend less time focusing on these aspects and more time coaching the movement technique. The ambiguity of character and narrative choices was critiqued not only by the dancers, but by some audience members as well. Because the narrative was purposefully left open to interpretation, however, this is not necessarily a failure or weakness of the piece.
First Survey Result (October 13-18)
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-KRYRMV67/
Second Survey Result (March 23-31)
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-25VN9V67/
Third Survey Result (May 3-5)