Tuesday, May 8, 2012

New Solo

Hi everyone,

Well, India was amazing, and I'm back in New York now and working on a new piece. This one is quite a departure from the last 9 years or so! I've been choreographing and choreographing for almost a decade, and not doing very much actual performing. And for the last year or so my dancers kept saying things like 'ah, you should be in this part' / 'this is your solo, I don't think I should do it' / 'you should dance more' etc. (You can't get much clearer than that last one really.)

The gracious people at Movement Research gave me a performance date this spring as part of their Wednesday night Open Performance Series, so I figured this might be a good opportunity to listen to the dancers, dust off the leotard (read: get into shape) and step out.

The idea for 'Flipped' (working title): Most dance pieces have one choreographer and several dancers. In this case, I wanted to flip the convention, and invite several choreographers to individually set material on one dancer. I would also flip my familiar, safe and established role, and be the dancer rather than the choreographer.

The learning curve in this process has been steep so far, and incredibly rewarding. So far, I've had the pleasure of working with Hunt Parr, Krista Racho-Jansen, and Erica Frankel in the studio, and tomorrow I work with Matthew Westerby. I intend to write more about the process in upcoming posts. 

In the meantime, here's the date for your diary for the premiere of this work:

Wednesday May 30th 2012
8pm
Open Performance will be held in the “Great Room” at the Space located at 138 S. Oxford St. in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

- Rachel 
Twitter @expandance


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