Hope that you can join us in Germany this weekend:
Tag Archives: Picasso
Week 5 done
Thanks to all of you who have given us feedback on rehearsals this last week via tweets, likes and comments, it’s been good to know that you’re all with us once again for the new season.
This week we have been re-visitng and rehearsing my new work for 2015, Fascination: we have also been looking at tasks for Gary in anticipation of his new work for us which begins studio time later this month. It’s wonderful that the body remembers what sometimes the head forgets. During the time that we have been out of the studio, Fascination has germinated and grown resulting in a more settled and mature piece of work with which I’m thrilled. There’s still a lot to do in terms of production details, but I’m sure that those of you who enjoy watching my work will very much enjoy this work too. It has all the usual intricacies of form and texture together with an affinity to the score. For those who are new to my work I am a stickler for detail and structure and a grounded relationship with the musical accompaniment.
The dancers are really getting into the Picasso fascination for threes which forms the basis of the dance idea and we have become more closely connected with Three Bathers and Three Dancers this week; it’s become quite eery as we now connect with the actual 3 figures in the paintings as well as the painting itself.
Next week we continue with Fascination and Gary’s tasks, but we’ll be spending more time on D-cay, Catrin’s new work based on the Omaha Beach tragedies in WW2.
We have been visited by 3 guests this week in our company class – Krystal Campbell one of our teaching staff for the dance faktry, Julian Lewis a company friend and Matt our technical assistant who also “dances a bit” It was lovely to see you all, please call in again!
More blogs coming up over the next week, please drop by.
sue lewis
Going for a run…
So today saw us slot together the jigsaw pieces and go for a first run of Fascination, Sue’s latest work for the company. It’s certainly an exciting stage to reach (with the exhilaration augmented by the fire alarm going off mid-way through!) – you get your first taste of what the piece will be like to perform and start to make sense of it in its entirety.
The different sections of the piece have not been created in a chronological order of how the final piece runs, as is often the case in the creative process. At the start of the day, we knew that we had one final piece of the puzzle to crack before we could string all of the sections together.
What is particularly interesting about this newest addition is that it is going to be a structured improvisation on each occasion that the piece is performed. So essentially, the movement itself hasn’t already been pre-determined; within given parameters we will make different choices in the spur of the moment each time we dance the piece. I think that this is going to be a really interesting challenge for us to maintain a sense of freshness in our decision making whilst simultaneously improvising movement and avoiding looking like rabbits caught in the headlights!
All in all, a good day’s work – from hereon in we will start to clarify our own internal narrative and physical pathway through the piece. If the first run is anything to go by we’re onto a cracker, with a fair amount of vogue sweatiness thrown in for good measure!
Effie 🙂
That was the week
So that’s the first studio week over creating my new work for the company – Fascination.
I’m working with a trio of women, Effie, Catrin and Natasha examining some of Picasso’s paintings and why he used three figures in his work so much.
I’ve been astounded at the dancers’ response to the tasks that I have set them: such depth of understanding from tiny intricate details to larger more general pictorial representation.
Many choreographers dislike working with 3 dancers, thinking that the numerical variations possible with 3 can be limiting, but I personally love it1 I adore the asymmetry, the lop-sided qualities, the angles, the relationships, the patterns and so on and on.
And then on to my role – the manipulation of material.
Already starting to structure (just can’t help myself ), I have a very clear vision of where the piece will go. My last work for the company – Fractal – was a series of solos that unfolded as episodes, with occasional groupings thrown in for good measure. Fascination doesn’t work in that way: the sections are governed by the score as in Fractal, but each scene varies from the previous and subsequent one. Today we are working on 5 separate vignettes, inspired by Picasso’s Three Bathers including a trio, 2 solos and 2 duets that will be performed concurrently.
It’s been a most rewarding and exciting week, hope the dancers think so too!
Join us next week as we continue our work with Picasso
sue lewis
Fascination
Picasso Three Dancers
In less than 2 days time, I will be back in the studio with the dancers making my new piece for the company – Fascination.
The work centres around the fascination that the artist Picasso had for painting 3 figures in much of his work. Three musicians, three dancers, three women, three bathers and more. This fascination with three, called triaphilia, has inspired artists and designers for many centuries and still continues into our daily lives: sneeze three times and make a wish, knock three times before you enter, bad luck comes in threes et al. The figure three also has magical and spiritual connotations like the Trinity, 3 pyramids at Gaza, faith/hope/charity.
It’s this fascination that we will be looking at.
We welcome new company dancer Natasha Wade into our studio on Monday, we hope that she will enjoy being a part of our team and wish her well.
I’ll be tweeting and posting on our Facebook and Instagram profiles over the next couple of weeks, hope you’ll join us on our journey.
sue lewis