Life is but a dream

It's soon going to be April. We are inching forward. This slow climb is a good steady pace, somedays as easy and fun as waltzing, others like the hardest most rugged mountain climb, snow laden cold, and yet there is always a sun that warms as the day gets brighter. Today's post is about 'soft issues'. As an international student doing a choreography production, doing something for an extended period away from family and loved ones is not easy. I miss India often and I miss the ease of family life. I celebrate the friendships I have here and the sense of being loved and cared for is something I cherish. If the environment in school doesn't tangibly carry that it drains your spirit. And so I go back to the whole process of doing things, how you do it is so important, more important than just accomplishing a goal or target...because human beings are human beings, dancers are not inanimate objects that you program to move a certain way...or at least I do not want to create such dances. I've tried to bring a culture of love and honour when I am in the studio, and while for some this is alien and unnecessary, I know deep down it makes people start to act more from the heart, in honesty and with integrity. My last week has been hard, but the solo is progressing, and I'm learning alot. In addition to research and composition study I will also be adding a technique class to my studies this semester. I believe it will feel wonderful to be dancing in class again. Not planning seems to be key right now, just focussing and moving ahead is all I must do. I have to trust my adviser in leading me at the right pace, it means giving up control and just floating...it's something I have to choose to do, because I control how much I trust someone, and so I trust...it's from the heart not the mind...and so we keep moving on...Row row row your boat Gently down the stream, Merrily merrily merrily Life is but a dream...

From the heart

Artist: Chu-Yi Huang

This was a fun impression one of the dancers from the group piece did from a photograph of our dance. It is a black and white photograph with a very similar formation and positioning but my dancer painted it with colours, the colours of her imagination, different to what is the actual costume colour. It made me happy to see the freedom and flow of creativity from painting to dance and dance to painting. Beauty captivates.

Mysteries

I'm getting deeper into it...I love watching and learning, doing and being...it is a great experience. I think I wouldn't trade the opportunity I currently have for anything in the world. I had a definitive sense of conviction that I am in the right place at the right time. It was a powerful moment in class last week, when my teacher was demonstrationg something to his sophomore students and it was like a light-revelation( I'm coining that term, because that's what I saw and that's what it felt like.) It made me realize how much more is available to me and how much more I can have access to as a choreographer and artist if I seek the deeper treasures of this great big ocean. I am in wonderment and awe as I journey onward.

Research is progressing well and I find 'walking into walls' happens to everyone. But it's in the increasing ease of finding the doors and knowing the right keys to unlock them that brilliance is revealed. I look forward to witnessing more of this next week. I just had the thought, I feel like I need to expand my descriptive vocabulary in academic work...fun...I am happy to grow. The solo dance broke into something very neat on our last day. Neat because it was wild. We ran out of music to what was choreographed and so I started singing spontaneously(in the way my free spirit does) and the dancer continued from that breath in his spirit. This gave me abundant joy to watch and capture on video. The dance has definitely taken flight into a new direction. We have our second showing next week with Ming and I'm keen to see his response to our delightful discoveries. He will push us into the something better no doubt, it is his favourable ability to accomplish this to advantage. I am a happy advisee. I might also add a technique class to my schedule this semester. Smiles.

'Dream Realms' Advisory Committee

Photography by Grace Chiang and Jia-Wei

I have an excellant panel working with me to see this production is ready for it's public performance next year. Introducing my professors informally is Ping, Chifang, Yaping and my thesis advisor Yatin and Ming my choreography advisor. A friend said wisdom and creativity are the perfect match for brilliance in the arts. I hope I can apply what their years of experience and wisdom can impart to bring a high level of excellance into my artistic expression. The second semester of rehearsing pulls us into the further to go place of journeying.

Capturing beauty...

