Reflecting on this process brings up so many fun times but also some struggles. We began working on this study at the beginning of April, with a clear idea in our minds. This being a duet with Alexa and I, we wanted to focus on something that relates to us both. That being said, we came to a common ground and decided to focus our final study on grief. This idea that we had was so solid in our minds and there was no way that we were changing it. Within the span of the same month, Alexa’s grandmother had passed away while my friend from high school had as well. We thought that this was the right time to elaborate on this topic. We knew that we were basing our piece off of grief and how it affects one’s life, but we wanted to do something a little different. After playing around with the music and really thinking about the concept, we came to a conclusion that we wanted a progression of the stages of grief, focusing on the acceptance stage. We didn’t want the dance to be a sad and emotional dance, rather an uplifting dance that focuses on being there for someone else. Our core idea description was “The feeling you get when you lose a loved one and how that grief affects your life”. We were interested in exploring how friendship and being surrounded by friends who love you really matters in a time like this.

 

Our piece is titled “tuning it out”. We gave the piece this title because of the music and the meaning behind it. Basically, our music is a compilation of 3 different songs with radio tuning in between. The first “song” is actually spoken word from a Ted Talk. It was “When someone you love dies, there is no such thing as moving on” by Kelley Lynn. The second song is Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers and the third is Sleepwalk by Santo & Johnny. The last two songs being used are from around the 60s, so we really wanted to incorporate some quirky and unpredictable movements that could flow really well with the style and feel of the music. Alexa and I were also striving to make the movement big and travel a lot. I would say that we were pretty successful in that aspect. Playing around with spacing and travel caused us to really focus on our facings. We received a lot of feedback from our peers about our facings and how they thought it was interesting and innovative.

 

The process took a lot longer than expected. We had to spend a lot of time outside of the studio to work on it. There were several times where we got stuck and were not quite sure what to do and were kind of in this rut. A way that we got out of our “rut” was just by playing some music that we enjoyed listening to and improving a little. We would also do room reads where we would take turns naming thing in the studio and making movement based off of those things. For example, I would say clock, and Alexa would make up a movement based on the first thing that came into her mind. Then it would be my turn, and so on and so on until we collaboratively made up a phrase. We mainly used choreography that we just came up with on the spot, from our room reads or from the gestures that we had made in the beginning.

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We were questioning how our embodiment of the material and the use of the performance space affected the piece. We really tried to review a lot of the material and record ourselves a lot in order to help this process. We would look at the videos and see what space we were using a lot and what space we were not using at all. Watching videos was very beneficial because not only did it allow us to understand our use of space, but it also gave us a better look at what choreography we were using and when we were getting too repetitive or when we should repeat certain things.

 

Overall, I think Alexa and I were successful with this project. I definitely feel like it is not completed though. I feel like we were on such a time constraint that we were not really able to process everything that was going on. We put a lot of time and effort into this piece but I also feel like it is one of those pieces that cannot just be made in a month, but rather a lengthy process. This piece definitely has some progress to be made and I hope in the future Alexa and I can come back to it.