I traveled last semester with the school of dance majors at Ohio University to Canada for a dance sharing at Concordia University, Montreal. At the sharing, one student spoke about how she had always done fast movements and was told by her professor to explore other tempos. She performed a slow piece which was interesting and was pleasing to watch. After the sharing, I decided to explore slowness and how my body reacts to slowness.
With this, I knew I would not be working with music. I rehearsed about six movements and slowed them down, adding different shapes and gestures. I rehearsed it for a day and presented it in class. Surprisingly, everybody loved it and I was given ideas to make it interesting. One idea that came up was to perform it in an enclosed space (between two buildings, in a confined place, in a box, etc) and shoot a video of it to present in class. I decided to give it some time to let the ideas sink in well so I could come up with something mind-blowing.
One day as I was in my car trying to make a turn, I noticed how the cars filed past me in both directions and an idea dropped into my head. I decided to perform this in the middle of the street with cars filing past me. I began to look for possible streets that had spaces in-between them that I could perform there. Also, I realized it should be a place where people will be walking around, crossing the streets, and going about normal daily lives. I located the street behind the Ohio Union as it had people walking to the building and from the building to the Oval and other parts of campus. I asked Jonathan after a class in the Tent about dancing in the middle of the street and he said once I’m being safe, I would not need permission from anyone. “Perfect” I exclaimed, then moved on to speak to my colleague Yukina about helping me shoot in the middle of the street.
The shoot turned out great and with some editing skills learned from my Dance Film class, I made an amazing piece. This piece is a piece that I will rework in the future and submit to a dance film festival.
The Creative Process 