Two seemingly unconnected inspirations are informing a new Full Radius Dance work: 1) My love of thrift store shopping and 2) The company of Merce Cunningham, the iconic avant-garde choreographer who passed away in 2009, will disband following its final performance on December 31, 2011. So what's the connection? Chance.
I never know what I'll stumble across at my local Value Village or Goodwill. I take a chance whenever I visit that I'll find a bargain that interests me and that I can't live without.
Merce Cunningham introduced chance operations in dance creation and made indeterminacy an important compositional device. For instance, he would roll a die to reorder dance phrases, discovering endless variations for a finite number of movements.
The roll of a die is a new way of working for me as a choreographer. It is hard for me to give up control in the structuring of the dance and let the die tell Onur to start with phrase one but Laurel has to start with phrase 2, etc. But I'm finding new connections and interactions through this method, ones I wouldn't have found otherwise.
I never know what I'll stumble across at my local Value Village or Goodwill. I take a chance whenever I visit that I'll find a bargain that interests me and that I can't live without.
Merce Cunningham introduced chance operations in dance creation and made indeterminacy an important compositional device. For instance, he would roll a die to reorder dance phrases, discovering endless variations for a finite number of movements.
The roll of a die is a new way of working for me as a choreographer. It is hard for me to give up control in the structuring of the dance and let the die tell Onur to start with phrase one but Laurel has to start with phrase 2, etc. But I'm finding new connections and interactions through this method, ones I wouldn't have found otherwise.
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