Happy With My Solo + Challange

In general I was really happy with my solo so I thought it would be best if I stay with it and work further on it. I wanted to apply the feedback I received to see what else can emerge. Moreover, this was a good challange for me as I find it difficult to make changes once something is set. This saying, adjusting something that has already been performed twice as it is pushed me to go out of my comfort zone and to see what else can be done.

Movement

  • More focus on the hands, the hands are the red thread
  • The beginning is slightly different - the positions in which I lay down and the initiation of the movement
  • Repetition of some things
  • "Feeling yourself" part focused more on the throwing quality of the arms
  • Instead of repeating at the end what I do in the beginning I do a little resume of my solo
  • Taking things out
    • no "crazy feet with crazy arms"
    • no "4 hip hop step"
    • no sounds with the feet and hands - there is still a bit but the focus is not on the sound and it does not come back as often as before
    • no "crossings", both in the diagonal and on the floor, I do refer to the 4 corners but the main thing are not the crossings but my arms being pulled by an external force
    • no "crossing with looking in one direction"
    • no left upstage corner position in the end but going directly after "feeling yourself" into the end position (aka starting position)
 
I gave the focus to the hands as I noticed I was already doing a lot with them in my first solo. I wanted to give them more meaning, go more in depth. I am being pulled by them, they are being manipulated by my knees, they are covering my face, they are throwing themselves in the air. Recently I started to get more intrerested in what the hands can do as they are extremally expressive in both abstract and more litteral ways. The other day I played with very subtle movements of the fingers and I was fascinated by it. It is not something for this piece but that research also showed me that I can explore much more with just the hands. The subtle movements can maybe come in the duet. 
 
The other big focus was taking things out. In my feedback I was often told that there is a lot in my solo and, especially in solo bis, I also observed that myself. I have researched so much physically and found so many interesting things that I wanetd to put it all in. I realized that putting 10 different qualities and movement ideas in 13 minutes is simply too much and I should narrow it down to just a few qualities and explore them in depth, use their full potential rather than staying on the surface level. 

 

Music Loosing Its Power

There were times when it was extremally hard for me to do a full run of my solo. It requires a lot of energy and in a studio setting alone sometimes I had difficulties to find that energy and motivate myself to do it. What is more, the music was also loosing its power. In the beginning when I found this song, it was giving me a lot of energy and it was pushing me to give my all even though at times I felt like I cannot do that. It was then fresh and every time I played it I was ready to go. The fact is that I am listening to this song since the beginning of this process, I am stuck with it for months so it does make sense that now it might not always give me the same as it did when I first heard it.

 

 

 

 

 

Fresh Music

In the rehearsals when I was really resisitng to do a full run with the original song I would do my solo with a different song that at the time was giving me the push. Once I did it to "Freed From Desire" by Gala, another time I did it to "Opto File 1" by Opto, Opiate & alva noto. I went through the whole solo in terms of qualities, I was not doing the exact counts as I do with "Integrate" by Cleric. If I needed more time to feel a certain quality, I would take my time to do that, if some parts were clear for me I would go through them faster. I never tried this before, to do a choreography on a different music but that allowed me to actually go through it and stay true to it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Break From The Original Song

What was ineresting was that one day we had coaching and before that I did not run my solo a lot, espeiclaly not with the original song but I was told that my movement and its quality was much more deifned. I was a bit surprised by that as I did not practice it a lot but maybe that was the thing - becasue I did not do it that many times and becasue I was doing it to different music it kept me fresh and when I heard the song again it felt like I was hearing it for the first time again. After that I decided to not run my solo before the week of the performances to keep it fresh and to not do it on automatic pilot but to really from the feeling. 

Lights

  • Less cues
  • Simpler lights, no special shapes
  • Creating more of a void feeling, I do not want the floor to be visible
 
There were some lights that I knew I am going to delete. One of them were the top white lights that came after the spotlight and lightened the whole stage. The transition was too immediate and I really did not like how the whole floor was visible. It was the only moment in the whole perfromance where you could see the whole floor and it did not fit for me at all. It looked heavy, it did not go along with the other lights and it seemed misplaced. I really liked the spotlights and towers - spotlights because it was on one spot and the rest of the stage was black and towers becasue you could see me moving through the stage but the stage in general was not so visible. I like this image of me sort of floating in the space plus it supports with my concept.

