Advanced Independent Choreography (MU60362O)

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui created Babel in collaboration with Damien Jalet, another ground-breaking contemporary choreographer. These forces join together to create a spectacle on stage, utilising ‘5 huge 3-dimensional frames’ (Eastman, 2021) to manoeuvre and weave in and out of the choreography. The choreography creatively depicts movement that ‘explores language and its relationship with nationhood, identity and religion.’ (Eastman, 2021) (Eastman, 2010) This piece seems to share similar themes to Cherkaoui’s work ‘Sutra’, which included themes of solace and representing different cultures and exchanges. Whilst Sutra was more of a personal journey for Cherkaoui, this production depicts a narrative of an array of people and cultures, ‘the tale of Babel represents the gates to enlightenment, to others - chaos, confusion and conflict.’ (Eastman, 2021) The movement style in Sutra incorporates martial arts, hip hop and acrobatics, creating a unique style for the piece. With Babel, however, the...

In my current process, I have completed the ending sections (Depression, Acceptance) and most of the beginning sections, including Denial and Realisation. I believe I am halfway through choreographing the piece, and I am happy with where I am at so far. The movement material I’ve created so far has matched my intentions which has enabled me to go back and add some devices to make the movement more detailed and intricate. I have struggled a bit creating some movement for the middle sections, as I felt I couldn’t pull out ideas very well. Therefore, I went back and mapped out my sections and their intentions, altering bargaining as a section, and changing it to spiralling within the brain and facing an overwhelming sensation. I felt this would lead better into the depression state, making the piece flow more progressively, and therefore making it easier to watch and understand for my audience. (Thompson, 2023) I have received feedback on some of the material I’ve worked on, which was mos...

Sutra is a piece depicting the practices of Buddhism, incorporating Cherkaoui’s personal experiences within the Shaolin Temple on his path to enlightenment. He sought to reestablish himself after constantly creatively working with artists such as Akram Khan, thus needing some time to recover and find his source of creativity once more. There, he found rehabilitation and brought a new spectacle for audiences, as “the spectacle of athleticism explores the philosophy and faith behind the Shaolin tradition, and its relationship with Kung Fu within a contemporary context.” (Sadler’s Wells, 2023)                                 (Sadlers Wells, 2008) As the piece contains themes of solace, rehabilitation and meditation practices, I found revisiting this piece to be a significant influence for my choreographic solo, as I have outlined similar themes. So far from my observations, I hav...

Choreographic Devices and the use of Motif Developments are going to be efficient tools for building and layering my choreography, to inevitably make the action more interesting. I have selected a few devices to work on that will help structure my material and shape the movement to become more interesting and unique. One I will use throughout is embellishment, a technique to layer the choreography with additional movements. I feel this is important for transitions, as it helps the movement to flow in a much nicer way. I will embellish some of the sections with motifs from alternate sections, to keep linking my ideas of the piece throughout and to show the progression of how something may change as you experience the different stages. An example of this is the push motif (shown below) where in one section it is light and elegant, to show happiness and joy, whereas in a later section, it becomes more direct and punchy, to show anger and aggression. (Thompson, 2023) https://youtu.be/DeUFk...

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is a renowned, world famous choreographer within the dance industry. He is a choreographer that has “made more than 20 fully-fledged choreographic pieces and picked up a slew of prestigious awards.” (Sadler’s Wells, 2023) I’ve always been interested in his collaborations and works, as I think he’s a very innovative and risk taking choreographer that pushes boundaries within dance. I admire his unique stylistic qualities, fusing hip hop and contemporary, and incorporating eclectic stage elements to heighten his intended atmosphere and themes. I have always admired his work Sutra, a piece I’ve seen live before, which is a performance that incorporates the practices of Buddhism, with Shaolin Monks dancing throughout the piece to live music with the dancers' live chants. (English National Ballet, 2023) I admire Cherkaoui because of his eclectic approaches to choreography, incorporating a variety of styles such as “African dance to voguing in the contemporary scene....

My chosen stimulus is the song ‘The Moment I Said It’ by Imogen Heap. I chose this song because I feel it paints a beautiful story through the varying melodies and personal lyrics. Imogen Heap is an artist who creates musical artwork, straying away from traditional music as she ‘balances machine wizardry with startling humanity in her electronic pop.’ (Zhang, 2022) Because I’ve appreciated the song and I relate to the lyrics in my ways, I felt it was important to pay homage to Imogen Heap as her music has helped me through some difficult times throughout my adolescence.  (Thompson, 2023) The lyrics to the song have a powerful message and contain elements of heartbreak and sadness, with a build in the climax ‘to generate an uncertainty that helps us to feel the narrative more poignantly.’ (Shaffer, 2017) After analysing the lyrics, I decided to incorporate the themes of the stages of grief one may experience after a traumatic experience, which I will learn more through more extensiv...

Within our first choreographic lesson, we were set choreographic tasks to generate movement phrases. The first task consisted of choosing a sequence of random numbers, to which we grabbed a book and used these numbers to pick out words from a page in the book, to which we would create a movement embodying these words, both metaphorically and physically. This was a form of Chance Method, created by Merce Cunningham, to help generate a phrase of spontaneity that you wouldn’t normally create, to add to one's complexity of choreography. I found this task to be successful, as I found it sparked new and interesting ways of creating choreography which I aim to use in my choreographic endeavours. I think this will be useful for my creative process if I face a choreographic block, as I would resort back to my comfortability in movement. Therefore, this exercise may help to push my choreographic abilities into new lights that can expand my movement vocabulary, thus creating a more fascinatin...