Morgan Goodwin Professor Kelly Ferris Lester Junior Choreographic Project 30 April 2020 The Obstacles Between Us Originally, my process in creating “The Obstacles Between Us” began with the initial inspiration in November 2019. I was inspired by a podcast I was listening to at the time, called “Heavyweight” by Jonathan Goldstein. Each narrative unfolds in approximately an hour or less, detailing a person’s search for answers to past events. Often times this includes contacting another person to rekindle a relationship, gather information, or seek closure from the situation. Individual accounts drew me in with their vulnerability and riskiness, two things I eventually found continually resurfacing throughout my choreographic process. In each episode, someone expressed their desire to find a figure of the past and what kept them from searching or discussing their pain for so long. This prompted me to consider my own past relationships and what I might say to those individuals, if I should consider reaching out. Some past relationships I thought of were overall positive interactions; I considered them wistfully as friendships cut short. However, other connections, ones that ended negatively, resulted in hard-learned lessons about vulnerability and resistance. My first thought was to choose one situation from the podcast and create an abstract depiction of it on stage, including bits of the podcast within the soundtrack. From this thought, my second idea was to choose a story of my own to depict within the dance, as a reflective journey. The more I considered it, a connection surfaced between each memory of mine and each story I felt attached to in Goldstein’s podcast; every situation brought a nostalgic quality.
I held on to this word: nostalgia, which became the driving force for the concept of the dance. The word’s importance begged me to search the formal definition: “Nostalgia: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past typically for a period or place with happy personal associations” I circled (underlined) some of the words that felt important to me and continued to research its synonyms and phrases with similar meaning, as well as a few definitions of these sentiments. The following are words and phrases that stuck out to me throughout my research: homesickness, remorse, wistfulness, sentimentality, pining, maudlin, and “hearts and flowers.” These words inspired the choreography for the first phrase created for the dance. The first phrase consisted of gestural, stationary movement done while in a kneeling position. I eventually placed part of this phrase in the introductory section to the dance, taking place in the upstage left corner while the dancer is sitting on her knees, back to back with her original chair. In this gestural phrase, the dancer’s focus follows her right hand sliding up from where it is placed on her thigh to a fist. Suddenly her pointer finger pops upwards, directing her focus to the sky in an S-shaped pattern. Her arms switch quickly in one fast motion, as her right hand covers her eyes, and her left arm is outstretched towards the ceiling with the palm open towards the corner she is facing. Her position switches suddenly again as the right arm reaches the ground to prop her up, and she leans back to the right diagonal. Her left hand takes the place of covering her eyes. She then arcs in high release from upstage to downstage, parallel to her corner facing, while her arms follow the motion. Facing downstage, she sweeps straight arms in a circular motion to clap together before they sharply pull into her chest, elbows pointed in opposite directions towards the floor and ceiling. This is the final version of phrase as it appeared
in the dance, but it continued to develop over time between November and the beginning of rehearsals in February. The next step in my process, after creating an early version of the phrase described above, was casting. I determined from the narratives I roughly imagined that I needed two to three dancers to convey the story and interact with one another in a way that reflected an isolated relationship. I collaborated with my partners, Carrie Sullivan and Linnea Blakemore, to create a phrase that reflected a dancer’s ability to take risks, perform with vulnerability, find deep plié, become comfortable with efficiency in and out of the floor, build athleticism necessary to execute movement, and become an equal partner to their counterpart. After choosing Jayme Carroll and Frances Davis as my cast, and Mikail Samuels as my apprentice, I began to imagine what a dance would look like for these individuals specifically. Throughout the rehearsal process, I kept a running list of what I saw as Jayme and Francie’s strengths, to include within the dance. Before beginning the process, I also defined my ultimate goal with this dance as, “(Creating) something that makes my dancers shine and… having my art be received and understood for what it is, (regardless of) whether or not the person (watching) liked it.” I did not focus on choreographing more movement right away. Instead I researched ways to generate movement with my dancers, compiled possible music selections, settled on a basic structure for the dance to follow overall, and drew a map of what I envisioned for the flow of the first few seconds in the choreography. I brought all of these tools into my first rehearsal and began by revealing to the cast my intentions with the piece narratively. The original idea was: two people come together and meet for the first time. They explore a connection, and separate again. When they reunite, the relationship does not function the way it once did, and the partnering that was once smooth and exciting becomes arduous, like the relationship hit a dead-
