This spring semester I took a performance course at Pasadena City College, which meant that I created original choreography for other dancers to perform onstage (and I also participated as a dancer in other choreographers’ pieces).
My background is mostly in percussive dance, and mostly in solo improvisational percussive dance. To create movement pieces, choreographed, and for large groups, was an entirely new experience for me.
It’s been about a couple months since the show, so I figured I should write down a bit about my experience as a choreographer. So here’s what worked, what I learned, and what I’d do differently next time.
Before I get into it, though, let me provide a summary and video of the pieces I made.
First, I made a tap duet with another dancer (Sadie Browne). This was a really straightforward process and I appreciated that. The plan was to dance on two slightly raised tap boards, to allow the sound to carry. During the piece, we switched tap boards a few times by jumping from one to the other, but in general we were firmly on the boards. This meant we did not use the full space of the stage, but we did focus on creating rhythms within the 4×4′ available on each board. When creating the piece, we each choreographed some sections on our own and then brought them together to teach one another. This was pretty easy to do–we just had to worry about practicing and remembering what we learned. We also left some parts open for improvisation, which means that these sections were different every time we performed the piece.
We called the whole thing Soundboard, a sort-of pun on the literal boards making sounds and the part of a string instrument inside that is used to create sound. It’s only kind of a pun because no string instruments were involved in the making of this piece, but that’s okay.
Here it is, if you want to see:
Second, I “made” a movement and physical comedy piece called Out of the Box about rejecting facial recognition technology and stepping outside of prescribed boundaries. I say “made” in quotes because much of the movement was either a score or pre-arranged space for freestyle. Movement scores give instructions for movement, but do not choreograph the movement fully, meaning that it has the potential to be different every time. Freestyle, of course, is up to the individual dancer and can vary tremendously from performance to performance. So, much of my job as “choreographer” was to give more guidelines than rules. There were a couple places where we did have choreography, though–it just did not make up the bulk of the piece, which I honestly preferred. The ethos of the piece is that we, as humans, do not fit neatly into categories or models. To present a piece on this topic where we all did the same movement for the entire performance would be counter to the ethos of the whole thing.
To give a summary of the piece, though: it opened with a film, which ran through some of the dangers of surveillance and so-called “AI” systems. From there, the stage went black and when the lights rose, dancers stood with yellow bounding box props. We danced with the bounding boxes, at times escaping them and at times finding ourselves trapped within them again, sometimes in opposition to gray-clothes “enforcer” characters.
Here is that piece, if you want to take a look. The dancers are Afton Coombs (me), Tylei Morris, Thomas Ng, Zhipeng (Joyce) Zhou, Sadie Browne, Stephanie Chan, Nicole Davis, Mikyla Mendoza, and Kate Sandoval. The film was created by me, with voiceover by Tylei Morris. I also want to give credit to Sophie Wellington, who I met at the Dissident Rhythms gathering in January. It was their idea to do a physical comedy implementation of the yellow bounding boxes using rubber. It was a good idea!
What did I learn from this whole process? At a high level, I learned about stage performance to a degree I never had before. Lighting! Prop design! Music and video editing!
I’m super grateful to the PCC theater shop students. They built the tap boards in Soundboard, and they build the wooden frames used in Out of the Box. They did an amazing job and I felt really lucky to be able to request, design, and see these props come to life.
What else did I learn? How to organize a rehearsal effectively. How to run tech. How to keep the backstage area smooth. How to communicate well.
There were a few hiccups. I had health issues (maybe I’ll write a post about that, someday) that delayed teaching the gray “enforcers.” They learned super last-minute. They did an amazing job on such late notice.
We also lost one dancer, also for health reasons. Originally the piece was supposed to have five dancers holding the bounding boxes, but we ended up with four. This required restaging at the last minute (at the last tech rehearsal, if I remember correctly). Everyone did a great job adjusting. It mostly involved restaging so there were no gaps. I also ended up taking the solos/freestyle that this dancer originally had. This was pretty easy, since I had originally not set aside any time for solos or freestyle for myself, so I had the time and energy to step into that part.
I would really really like to keep working on this piece in particular. Maybe it could be performed again at a different venue, student showcase, or festival, etc. Overall, I learned a lot from the process. As I said, it was my first piece for a stage and one of the first pieces I choreographed overall.
I just want to say thank you to PCC and to Professor Banks-Smith for providing the resources and guiding me through the process. This was such a new and rewarding experience–the mistakes and the successes. Hopefully I’ll be back next spring to do it again. 😉
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