and while it felt like a lifetime since our last time together
stepping into Chez Bushwick felt just like home.
Many of us experienced large-scale life changes in our time apart--
some small but poignant, others grand and cataclysmic--
but we were happy to be sharing in the creative space once more.
The first half of rehearsal was dedicated to an exchange of ideas:
Where were people at in terms of thinking about the project?
What was the impact of having so many supporters on our Kickstarter campaign?
Which other administrative, personal, and bureaucratic relationships had been established?
The second half of rehearsal focused on sensorial experiences and energy exchange.
Since it had been so long since we had moved in the space together, I encouraged the dancers to elementarily explore the shared environment and the collective energy again. We focused on familiar modalities: sight and touch, and found new ones; smell and taste. We also explored notions of energy created by friction between body parts, between bodies and external surfaces, and internal qi. From this point we began to see how energy could be passed between dancers so that the exchange was actually tangible and somatically understood.
With this heightened awareness and attention to sensorial experiences of energy, we revisited some old phrase work and began to undermine the structure of the choreography that had already been created. Dancers like to call this "playtime," and rightfully so, as the exploratory process of learning to move newly in a previously learned pattern became our challenge.
I am energized and excited about the work to come!
Stay tuned and spread the word, Project Agent Orange is taking off!