end. Next, the dancers and I completed a writing prompt. I asked them to write about the first time they remember meeting someone significant like a best friend or partner; I also asked the dancers to share their stories if they felt comfortable. Then I taught the dancers my choreographed gestural phrase to help them get a sense of the movement vocabulary I envisioned within the piece. We revisited the writing, and I instructed each dancer to circle words and phrases that stood out to them. Each dancer created a phrase corresponding with their words, and I led each dancer individually through layers of movement devices, personalizing the instructions to each person’s phrase, until their movement was manipulated to my satisfaction. Planning for our second rehearsal, I considered integrating a prop or media element to help make a more powerful stage image. I compiled a list of possible elements but settled on trying to manipulate chairs as places of belonging for each dancer. When Francie and Jayme were apart, their personal chairs were also spaced apart on stage, and when they were together, the chairs moved together. In this rehearsal, we implemented chairs and spatial pathways into the solo choreography the dancers and I developed using their writing responses. Jayme slid onto stage and grabbed her chair, placed in the downstage right corner. She jumped from the ground to stand on the seat. Jayme gathered her upstage arm to her mouth, then followed the elongating motion of her arm pulling behind her to step off, continuing to a deep plié chassé. I set her path linearly across downstage. In Francie’s solo, she grabbed the backrest as a spring board to gain height jumping. This was during Francie’s transition from a kneeling clap in the previously mentioned gestural phrase to a rotation, while moving her arms circularly and standing to face upstage. What I immediately liked in this rehearsal with the chairs was the new dimension it brought to the stage. The dancers were elevated, and the appearance of more “bodies” on stage created a different dynamic.
Before our second rehearsal, I also created a new phrase, based on my own response from the writing prompt in the first rehearsal, and I created a traveling version of the gestural phrase. The dancers and I worked together to play with some partnering ideas to create their first hint of interaction. This moment occurs after the introductory double solos as Jayme and Francie turn with a battement rande de jambe en l’air to face one another. The two dancers release into an arch of the spine while in second position on forced arch of the feet. While facing one another, the movement brought them closer, making it appear as if they were going to begin dancing together, but Francie slides to the ground while Jayme hurdles her with a forearm cartwheel. This particular bit of movement was inspired by an invention method of interpretation. I was inspired by other dances with partnering, so I wrote down a list of descriptions of the movement, such as, fall into someone, turning hand stand, jumping and rolling, over the shoulder, and getting onto the other person using the chair. In this particular example, I asked for the dancers’ ideas for “jumping and rolling,” and it became the dodging moment. Without a transition between the two sections yet, we also began creating the dancers’ initial meeting in the upstage left corner. In the third rehearsal, we continued to develop the dancers’ meeting by editing some movement out to fit the musicality of the song I chose. This rehearsal solidified the first song choice, “After the Tone with Lossapardo” by Crayon and Lossapardo. We were using the song as inspiration initially, and I intended all along to make it part of the dance in some way. I started adapting movement and overall pacing with the composition and qualities of the song in mind. We continued to create partner work together from the list of descriptions, but I also adapted the new phrase to become a dance between two people rather than a solo. I thought about the words I had in mind while creating the movement to help me decide flow between motions and reaction from one dancer to another while making the adaptation. This section moved the dancers from
the upstage left corner to center stage and then to the downstage left corner in a shape resembling a lesser than symbol. To begin the section, Jayme meets Francie at her chair in the upstage left corner, placing her chair back to back with Francie’s. Francie is in a perched penché position, holding the back of her chair. She then steps over both chair backs, onto Jayme’s chair’s seat as a stepping stone to rande de jambe her leg over Jayme’s shoulder. This is a lift inspired by the “over the shoulder” prompt. Jayme pivots 90 degrees to place Francie down opposite of where she was before, as Francie rand de jambes her opposite leg over Jayme’s back before sinking into a lunge. Simultaneously, Jayme sweeps her arms over her head as if to swat off a fly, opens in high release, then swats again, and Francie slides onto her shin to mirror the same swatting movement on a lower level facing Jayme. Then Francie slides from this position while Jayme does a safety foot inversion that changes her direction to face away from Francie. Jayme pauses as Francie takes a slow moment to pull her arms, like taffy, out to either side. Francie then pulls herself into a legs-crossed sitting position. Jayme runs around her partner, guides Francie’s arm in a semi circular motion over her head and sets it to the side, closest to where Jayme is crouching. On a snapping sound in the music, the two dancers snap their heads to look at one another. Francie assists with Jayme’s left leg on her left shoulder in a pistol squat and split with high release. After this rehearsal, I dreamed of ideas to fill the gaps in transferring Jayme and her chair to meet Francie in a short amount of time. Rehearsal four was when we attempted these ideas, but did not stick with any of those initially. I also made a lot of small changes in the dancers’ solos after receiving feedback that Jayme’s beginning pathway, traversing the downstage section and exiting to reenter later, was leaving the stage lonely as Francie began her solo.
