Individuality in the Dancer: Working With What is Unique
Peggy Baker (2007)
The choreographic scores for works of contemporary dance are a combination of explicit demands and open-ended possibilities. The overall style of a choreographer’s body of work, and most certainly individual dances, will be characterized by exacting demands in particular areas. Depending on the work in question, varying degrees of specificity will be countered by varying degrees of freedom in expressing elements of time, space, dynamic, shape, quality, or intention, for example:
In dealing with time it might be weight falling through space, rhythmic precision parallel to the music, sequential movement, or unmetered time.
The choreographer’s spatial concern might be primarily with location-specific events, trajectory, negative space, reaching through the body along prescribed lines or toward exact destinations, leaving space or entering it, or describing planes in space.
The choreographer may need a dynamic that is explosive, fluid, staccato, thrown, weighted, light, or percussive.
They may need convoluted, vague, elegant, twisted, or blocky shapes; clean lines; extravagant extensions; tight coil; loose joints; the arms behind second; broken wrists; hyper-extended limbs; a particular use of the hand or foot.
They could want a quality that is hypnotic, surging, indirect, considered, disturbing, shocking, grand, strident, pedestrian, or unpredictable. They might require you to hold back from your full range of motion, to work at the end point of reach or effort, to initiate movement through the core or through the extremities.
They may need you to use the motives of a character or situation, to be caught up in the execution of a task, to mark, to be moved by the music, or to pointedly ignore it.
The effort to master the specific and challenging demands within the choreography, while navigating the elements that require a personal response to complete them, is some of the most exciting work to be undertaken in the rehearsal studio.
Just as a single dance or an entire body of work has stylistic characteristics, so too does each dancer. None of us comes neutrally to movement material, a great thing, since it is an individual response that is called for. By becoming more aware of our habitual tendencies and by appreciating our potential for flexibility and choice, we can, with practice, learn to temper, modulate, and finesse the way we move to better serve our expression within a given aesthetic.
Every dance depends – for its very life – on embodiment in the moment. When we are successful with a dance, it is because we have honoured both the choreographer’s vision and our own artistry as an interpreter.
Photo credit on Collected Essays - Individuality:
her body as words (2021)
choreographic direction: Peggy Baker
dancer: Syreeta Hector