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Sometimes the most stunning dancing happens in rehearsals. Without the pressure or distraction of a performance, the dancing finds its own pace and edge. A robust studio practice, pumping energy into movement investigation , is a must. Seeking thoughtful and passionate effect, rehearsals balance nonchalant humor with a search for something original and memorable. The rehearsing process becomes the ground from which the creative imagination takes flight. Keeping a direct relationship between physical practice and choreographic inspiration makes things move. The rehearsal process is a storied landscape. Everything that happens becomes part of the work.1 Memory and imagination are housed in the body. Knowing and not knowing, process and outcome, inhabiting the past and establishing new ground, safety and discomfort, being liked and not liked, are all part of rehearsing. The way you treat people, and yourself, in the rehearsal becomes part of the fabric of the work. Develop relationships and complexity. Notice the power differential—the unspoken climate. Consider how to be a person in Rehearsing You have to have hunger and discipline, and I can’t teach you either. Hunger for beauty and the discipline to create it. —Barry Lopez, lecture Day 13 Day 13: Rehearsing • 95 The Forsythe Company Eidos:Telos (rehearsal) Photograph © Dominik Mentzos 96 • making the world, and how to be a community in the room.2 Find skills to foster and maintain engagement, focus, and mutual respect. Notice the language you use when speaking to dancers, or when talking about the work. Quit apologizing, if that is your habit. Role-play; practice voicing your ideas and building mutuality. If you care about people, that’s part of the treatise of your work. Intention is a collective vision within group work. One challenge in choreography is to draw original phrase material from dancers while crediting their vision. Decide what you intend—“choreographed by” or “created in collaboration with”—and let it be the truth of your process. Support the uniqueness of each person, but keep the voice of the dance primary. Ultimately , the work is larger than any one individual. Something wants to move through you as an ensemble, and the rehearsals are the format and forum for this to happen. Daily life is your palette as an art maker; there’s a dialogue between conscious intent and unconscious unfolding. Authentic openings occur in rehearsal. Sometimes fresh movement vocabulary, clear intention, and idiosyncratic textures emerge in the liminal space between rehearsing a phrase and being a person. Being awake to these moments is a skill. You might also notice how light falls on the studio floor, or the way someone touches another person’s arm. Walking down the street, you catch a glimpse of a poster or book cover, the color of a dress, the shape of a pant leg, or a discarded CD in a trash can. Your job is to stay open, undistracted, and available for synchronicities and insight. Getting energy moving in the beginning of a rehearsal allows you to begin shaping the material. Improvising is a good way to start. Exploring together helps build an ensemble mind; there’s depth to work based in experience. Investment in the material helps each dancer author the body within a phrase—making inner and outer connections. Often the bestquality work happens when everyone in the room is available, focused, supported, and invoking their edge. Productivity requires both taking action and surrendering; giving out and taking in. If you are too busy carrying out a preplanned agenda, you can miss receiving the magic. But if you stay too long in process, nothing gets shaped. What’s happening on an external level in rehearsal is also happening inside each dancer’s body; the performer is creating relationship with the material. There’s no “waiting” to connect. What you practice in technique class—inhabiting each tendu or arm reach—carries over in rehearsing. Movements need to be personalized and fully inhabited by each dancer, available to be shaped by the dance maker(s). The performer who rehearses half-heartedly, and then steals the show on stage undercuts the whole. Kinesthetic muscle memory is the dancer’s primary tool for remembering movement, documenting what emerges in rehearsal. Repetition of material means deepening muscularity without getting “rote.” Video and other digital media are essential components for capturing spontaneity and documenting process—an extension of memory. Emotional investment (personalization of images) and spatial markers (where something occurs within the body’s configuration, between bodies, and in the space) help Inviting...

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