The fifth rehearsal finished with a full rough draft of the first song. After the dancers’ contact duet material, they ended in the downstage left corner. I placed a traveling version of the gestural phrase, facing upstage, to move them from stage left to stage right. Overall, the phrase was a moment of unity with slight difference between the two dancers. Both dancers, in synchronization, slid their hands from where they rested at their sides towards the ceiling in a fist before popping their pointer fingers to the sky. This motion initiated the focus following and invisible S pattern. From this moment, both dancers reached their arms, sweeping up and out, to grab and push the right leg to chassé, stopping to conceal their eyes and raise the right arm. As Jayme hinged to the ground and found a lunge position, Francie turned in a double pirouette. Francie matched Jayme’s position, and they continued rolling in unison to another lunge reaching behind them with focus and the downstage arm, towards the downstage right corner. Together they jumped into a straight arm clap and rose from a crouch to find passé with the downstage leg extending straight to their front. Both dancers stepped through this position to a penché with the upstage leg. In this rehearsal I created a new section utilizing bits of choreography we already had imbedded in other phrases. This section was inspired by the idea of a flow chart in movement. The first dancer to move out of a penché position was Francie. She swiveled the penché leg like a corkscrew to roll to her knees and stop in a seated position. Here she repeated the swaying finger articulation seen earlier in Jayme’s solo. Soon after, Jayme started moving with two rolls towards the upstage corner. The idea was that as one dancer starts, the other matches them and moves ahead while the second dancer is stopped, so there are moments of unity and moments of stillness. The two dancers end this section with a modified table top pull through that leaves them laying on the floor. Their heads are together, but their feet are angled apart to opposite
upstage corners. There is a moment of stillness here before transitioning to the second song and phase of their relationship. The sixth and seventh rehearsals were instrumental in deciding the direction of the overall dance. I had a structural goal set in the beginning, but throughout the process I allowed each rehearsal to slowly develop the message organically. Each rehearsal I made and executed plans, but I let the movement, my dancers’ strengths, and experimentation guide the outcome. When deciding the direction of the second song, I leaned into the concept of dead ends and obstacles. In these rehearsals, the dancers and I experimented with the amount, positions, and hidden locations of chairs to discover a shifting and surprising landscape. We attempted different building structures and formations of chairs, diverse sound options for the second section, and different conceptual idea for the lasting image. The sixth rehearsal allowed us to attempt plenty of possibilities, but it was between the sixth and seventh rehearsals that I found direction for the dance’s overall structure. The music I decided for the second section was “Jungle” by Tash Sultana. The song has an electric, lonely quality that creates an echo of what the dancers reflect on stage. The two separate to go in different directions, Jayme towards the two chairs joined on stage and Francie towards the curtains on stage right. Both dancers continue moving in their own way, signifying separate experiences. The focus is on Francie first as she pulls back three curtains on stage right to reveal different structures of chairs. She deconstructs these and reconstructs them into a line with each chair in its own position. Focus shifts towards Jayme as she dances with on chair as her partner, sliding under it and moving the chair beside her. Jayme balances the chair on her head and walks it towards the downstage right diagonal, placing it on the end of Francie’s row.