The changes (on above photos)

1. Top lights --> 6 towers

2. Street light following my movement --> first front 3 towers

3. Spotlight from top right back corner --> first front 3 towers

4. Spotlight from top back corners & a little bit of front light --> third row of towers

Not Enought Time 

Between the solo bis and solo trits there was not a lot of time. I did not see myself making a whole new solo in such a short period of time. I preferred to refine what I have instead of cretaing something in a rush.

S  T  I  C  K  I  N  G      T  O      M  Y                                        S  O  L  O

C  H  A  N  G  E  S

4.

1.

2.

3.

My Focus

My focus was to make things simpler. In my solo I wanted to put everything I have found in my physical research but that was too much for a 13 minute performance. I already left behind some things out for my first solo but I think there is even more I can keep for later. I want to take things out both in the movement and in the lighting so that it becomes less all over the place and more cohesive. 

III

II

I

These are some of the changes I made regarding the lights. The idea from going from 6 rows of towrers into 1 was to make the stage darker and darker before it changes into the blue and purple towers (which is quite dark as I did not use the full 100% intensity). There were some other light adjustments that took place yet those were mostly due to the changes I made in my spacing.

F   I   N   D   I   N   G   S

Let Things Come To You

Once I was doing a run but I did not know what I am going to do at the end, I was not sure if I am going to keep it the same as last time or not. I was too tired to figure it out at that moment so I decided to just do the run and at the end I will improvise and see what comes out. It was in this run when I touched my face for the first time (with the palm and not with the outside surface of the hand). It came from a feeling, I was so in my solo that when the silence part came it felt so real, the music was no longer in a way being my sheild, everything was exposed visually and aurally, I was exposed. I do not know why at the moment I decided to cover my face, from where it came. Now reflecting back on it I think it came from the feeling that I just needed to feel my hands, they are being controlled and thrown around the space for 10 minutes and I felt like I need a moment to feel and to connect to them.

 

 

 

 

 

Grandpa

I think covering the face with my hands also came from thinking about my grandfather who passed away. During the process of solo bis I had a bad breakdown but I did not where it is coming from. After a while I realized it is because I miss my grandpa (and my other grandparents as well). I was thinking about it a lot and at once it stroke me that my solo is more about that than I thought it was. My title "Not here, elsewhere" came from me, that I am not here in the real world but somewhere in my head, in my imaginary world. As I was thinking about it I realized it is also about my grandparents - they are not here, they are not with us, there are somewhere else, nobody knows where. Due to this my solo also took a slight shift in that direction. It is still about reality disturbing my dreamland but now I show much more the struggle. The struggle is very abstract, it can be anything the audience wants it to be and at the end, with the silence part, it is where I find what the struggle is. It is grief and me still batteling with the fact that my grandparents are no longer here. It is like through the whole solo I am searching for the thing that is making me struggle, that is not allowing me to be in my dreamland and then I find what is causing the struggle.

Music

  • Same music
  • Deleting the short pause in the middle
  • There was an idea of using a different song 
 
I decided to use the same music. I had thought of using a different song, in particular "Music for Marcel Duchamp" by Rickyjam yet at the end I sticked with my original song. I was curious to see how my solo would like on a different music, how much it would change but perhaps this could be something I can explore another time. Knowing how much time I take to put things on msuic, esepcially when there are not many cues I can refer to, I did not see myself structuring my whole solo again. I would definitely need more time for that. Furthermore, I wanted to focus on the other things - to make my solo more simple and give more attention to the hands.

One Song On Repeat & No Preparation

To do my physical research I used the tool I discovered last time - playing one song on repeat while researching. All the times I went to a studio to do physical research I never planned what I am going to do, I would just go and see what happens. Especially in the first research session, I had no idea what I am going to do in the parts that I want to take out, I did not know what is going to replace them. I started with moving with some of the qualities I have in my solo I want to keep and from there it would go into new things. That is how I found my arms being controlled by an external force and the knees manipulating my hands.

Knees manipulating the hands

T  H  E     P  R  O  C  E  S  S     &     F  I  N  D  I  N  G  S

Other movements

Arms being controlled

by an outside force