Final Composition Project

My composition final assignment was to make a piece doing whatever you want for three minutes. Now, some students may love this and thrive, while others may struggle because of the absence of structure. I thought the assignment was a great challenge for myself and majority of my classmates. Throughout the entire semester we were given very structured assignments, with detail on the quality of the movement. Now, we were free to do whatever we'd like. This could mean, music or no music. Solo, duet, trio or many dancers. The choreographer could be in the piece or did not have to be in the piece. The options were endless.

With a blank sketch pad, i could not decide how I wanted to make this composition final come to life. I do understand my talent in having a good visual eye when it comes to creating transitions and structures of a piece. With this understanding, I decided I was not going to be in the piece, but I was going to have two dancers dancing my choreography. The ability to step out of the piece and watch for transitional and movement details helped me explore as not only a mover, but a creator.

I then was challenged with how to start the piece. I asked myself many questions such as, do I want a narrative or not? It was a challenge at first, but a good one and I learned a lot about the evolvement of choreography. I decided in the beginning I wanted my movement to be based off of a story or a relatable life engagement. I chose to base the piece off of daily life obstacles and the stress of doing what is expected. Everyday we wake up and do the expected or what we are told to do, but sometimes we should take risks and do things for ourselves. It is important to do what we want for the mind, body and soul. Although this idea can be frightening and stressful, it is important. I took this idea and created a duet between two dancers experiencing different qualities, characteristics and mindsets. One dancer was the stress of the tasks and the other dancer was the person rebelling against the tasks. The journey during the three week period of creating this piece lead me toward a different idea, but still holding on slightly to the original narrative. I began exploring deeper with the different qualities of movement in the dancers when I give them two different traits to perform. I also wanted them to find similarities in movement and themselves. I wanted a connection between the two with a remaining disconnection of movement quality.