The next ideas were never fully realized before ending rehearsals, due to COVID-19, but if possible, the structure would have continued as the two dancers met at the line of chairs. In a potential future version, the dancers weave in and out of the structure, executing synchronized choreography with individual pathways and levels. While executing the movement they slide under chairs, stand on top of them, and use the chairs as their partner. Occasionally the dancers find each others’ eye contact, and one will attempt to move towards the other. However, the chairs in their way act as obstacles in the path to reaching one another. As the dancers partner with the chairs, they eventually create a new structure. The new chairs file into a line between Jayme and Francie’s original chairs, distinguished by their different color. In the last few seconds, the two dancers are close to one another, dancing in the spaces of the diagonal line, yet they are divided by the structures. They traverse the line, sliding through, stepping over, and jumping on the chairs, in different ways previously shown throughout the dance, before making it back to their original chair. The lights dim as the dancers find a position reminiscent of their introduction, Jayme standing on top of her chair, looking back with her arm outstretched, and Francie sitting on her own chair, slowly moving her arms in an arc while her chest is in high release. The dancers have slowed their movement almost to a stop when suddenly Francie notices Jayme and begins to traverse the landscape towards her by jumping from one chair to the next. Lights dim and go to blackout before the audience is able to find out what Francie does next and if she makes it to Jayme. To coach my cast in their performance, I gave them directives throughout the process. Strategically, we often focused on one element at a time during a run of a phrase or full choreography. I gave each of them individualized words to apply, such as, deepest plié, breathing, musicality, release in cambré through the back, finish through movements, and take
risks. I also attempted to give them a sense of independence and pride throughout the process by reminding them that the dance is theirs. I was creating it for them to perform, so if a section was not flowing or movement did not feel quite right, I was always open to explaining or changing it. If I continued the process, I would do more single-focus rehearsal runs with different objectives. I also planned to take more time to bond with the cast in more writing prompts and discussion through field trips to grab coffee or take a walk together. Discussing the concept to feed the dancers artistically can be just as transformative for their performance as more practice and feedback. For costumes, I imagined a black short sleeved crop top, with black, flowy, cropped pants for both dancers. I also gave Jayme and Francie pearl hair pieces in different styles, and I imagine the hair as a slick, low ponytail. Overall, I imagined the lighting as warm neutrals in the first song, which slowly transitions to blue in the last minute of the second song, until the stage is saturated with blue in the final image before the lights fade. When Jayme emerges, for her introduction, only the tree in her wing is illuminated, and as she shifts her gaze to Francie, a spotlight upstage illuminates Francie. The stage opens with neutral lighting as Francie begins performing full-body movement. Lighting reduces on the rest of the stage and glows above the dancers when Jayme meets Francie in the upstage left corner. During their initial partnering, I imagine three spotlights softly glowing in the upstage, downstage, and center places the dancers traverse while Francie and Jayme are mainly lit by shins on stage left. As they move linearly from stage left to stage right, neutral front lighting illuminates them and dims to reveal a soft spotlight when they are laying in the center of the stage, transitioning to the second song. The direction of the choreography’s split focus in the second song is determined for the audience by lighting. Neutral lighting illuminates Francie at first for almost a minute during her interaction
with the wings and chairs while there is very dim lighting on Jayme. Then the lighting shifts brightness to Jayme’s interaction with her chair, leaving Francie in as much darkness as possible. The lighting starts to become cool when Jayme brings her chair downstage and starts to interact with Francie’s line of chairs. The lighting continues to build in blue saturation slowly and lose neutral front lighting for approximately a minute until the Jayme reaches her last position for blackout. I never defined the relationship of the dancers in a concrete way. I can see many possibilities, and what I hope the audience also sees is the structure of their relationship as the two are individuals meeting for the first time. Jayme and Francie have a harmonious relationship before separating briefly, and obstacles form between them that keep the two from being reunited. The audience is allowed to determine if the nature of the relationship appears to be romantic, platonic, or work related from their perspective; each type of relationship was considered throughout the process. I also attempted to build a nostalgic atmosphere with the movement and soundscape, and I hope the dance would ultimately remind the audience members of a past relationship of their own that had undeniable obstacles. I also want the audience to recognize the dancers’ talents throughout the piece, as one of my main goals form the beginning was to create an equal duet that showed how strong, technical, and artistic both dancers can be. Since ending the process for now, the dancers and I have discussed alternative ways the dance can be performed for an audience. I am open to creating a film adaptation for the duet, as well as, rehearsing the dance for a volunteer show like the Student Dance Organization. With a bit more work, I would be interested in applying it to festivals like ACDA and others in our region to see what the response is. Before pondering the process, I was opposed to the idea of creating a solo with the concept or choreography, but I am more open to the idea now of using
this dance’s choreography or concept as a basis for creating a solo for my senior performance thesis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYhYuE13DXU&feature=youtu.be