The Beginnings of Endings

I can't believe I only have about two more weeks left of working with ETD! The summer has without a doubt flown by, and i’m simply not ready for school to start or for this experience to be over. Last week I put music to the split screen/ mirrored effect videos and Eryc really liked them so i’m happy about that. He wants more videos, but the quality of my videos really just isn’t up to par with what he wants and I feel really bad because i don’t have an actual camera to use. It’s frustrating when money is a factor of you not being able to do your best work, especially when you want to.

The piece that the company has been working on is finally done and now they are setting it to the music that was composed for them. This process proved to be especially difficult for the dancers because they were already so used to doing the material in a certain rhythm, pattern, and emotion in silence, that when the music was added it didn’t fit. To add to the frustration, they accidently used the wrong music on Tuesday and set cues that weren't present in the updated version, adding another variable to consider as they were trying to find what made sense. I noticed that I could really tell when they were listening to the music vs. when they were on an auto-pilot remember the step kind of headspace. There was a visible switch in their body when they were actually internalizing and trying to work with the music as opposed to trying to push through and on top of the music.

I appreciate when Eryc asks for my opinions on these matters as well, because as an objective outside eye, my experience is much different from his. He seemed to be concerned about the dynamic shifts in the piece and whether or not it was too slow or boring, a 16 minute long work is hard to keep energized. I think re-affirming and talking with him about the work also helps me to see what he’s looking for as a director of the work and how to shape it to become what he envisioned.

When working on the last 2 minutes, the company members took turns bouncing ideas off each other of how to fill the gap between the last solo and the end of the song. It was interesting to watch how Eryc let them experiment with what they thought might work even when I could tell he didn’t really like the idea at first. He never shot down ideas in their beginning stages, he let them flesh out and tried to find something useful or interesting within their ideas. This patience waiting to see what could happen is admirable and very open minded of him to practice.

More to come~