Nothing as Dear as Life

 Distance learning or no distance learning, I was determined my Dance Production class would create a dance together this fall, as they did last year…

When we came back to school, I first told them their semester would have two main focal points: the first was “screendance,” or dance-for-video (for obvious reasons – there was not a chance that we would be able to perform in person this semester) – I mentioned that dance-for-screen is truly how our art form is evolving these days, all over the world, and our task is to show that we can still do meaningful work even if we can’t get on a stage…

… And the second, of course, was dance responding to meaningful issues – I quoted Nina Simone that “an artist’s duty is to reflect the times” and said that dance can be a part of changing the world, whether we dance for resistance or uplift. I told them that we usually create a dance together on some issue, and that last year we went through a long process of consensus-building to get to an issue everyone agreed on – but that this year, it seemed imperative that we needed to respond to the #BLM movement.... and they all were completely on board with that (not a surprise, actually, knowing these students and how focused they can be on social justice issues).

So from there, my role was mainly to help them organize their ideas – I got them into breakout rooms to talk about ideas for the general shape of the dance, out of which came the general consensus that it should start with solos (some said “like our chain dance from last year) then grow through small groups to end with the whole class dancing together in unity, as well as the idea of using quotes by civil rights activists to lead off each section.

I then took lots of suggestions for music and title ideas, and narrowed them down through multiple polls. We narrowed down the music choices for solos (or duets, for those who wanted to work in a pair) to three, and each dancer or pair of dancers chose their music and which name they would honor. I asked who was up for choreographing the small-group sections, and six dancers stepped up, serendipitously all seniors.

For the ending section with everyone, I asked the four seniors who were veterans of last year's class to choreograph (that was one of my only real inputs in the process). My role from there was setting the small groups (three of them, two choreographers each) and facilitating the rehearsals. The small groups naturally happened in breakout rooms, with many of the choreographers sending their dancers videos to practice with outside of class; for the full-class rehearsals,  facilitating on Zoom meant a lot of watching everyone and checking to see if they all understood which foot and hand the choreographer was using, since some screens come out reversed and things can be really confusing! And of course, once rehearsals were done, I spent a lot of time nagging kids to get their videos to me for editing (they all had three to turn in: one solo or duet, one small-group section, and one for the final, full-class coda), and editing them all together (this was by far the most complex video-editing project I had ever done!).

The piece came out to over ten minutes long, and was beautiful in the variety and passion of their dancing… My one and only choreographic input was the very end – after the choreographer of the very last section ended the whole dance with a long slow movement, reaching toward the camera, I thought it would be nice to bring in the photos of those they honored, one by one… I proposed that to the class, they liked the idea so we went with it – otherwise, as usual, the dance was entirely theirs, I functioned only as facilitator and video editor.

I was incredibly proud of what they did – the dance was powerful, and reminded me more of my class at EOSA, who created their dance on youth killings in Oakland all those years ago, than any other class I have taught since…  and I hope that this experience creating such a serious and socially relevant dance (even virtually) may stand us in good stead for next year’s class and beyond. 

more choreography projects on Zoom

 We only had time for four choreography projects for the Jazz 1 (Beginning dance) class, owing to the 4x3 schedule and having to condense the entire year’s curriculum into one semester. For the third project I wanted to give them a version of the project that is usually our fall semester final – contrasts in tempo, level, and size/range. I usually introduce this one with a quote from Doris Humphrey about staying away from “the deadly middle.” In this situation, I figured that three elements in one project was really too much for Zoom, so I concentrated on the two that we hadn’t already covered (tempo and size/range). Unfortunately, even the two different elements made life too complicated for our distance learning world, as this was our least successful project – only a few groups truly showed what I would consider real contrasts or opposites in both tempo and  size… perhaps showing real size contrasts is just too much for small spaces! So this is the only project I plan to change for my 4th-period Jazz 1 class, which meets during the spring semester – I think I will revert to the simple tempo variations project which is usually the lead-up to the contrasts final when we are in person.

Difficult third project notwithstanding, I was not about to let go of our usual year-end final: narrative form. This one is important to me, as it really helps set the students up for the idea that creating dances is not just about creating interesting steps, but is also a form of communication… I set this one up the usual way, with a video observation of a few short narrative dances or excerpts: a large chunk of Paul Taylor’s Snow White, the final crypt scene from Romeo and Juliet (I have the ABT version, with Natalia Makarova), and the “Rosa Parks” section of Gordon Parks’ Martin. Then I just set them in groups (in this case, in breakout rooms) with the instructions that they are to use movement only to tell a story – whether a famous story that we all know (like Snow White or Romeo and Juliet), something from history (like Rosa Parks), something from their own lives, or something they make up. I remind them that a real story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and something has to actually happen – but beyond that they are free to create whatever story they would like.

Of course, the added difficulty this year is that it is so much harder to tell a story when none of the dancers are in the same place… But some of the groups came up with very creative solutions to the problem of narrative on Zoom! One duet used a bear costume
and multiple virtual screens to dance Goldilocks and the three bears. Another pair created a story about a girl drowning in the ocean and getting saved, and managed to throw the life-preserver (actually a big round pillow that they both had in their houses) from one screen to the next. And a quartet used extensive (and well-planned) video editing to tell the story of Cinderella – my favorite part was how they took advantage of two of the dancers having similar staircases in their houses, so that Cinderella could lose her shoe in one scene and the prince could find a shoe on (what appeared to be) the same staircase in the next scene! There was much creativity all around, and I was so happy that they finished the semester this way!