Intellectual and Expressive Blocks (LizB)

This article had a lot of direct applications to my choreographic process. Certainly this idea of choosing the appropriate language for a given situation or problem is relevant to my investigation of what the body can express that verbal language cannot and vice versa. On page 73 the author discusses how verbal language can trick you when applied to the design of physical things. One of the most important things that I have learned is that I cannot simply ask my dancers to take a textual description that I have written and make a dance out of it. Rather we have to go into the studio together and physically do it, and usually it changes in the process. Sure, it may sound great to have dancer 1 throw dancer 2 across the stage, but is it actually physically feasible? To find out, we have to get out of our heads and use our full bodies to solve the problem.

Another expressive block which the author identifies is “the frustration of trying to present concepts in a foreign language over which one has poor control” (pp.81). Technique is necessary for the dancer in order to maximize his/her expressivity and/or ability to communicate through the medium of the body. If a dancer has poor control over his/her body or a limited knowledge of the body in general, then it will in turn limit his choreographic vision. One of the issues that I am struggling with right now is how to teach my dancers to move with clarity and fullness when I am often unable to do so myself. Therein lays my answer: if I am to cultivate this kind of specificity in their movement, then I must first discover it in my own body.

The process of choreographing has also brought my attention to my habits and how they can both help and hinder my creativity. Being able to develop an awareness of the tools available to me has helped keep me from getting bogged down. As the author states, “Our ability as thinkers is dependent on our range and skill with our own tools” (pp. 76). A friend of mine recently commented that “writing a thesis just teaches you how to write a thesis.” Similarly, I view the 360 class as teaching me how to utilize the tools available to me to bring my choreographic ideas to life. Interestingly, on page 78 the author notes that prejudice often causes us to not take advantage of all of the information available to us. This reminded me of something Huer said when we were going over lighting design together during tech rehearsal. Someone asked her what class she wished she had taken in college and she replied “poetry” because of the difficulty inherent in articulating the colors and patterns that make up complex lighting design. Thus, her earlier assumption that written poetry would have little application in her visually, technically oriented craft had proven misguided. In fact, the language of poetry had proven to be the “correct” language for addressing this particular problem.

Personally I like to have as many languages at my disposal as possible. At the end of the article the author weighs the advantages and disadvantages of possessing a “clean” mind versus a “dirty” mind. Personally, I have a “dirty” mind (and you can take that however you wish ;)). My preferred method of working is to first research as much as I possibly can about my chosen topic. Starting with a blank canvas is too intimidating; I prefer to gather as much information as possible and then proceed to draw connections between the materials and distill everything down to its essence. I consider my creative process to be very similar to the process of making maple syrup. First you go out into the woods and tap as many trees as you can. But you don’t just tap any trees, only maples. Thus if your topic is feminist movements in Britain you don’t “tap” sources on male migrant workers in Texas. Once you have gathered the sap from as many maple trees as possible, you then return to the sugar house and mix all of the buckets of sap in one big pan on the stove. You then leave the sap to mix and simmer, until it is boiled down into an entirely new, thick, syrupy substance. This metaphor functions to describe my tendency to gather a bunch of information and then allow it to mix and simmer until I am left with a product that contains elements of all of my sources but is inherently new and different in substance.