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  Rhiannon
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Rehearsal 3: Love Me Tender

20/11/2015

 
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I knew in this rehearsal the scene I wanted to create, the mood of the scene and the music but I didn't have the choreography.  I went to the rehearsal with the idea that I wanted to create a scene about the delicacy of the body after childbirth and in this specific story after a caesarean section.  I wanted something which showed that you could only move with the help of others initially after birth.

I thought about using some trust exercises to begin but on the way to rehearsal I remembered some excellent exercises where you sculpt the other performers into different positions and a way of developing choreography (which I use a lot) to come from these sculpted positions.

The exercises worked really well and I later learned that the process was really necessary to arrive at the fairly complex choreography.

Once we had a cycle of movement between the different sculpted positions I introduced the music to the dancers and we discussed making the movement more tender.  I still hadn't discussed with the cast what this scene was about. From the cast's perspective they were still just trying to execute a choreographic task. 

Having introduced the music and the aspect of tenderness I asked them to repeat the cycle of movement with the dancer now able to move more for herself.  Then on the third cycle she moved unaided.

We found the music ran out before the end of the movement which I love as it does accentuate the final few seconds of movement.  During the break we discussed the meaning of this scene and me and Mary discussed childbirth with the two Graces and the impact it has on your body.

It was a really productive rehearsal as we came away with not just a new scene but a really beautiful new scene.

Marketing the show

18/11/2015

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This week Justine Reeve who is one of the other choreographers performing on the same night as us spent time developing a joint flyer for our night and making us a banner for our e-mails. 

It is a great coincidence that the other two choreographers are also both female and mothers.  In fact Simone Mousset had her baby just a few days after me! Wow! Justine has two children.

We all had discussed how on our night we should highlight this fact since there is such a big ongoing discussion in the contemporary dance scene about the lack of female choreographers.  We all had to juggle the realities of family life and choreographing.

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Rehearsal Two: The Making of Baby

13/11/2015

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We arrived at Hither Green Dance Studio which was a new studio for us unfortunately the studio was at the top of the building which meant carrying Dylan in his pushchair all the way to the top.

Today I arrived at the rehearsal with the first couple of minutes of sound for the show edited together and eager to get a reaction to it from the cast.  I played the sound and then talked through about what was happening on stage during each sound segment.  The opening and closing of the piece are always particularly important moments for me and I see them as being crucial opportunities to grab the audience's attention and imagination.  I had been working on the idea for the opening of BABY  for some time so this was the first time when at last we would be developing the choreography in the studio.

It was better than I imagined when I gave Grace Kemp and Gracie-Jayne Angel two tasks in order to develop the choreography for the opening few minutes.  I was really happy with the dancers own input into their instructions and the way they made the roles their own.  There is still much work to do on the scene and it will be layered with other things such as the film projection but I am really happy with the way the piece is developing and the talented dancers I am working with.

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Rehearsal one: The Making of Baby

6/11/2015

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Today was exciting as it marked the start of a new weekly routine for me and Dylan.  It is a lovely time in the process of making a new devised show as the piece begins to emerge with every new rehearsal.  By December I should have a clearer picture of the show and a percentage of it should be choreographed.

The journey with a pushchair and baby in tow was not easy plus the weather was awful which didn't help.  I took the worst route on the train and tubes and would have been a lot better off if I had taken the time to plan routes without so many stairs.  I have it all planned for next time we go to The Place.

Since the casting session I had added a new cast member.  Laura D'Italia will be the fourth member of the cast and I will no longer be in so many scenes due to the fact that since pregnancy I have been dealing with sciatica which has now got very severe and causes me a lot of pain.

In this rehearsal we picked up where we had started at the casting session with the sleepy mothers scene.  I explained to the cast that I wanted to concentrate on this scene and get it more completed because I needed to have some film footage related to this show for me to use for further applications for future performances, residencies, etc.  The plan was to complete choreographing the scene in this session and then next week to film the scene with the cast all dressed in black.

Dylan got lots of attention in the studio and was very well behaved and nobody seemed to mind too much about the smell of one particular nappy change.

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After three hours of working on one scene with the same track over and over again we got the draft choreography to three and a half minutes which I was quite pleased with. It's a start! Its only a month until tickets go on sale so I do feel the pressure to get more and more of this show made.

We finished the rehearsal with me promising to introduce a new scene next week just so that we can have some relief in listening to a new piece of music!

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    Rhiannon's Blog

    Work:  The Promised Land (2018), Mr President (2018), Voodoo Child (2017), The Last Dance on Earth (2016), Baby (2016), The Legacy (2014) and She Walks in Beauty (2011). Performance maker and teacher.
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