Conversational Choreography by Joel Longenecker - Wednesday, March 23, 2005

   Last month I discussed the conversation that takes place between dancers and their music. This month I take a look at the on-stage conversation between dancers and its importance to choreography. This does not refer to actual speaking between dancers but to bodily conversation relating one dancer to another. But before we can look at dancers and choreographers, we should first look at the building blocks of choreography. The art of choreographing can be compared to writing. They are both forms of communicating and have structure and other elements that enable us to communicate effectively. In writing, we learn the proper ways to build a sentence. From there we learn how to combine sentences to communicate a concise idea that makes up a paragraph and how combining paragraphs, we hope to clearly present a thoroughly examined idea. Choreographing is a similar process. And just as writing is more than just putting random words together, choreography is more than just making up movements and putting them together. ADVERTISEMENT So what are the elements of choreography? There are three: time, space and energy. Breaking dance movement down and understanding these basic elements, then manipulating them and structuring them are the tools of a choreographer. Let’s take a Cliff’s Notes look at these elements. Time I consider to be especially important for a jazz choreographer since it deals with rhythm, and as you know by now, for me jazz dance is the rhythmic expression of the American soul. (Please see past articles if you are confused.) Besides rhythm, time also deals with speed/tempo (fast/slow), momentum (accelerating/decelerating), syncopation (varying of accents), and even stillness, which is stopped or frozen time. More than just minutes on a clock, time can become complex and intricate, adding interest to your choreography. Space is more than just our personal space and the place where we dance or perform. Space can be the shape or design that we create, be it with our bodies or the path on which we move. Patterns and body positions can be curved, straight, or numerous combinations of the two. Levels of height along with point, line, and direction are also aspects of space. Space can be very geometrical and clear or abstract and mystical. Energy is the most widespread and vague element of dance. Some words that relate to energy are force, quality, and dynamics. Energy can be active or passive, with strong or gentle force and can be affected by our emotional intent. Starting to choreograph can be as easy as picking random movement, but from there the magic happens as you play with the timing, space and energy. Taking the building blocks and piece by piece adding small elements, you start to create different layers to the movement. The more variety of different elements that you bring into the choreography and the more layers you create, the more interesting your choreography becomes. The number of dancers that you use also greatly impacts what happens because more numbers create more possibilities for layering the choreographic elements. Choreography can be thought of as a conversation. Dance has always been a means of communication, and thinking of moving dancers as talking can be helpful in creating one’s design. It’s easy to envision one dancer dancing a solo as an actor reciting a monologue. Two dancers can be seen as having a conversation that can be alternated with separate monologues. As more individuals are added, the conversations can become more and more complex and more interesting. While unison movement can be great to watch, at times it can be like hearing multiple actors reciting the same monologue. Too much of presenting something the same way, can become stale. In the movie “Amadeus,” based on the life of Mozart, there is a great scene where Mozart is told he is mad if he expects the ear to be able to handle eight different voices each singing a different part because the ear is unable to comprehend so many notes at once. But thanks to the brilliance of Mozart we have music that floods us with many notes, blending to create rich tones. This is also true for dance. The eye is able to take in many different images at once. Last month I stated that music videos are usually unison movement with formation changes and the occasional choreographic element of canon, and I concluded that this was the extent of their choreographic development. To mimic this and set it for the stage creates a problem because you do not have the elements of camera editing and quick paced changing of camera angles, which are what make music videos so entertaining. On stage you need to rely on choreographic elements to develop your works. Hopefully I have been giving you something to think about. Choreography is very complex, the same as language. But somehow we slowly learn and grow. Applying richly developed choreography to jazz concert stage dance will take jazz dance to a new level of artistic merit.