Process: Work through each step, but don’t read ahead. Move onto the next step only after you have completed the previous one with thoroughness. Instead of peeking ahead, fully engage in developing the creative idea for each step of the way. These are solos that you will create, but you may do “parallel play” with a partner if that is fun. Each step has a time associated with it. Work for the fully allotted time. We will do some of this assignment in class.
HEADS UP: This poem is about anxiety, written in response to Covid isolation,
Step One: 10 minutes
Create a movement response for each of these words. Fully create your movement response like we have done before. Love your movement. Be specific and clear (movement for the PERFORMER). Apply your best movement thinking/performing to your responses. You will string all the movements together to make a string, but pay attention to each “bead” on the string. Use Laban method to explore range by asking questions about: What are the direction choices? (Direct/indirect) What are the timing choices? (Suspend/sudden) What are the weighted choices? (Heavy/light or bound/loose). Also apply Elements of Dance, Siegel and Nii-ya ideas. Some tips about creating movement from words can be found here.
The words that you will create movement from:
- disruption
- unraveling
- touch as a tether
- severed
- lean into
- be held by the unseen
Memorize and be very clear about this string and how the movements connect to one another for seamless delivery before moving on. If you are working with a partner, show them your string and see theirs as well. If you need more than ten minutes, do it! But not less. If you feel like you are done, keep working for the fully allotted time anyway.
Step Two: 25 minutes
Access the text. This poem is our source text material. Watch the video of the poem “How to Be at Home” by Tanya Davis. (The poem is also transcribed in the description). Take your time. Don’t rush ahead. (5 minutes)
After having listened/read the poem, focus just on the last stanza. Copy and paste the last stanza into your journal (see below), or hand write into your journal. With a different color pen or pencil, annotate the last stanza. Make personal connections (This makes me think of…), use literary analysis to make observations, ask questions of the author… Take 15 minutes for this annotation.
If this disruption undoes you
if the absence of people unravels you
if touch was the tether that held you together
and now that it’s severed you’re fragile too
lean into loneliness and know you’re not alone in it
lean into loneliness like it is holding you
like it is a generous representative of a glaring truth
oh, we are connected we forget this, yet we always knew.
-Tanya Davis
After you have completed your annotation, share with your partner. You can photograph or scan your journal page and exchange with your partner. See if you want to add any additional ideas to your annotation. This annotation will be saved as part of the documentation of your process on this assignment. Take the final five minutes for this exchange.
Step Three: 20 minutes
Here is where it might feel like you are patting your head while rubbing your stomach, but follow along! Have fun. Approach this as a direction from a director/choreographer. You are expected to assemble these layers as a performer delivering meaning, communicating to an audience with the parameters set forth by the director/choreographer.
Say the last stanza of the poem while doing the movement string from Step One. It will feel slightly odd (maybe, or maybe not), but be persistent. See how the movements provide a subtext for the text. Find places that you particularly like and enhance them, adjust other places to make a fit. The only thing you won’t do is: create new movement or new text.
Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse until you can perform yourself speaking and moving without a glitch. You will have to memorize the text and your movement and how they fit together.
POST YOUR VIDEO HERE
Text & Movement 1 – Carissa
It was interesting to work with the words before I heard the rest of the poem. The lack of context was somewhat freeing because I could work directly with the word without thinking of how it was supposed to fit the larger piece. Then, when we added the full text, it was fun to see how my movement fit with the text in ways I didn’t expect, like how my movement for “severed” actually ended up going with the lines about leaning into loneliness, but it still made sense overall.
Text & Movement 1 – McAfee
I openly admit that I struggled a lot with this study due to trying to “pat my head and rub my stomach” via script and movement. I know I certainly ended with movement I would not have choreographed having read the full poem beforehand, and like Carissa above, I definitely enjoyed seeing where my generated movement aligned with the final stanza versus where I feel the movement contradicts the script. I think it would be interesting to ask an outside observer if they also felt that certain movements contradict the text, or if an audience would find connections that I haven’t noticed, having known that the movement was generated independently of the words’ full context.