No Destination
My 2nd choreography created for ensemble of Ballet am Rhein, in 2017.
As a dancer, at that point of my career, I was curious, how could I get joy from performing a dance choreography? I felt pressured, knowing my job as a dancer, is to ensure the choreographed dance steps have to been well danced and the dance technique must be perfect every single time, which I found making not much sense to me. First of all, to be perfect, I mean, I could try but what is prefect for me is not for the others. Then 2nd of all, why is that we demand ourselves and practise to stay the exactly the same in every performance, with the same steps? Is it possible at all? We are pretty much a good fakers or we are just robots. Is there no space for doing the same movement with a slight adjustment with the quality? I felt strongly that there was no tolerance that I could allow myself for any changes. But I know that do not make sense and do not have to be that way.
All of these were probably too much thinking but that initiate the concept of my 2nd stage work for Ballett am Rhein.
My understanding for a choreography would stay evolving thus I approached the creative process with the ideas of breath.
Related to the history of evolution of the Earth and living beings in this planet, I also looked deeply into the bio mechanic of human movement. Together with the influences of Feldenkrais, I would make of good use of eye focusing and for each small spiral movement in the Spine or a slight rotation in the joins, I would treat them with the most careful seriousness, in order to produce something organic, together with the breath.
Each time when I would start choreographing, I often challenge myself for something which is not necessarily familiar with , I take the chance to discover what I am curious or practise for something that I would like to develop a better sense.
I had this incredibly colourful adventure with No Destination, that the music of No Destination was newly composed. It was a honourable experience to have a piece of music created for a dance choreography and especially, there were 3 musicians writing the music and each of them were master with different instruments, Cello, Guitar, Electrical Sounds…..The breath at the beginning of the track/music for the choreography, was recorded with the dancers.It created as the same time, a difficult task for the dancers and I, since the music was being made throughout the entire creating process, not until 2 weeks before the premiere of the piece, the music was not settled and the dancers had to learn the music very quickly in order to perform with the steps.
The fact is, I like to create dance for group as well as for each individual dancers, who are involved in my creation. It is a work about the content created by each single dancers and it is certainly about their own present of each moment on stage.
Communication, between me and all the dance artists in this creation, was one of the core learning model that I had given to myself. How can I guide the dancers into a path, which was a bit off from our general repertoire technique/style? How is it possible to encourage the artist to integrate their understanding towards my ideas? How can I be clearer to introduce my ideas?
Thank you for all the open minded colleagues, who were all wonderfully generous and forgiven to my deficiency, together with their support, that ensure me creating is one of the best way for me to learn.
Music – “ No Destination ” from Leopath ( Michael Kamp), Julia Kent, Jaust
Live Painting – Walter Padao
Costume – Hélène Vergnes
Light – Thomas Diek
Balletmaster – Uwe Schröter
Dancers – Christine jaroszewski Yuko Kato, Helen Clare Kinney, Cassie Martin, Virginia Segarra Vidal, Irene Vaqueiro, Yoav Bosidan, Rubén Cabaleiro Campo, Alban Pinet, Eric White
Choreography/ Stage Design – Wun Sze Chan
Photograph – Gert Weigelt (© gert-weigelt.de)
