Blog seven - Where am I in my Process?

My stimulus for my solo has remained the same throughout the creative process; a piece of artwork called ‘Metropolis’, exploring how we are ‘’dwarfed in today’s society and lost in it’’. (Schaller, 2019). From this piece of artwork, my focus point of the shadows remained the same and I continued my research based on psychology and how we all have elements of our personality we don’t like and choose to repress into our unconsciousness. (Carl Jung and the Shadow: The Ultimate Guide to the Human Dark Side, 2022) However, from this I found it hard to show this in my choreography besides the use of floorwork, as I feel like showing the two different ‘personalities’ is quite challenging; therefore, I feel as though my message isn’t all that clear.  

The use of floorwork could show the difference between the two beings: the conscious becoming the unconscious. I feel like I managed to capture the image of shadows in my piece well as a lot of movements in my section are slow and held; resembling a shadow of an object. In addition, using this choreographic device of levels added extra layers in the piece; a greater variety of movements making it more interesting to watch. Throughout the creative process I faced challenges such as managing my time, ensuring I had enough choreography prepared prior to each lesson. Within our group we had collaborative sections in the piece so we could share ideas and draw together our individual motifs for each of our own sections. Although the piece is performed as a solo, I felt this worked really well in our piece as each of our ‘ideas’ worked well together and it enabled us to draw connections we had never thought of before and therefore, developing our ideas and piece further. As previously mentioned, my section to the solo has a particularly slow, smooth dynamic to it allowing positions to be held creating the idea of a shadow.  

When we were teaching the group of sections we had choreographed, it was helpful to watch them perform it to see how the movements I had created translated onto a body where I can see the movement rather than just ‘feel it’.  

The music we chose for our solo is a five minute piece called ‘Perpetuum Mobile’ by Penguin Café Orchestra. (Perpetuum Mobile, 1987) The name ‘Perpetuum Mobile’ is a term for a piece of music which has the same rapid motion from the beginning to the end. One thing that drew us to this piece was the different musical layers and the different dynamics. I really liked the more slow, controlled parts as it fitted with the type of movement I wanted to portray, however the parts where it increases in pace contrasts with this which also works well with my idea of showing two different characteristics – leading back to my topic of the ‘shadow self’ and the idea of having repressed characteristics; exploring this in my section of the piece. There are sections in the music which give a sense of building up to a climax which also worked well with our ideas and a sense of everything building up and becoming too much to handle to the point where it becomes overwhelming. We chose to show this in our collaborative section in the middle where the tempo changes and begins to build up to something.

(Perpetuum Mobile, 1987)

 

Moving forwards, within our group we will continue to go over the piece and clean areas where we feel are not so clear and make any changes, we feel need to be made to give the movements more originality and linking it back to our overall theme of perspectives.  

Bibliography  

HighExistence. 2022. Carl Jung and the Shadow: The Ultimate Guide to the Human Dark Side. [online] Available at: <https://highexistence.com/carl-jung-shadow-guide-unconscious/> [Accessed 10 October 2022]. 

Penguin Cafe Orchestra (1987) “Perpetuum Mobile,” Spotify [Preprint]. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/track/1MIwRUsj23h7cYn6mNiqHw?si=uVukdi3ESAK6p8U0a-1JRw&context=spotify%3Aplaylist%3A3gkUDGAsG34lbPIxfFpYy5 (Accessed: November 17, 2022). 

Schaller, A., 2019. Metropolis. [Photography].