Working with voice and text isn’t something I have worked with before, so when I found out that we were going to use it as part of the creative process I was a little nervous, especially as the first couple of rehearsals were online. I was sceptical on how easy I would find it...
Working with voice and text isn’t something I have worked with before, so when I found out that we were going to use it as part of the creative process I was a little nervous, especially as the first couple of rehearsals were online. I was sceptical on how easy I would find it. The first task to introduce us into using voice and text was to create our own written score and to read it aloud to everyone. As it was my first time writing a score I felt a little unsure however this was the case for most of the other dancers as well so that lifted some of the pressure. We then had to combine all of our scores to create a new one using what we had already written. Once this had been formed we experimented with movement that would correlate to the text. One person would read the score aloud and the others would dance the phrase. We then played around with fragmenting the text and changing the tempo, repeating words and the dancers would play around with their movement, doing whatever felt right. We did this a couple of times and the more we played around the easier it became to dance to the voice, instead of thinking what moves we had initially fit with the words. We eneded up improvising movements that helped describe the vocabulary of the score. I have found the whole process of working with voice and text with movement less daunting than I originally thought it would be, there is still that initial panic when it is first mentioned before a task however as soon as we get going the panic is gone and it’s so much easier to get into it.
The creative performance process has been a different and new experience as the first few rehearsals were online and beginning with it I struggled to find a connection with the other dancers as I couldn’t feel their presence the same way one would do in the studio. Now that we are back together again moving in the same room I still found that we were all used to being in our separate rooms. It didn’t feel like we were dancing “together”. However, this slowly began to change the further we got into the rehearsal and I think as the rehearsals continue our connection with one another will grow.