Choreographic Devices - Practitioner Study

 Wayne McGregor is a renowned British contemporary choreographer who is largely known for his innovative and unique approach to choreography in the dance scene. We watched a video where Wayne McGregor presented one of his choreographic tasks, in which he explained that he envisions shapes and tracing letters when choreographing. He explained how he thinks of “architectural lines and three dimensional shapes” (McGregor, 2012) which we found particularly intriguing, sparking an interest in exploring this method used by McGregor. As a group, we envisioned the object of a lamp to which we firstly improvised movement material tracing this object. I found this was quite a unique way of creating new movements that I may not normally choreograph or produce normally. This was effective and I found it was easier to explore new shapes within the body. We then explored the idea of the curves within the head of the lamp as well as the circular nature of the bulb. McGregor mentioned exploring “density, volume and scale” (McGregor, 2012) which we took on board and created more obscure and abstract movements. This was an effective method which widened our choreographic thinking and overall creativity.

https://youtu.be/wDwddPQyWOA - Video evidence of description above

Within our next choreography lesson, we looked at one of McGregor's choreographic processes which he used in his renowned work “Infra.” We wrote down a series of actions, dynamics and spatial relationships that would link to our stimulus. We discussed the idea of representing different features within the mentality of a psychopath and how these may be juxtaposing, contrasting and sinister; For example, we wrote down contractions to show the gut wrenching and horrific side to the mentality of a psychopath. From here, we wrote down sharp and jagged dynamics to complement the gut wrenching idea, as well as noting to explore this in an indirect pathway (travelling downstage) to inevitably enhance the confused and unpredictable nature of a psychopath. After noting down multiple different words, we then considered the use of choreographic devices to layer the choreography (to make it more complex and experimental).

 

Shortly after, we collated a series of different combinations, each containing a different word from each list for us to experiment and explore creating movement. We were given other groups' combinations to explore also, so we put this into practice and formulated choreography.

https://youtu.be/9gzxqPg50Yk - Video demonstrating above description 

I believe this process of choreographing was successful in challenging our creative thinking. I found that creating word combinations enabled us to create movement more efficiently but also more experimentally; we began to create movement we wouldn’t normally produce or consider. Lastly, I believe it was highly effective in embodying our ideas and themes as it forced us to consistently think about these when devising movements and how we can represent these ideas distinctively within the movement material.

References

A Choreographer’s Creative Process in Real Time (2012). Video. Consultant Wayne McGregor. New York City. USA.