Art Photography by Grace Chiang and Jia-wei

~es muy interesante

Week One. Two rehearsals, three research sit-ins completed. Good news is that my dancers are invited to join me watching Ming's rehearsal. It is a fun opportunity and I hope they watch with the same curiousity I do, soaking in from the atmosphere the knowledge of years of experience. I have moments of watching a master craftsman at work and I am in perfect delight at seeing little connections happen so easily, effortlessly finding beauty from nothingness.

My young dancer is braving the challenge of his very first solo and a 'not easy' dance. He is breaking into the dance so to speak, a raw four and half minutes outlined. I'm working hard to give him as much input as possible, so that from the very beginning he starts thinking and is concious about quality, timing and presence. I don't want emotion in the dances, but I do want presence. It has to come from your spirit, a deeper place than your soul. For many this is hidden away, shelved. Coming alive from the inside out is what I want. It is painstaking work trying to coach him, but I do it from love...the deep passion inside me that won't let me give up.

Tomorrow I get official photos of the rehearsals and showing, it's going to fun to look at and I will upload some. Next week at Ming's sophomore composition class we get to show our first efforts at rehearsing the solo. Translation on many levels is crucial...it really helps that this dancer is more fluent in English, and I've found more kinesthetic ways to express my own ideas choreographically...defining to the finest detail helps clarify for the dancer enormously. I think if my dancers and I are thinking on the same wavelength than giving them freedom in choosing/creating can work, but given that there is still such a huge gap I have to constantly guide and shape with great care. Heartache invoved, but we're climbing the mountain.

~So much more

Research. One of the great things about this extended time to work on dance is I get to do choreographic research. It's something I wanted to include in my thesis and which I tried to figure out with my thesis adviser, Yatin, for a while. I showed her all kinds of possible ways to include what would have been more of an academic study. We finally agreed that it didn't really fit in as relevant to what I was creating in this production. However now with things evolving I get to sit in on rehearsals for a new piece being choreographed by artistic adviser Ming, for the school concert.

It is fascinating and intriguing for me to watch a piece being made, and to watch it's progress over time. I have not had much exposure to professional or company dance life and so this really feels like a rare and valuable opportunity. The focus of the study is analysing methods of coaching the dancers in different aspects so they 'wear the dance well'...speaking metaphorically with the dance being a beautiful dress, well-fitted, becoming, bringing out the right tone, colour and personality. I really enjoy doing research and writing about it gives me great pleasure. My thesis gets to be written over double the time, so I believe this will develop into something of very rich content.

I'm looking at the paintings for this dance project...The 'Butterfly wing' had a creative process that was powerful...I remember making it, hitting the brush several times over with a force I almost did not control...it has beautiful texture...and quite the unusal blend of colours...it definitely carries a powerful sense of freedom, without the defined lines of structure...I wish I could carry that over into dance...I wish I could bring out the power in movement that comes from deep inside and is not dependent on physical energy...my exasperation right now in an 'aaaahhhhh'...still searching for answers. I start rehearsal with a new dancer doing the solo on Wednesday. Shalom to our creative exploits. Wanting more...

More of a blog now...

Writing to peruse. Writing to clarify. This blog will feel more like a blog now that I have time to update more often and I need a platform to process. My choreography goals have deepened so much more than when I first started...the time and effort it will take to complete this, really shifts the focus from doing a graduate concert to actually expressing myself as an artist and choreographer, being me, in the new transformed way I want to create dances. I continue in this project because of love and passion for what I do, and an eagerness to learn...if it was about the degree I would have probably approached things quite differently. So walking with me, you get to see more of reality and less of the facade that a promotion blog holds...you get to dig your fingers in with me, as I carve and choose and make art shaped from visceral realities. What if dancers were thinking for themselves, where giving abstraction could powerfully connect to inner beings realeasing in outward expression, not from a percieved consciousness but from hidden awareness, a potential still yet so deep it is unreached, untapped...I am certain it exists and I am certain it can be released powerfully...I just don't want to do things in the known and conventional way, though I respect and value what exists...it is something of the natural rawness and wildness that excites me...but I need to find the key. Discovery beckons me.