This piece started as a discussion after class one day when Yukina, John, Q (Quianna), and I were walking down the hallway. Yukina asked if we would like to collaborate on a piece and we all agreed to work together on the piece. We created a group chat to share information and discuss what we wanted to create.
After brainstorming for some time, Yukina had a brilliant idea which everyone was excited about and agreed on working with that idea. We were to write a short bio of ourselves and she will translate the bios into Japanese and have us dance while she read our bio. We emailed our bios to her separately and settled on a day to begin the creating process. In the studio, we started improvising as she read our bios one after the other and we moved to the sounds that we heard in the language. I only realized she was reading my bio just because she mentions my name so that in a way influences my movements because I knew what I sent to her. But when she is reading for the other, I only hear their names but do not know what is in their bio. I’m sometimes influenced by the little personal relationships I have with them, but I mostly focus on the sounds I hear.
We experimented with different ways we wanted to go about the performance, and we settled on having the person whose bio is being read to lead that particular phrase. Speaking about phrases to bios, each person improvised and came up with phrases for their bios and we had to teach each other our phrases. We learned each other’s phrases and we exchanged ideas on how to put them together. We agreed to start with Q’s phrase, transition into John’s phrase, and finish the piece with my phrase. Looked great when everything was put together, so we had to shoot a video of it and present it in class. In class, we had great comments but there were several feedbacks on Yukina being lost in the piece. It was difficult to tell if she was just a narrator or part of the group and this meant we had more work to do. The message the piece suggests is that “these dancers had their own stories and separate lives but have now met in grad school and their lives have become entangled/woven in the fabric of life”. But Yukina was lost in our fabric and we have to find her and weave her together.
We went back to the studio and with the feedback starting rearranging and piece out the phrases to connect more. Yukina never read her bio, she was not dancing with us but rather just walking in between us, so we decided she dances more and becomes a storyteller who is telling our collective story rather than our narrator. She added her bio to the piece and created a phrase to her bio which we had to learn and end the piece with. I enjoyed the several days of brainstorming to come out with something great which will be worth the toil. I enjoyed working with these amazing colleagues of mine and learning from their dance vocabulary. Learning new dance terms like “echoing” which I never knew off and spending every Thursday afternoon on dance should how determined we were about the piece. After the additions, we presented the piece in class and we had had amazing feedback from the Prof and our other colleagues. The effort and dedication we put into this piece were evident in the development of the piece during the second showing. I look forward to spending more days and time with this team to work on more ideas.
The Creative Process 