Despite my desire to report on our week at James Madison University I only spent time on the essentials - rehearsing, planning, teaching, some sleeping and too much driving. In one week student and community dancers learned and performed "My ocean is never blue" with the company, and I created a 15-minute work for the Virginia Repertory Dance Company. Aot of time, organization and creative umph was needed to get through the week. The dancers in "ocean" did a great job with the material - which ranged from simple walking structures to improv scores and athletic choreographed phrases. We spent time talking about the content of the work, each section's origin, how its evolved and fitting the pieces into the whole. It has taken us - the company – time to develop and clarify all this and getting new dancers on the same page was a challenge. But, as I said, they did great and both our performances were really wonderful. I, and the whole company, felt that they were some of the most satisfying performances of the work.
The work I created for the Rep Company was an outgrowth of the works I created this summer. I combined this previous material with new material, created a new sound score and came up with a dance for 9 dancers. This work is an exploration of 'home' and 'leaving home' and are the first bits of a larger project that explores human migration and immigration. As I started researching this larger project I wanted to clarify this idea of home for myself – both as a place we leave and as a place we create or arrive. Right now the work is pretty abstract, but as the project evolves I plan on bringing more concreteness to these topics/issues. I, again, was really satisfied with the students attention, creativity, commitment and dancing.
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