Travis Burbee
I begin a piece with an idea, generating movement and looking for inspiration in everything I can. In this piece I started with traffic cones and found a book cover painting done by Grant Wood for the book In Tragic Life by Vardis Fisher, as well as the book itself. I began to assemble all the elements into the meaning of the dance, figuring out what the cones themselves meant in the piece. I work with my dancers, seeing how they respond to the movement and the meaning of the work. Guided by a general arc, each new section of the dance reveals what comes next. After hours of refining, changing, expanding, and digging in we created Community Caution.
Juli Curran
My choreographic process is led by my inspiration that my music gives me. When I first heard my music, I immediately got a concept in my head of what I wanted my piece to look like. I have used my choreography to reflect what happens in the piece musically, but my music has also led me to portray how the music makes me feel through my dance. I have enjoyed seeing how my cast members interpret the music and how they express that through my choreography.
Alexandria Grossman
The theme of my piece is how time affects people differently, each person responds to time differently, and sometimes people respond at the same time. I’m also playing quite a bit with space and human tableaus. In preparing for rehearsals, I usually have a phrase that I plan to teach at my rehearsal. Once the phrase is set on my dancers, I manipulate it on them until I am satisfied with the product. The most interesting part of this process for me is finding the ways that my dancers can work together to make something happen. The most challenging part of this project is making my piece for a thrust stage rather than a proscenium.
Sabrina Harris
My process of preparation began with no music, it started off as a challenged but I embraced that and fell in love with the process of working in silence. I learned how my mind worked in the means of placing choreography and developing outside of my mind onto my dancers. My favorite place to think and create was in my restroom, and ironically I am able to release in that space, so most of my work was created there. The emotional direction of my piece started from a place of being controlled and from that I allowed the movement to continue its growth on its own. My music was created and produced by Graham T Howatt a student at Missouri State University. I enjoyed the process of creating the music because it was something I wanted to do, but I knew I could not accomplish that on my own. With working with him he was able to create what I needed to make my story come alive.
Caitlyn Price
Film and editing by Devin Sullins
Music composition and arrangement by Joe Emerson
The rehearsal process for this piece has been an adventure! We have had lots of fun working together and watching this piece evolve. The choreography was partly inspired by my family, partly by gypsy culture, and partly by the energy and spark of the cast!
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Emily Mae Rankin
My choreographic process started by recognizing an emotion that I wanted to explore through movement. I was not quite sure what the emotion meant until later in my process, but it ties in with a specific stage of grief that I have experienced through the loss of my brother a few years back. I, simultaneously, developed a movement vocabulary as well as settled on a piece of music, which is "On The Nature Of Daylight" composed by Max Richter. I chose my cast specifically for their movement quality as well as their strength and ability to project emotion through movement. They also share a powerful energy, which I knew I wanted to bring to my piece. Before and during rehearsal time, I would develop movement motifs, which I would then share with my cast. That process continued that way as well as some collaboration with my dancers. It has been a challenging and wonderful experience choreographing my piece, i'm f.i.n.e..
Edyn Mae Tarkany
To start my process, I knew I wanted to focus on a theme that was close to my heart and that I had experience with. The closer I am to my subject, the more genuine it is. So, I chose the difficult subject of eating disorders. From there and without music, I came up with random movement that naturally flowed from one phrase to the next. The movement had to relate to my theme that way the audience would understand: for example, the dependency the “girls” have on their “reflections” in the partner work. The most difficult part of my choreography has been incorporating the use of spoken word. We have really had to pull on our own experiences to give the words more meaning and say them in a way that is genuine and impactful. “Say these words as if you were speaking to yourself.” “Now I want you to punch with those words.” “Build the intensity.” Since creating the original 2 dance phrases, the piece has just built from there. After each rehearsal, I know where I want the piece to go next, it is just a matter of finding that transition that links the next ideas together.
Watch my visual process