Personal Development

When choreographing my final section, I faced the challenge of how to formulate an ending. To overcome this challenge, I started by asking myself the question:  Do I build up to a climax? My stimuli ‘The butterfly affect / Chaos theory’ explains how a small change can lead to larger consequences, something forming out of nothing. For example, a butterfly flapping its wings and generating enough wind to cause a tornado. In my choreography showing, the audience stated that they expected an explosion of movement to happen next, a ticking time bomb ready to blow up.  I wondered whether I wanted to have an expected ending like this or could I show chaos in another way? Not uncontrolled, loose, almost throwing away each of my movements but showing internal chaos by creating insular, restricted, contained choreography, like the nucleus of the tornado. A whirlwind or storm with a fury of steps.  I wanted to create original movement that allowed me to show struggle without losing control.  This way I still get the climax I want but in a way that would be more of a surprise to an audience.

In a similar way to my intentions for the very beginning, I wanted the focus to be solely on the movement. By containing these movements, I feel that the intensity could be more powerful if the intent is more controlled, slowed down at times to emphasise tension in the body, or the impact of chaos on me as an individual. I like the idea of having a focal point and having all the energy contained, imploding not exploding. I wanted to explore the idea of being confined or trapped inside a box. I began by limiting the use of certain body parts for example joining my hands behind my back to restrict my movement. My experimentation is shown below.

This process generated more unexpected and unnatural movement however the limitation seemed to block my creativity. I would like to persevere with this process perhaps restricting other body parts such as the head or legs. This would hopefully make movements that contrast each other, isolating different parts of the body. I want to show struggle, panic, tension and portray the feeling that there is something inside of me that wants to get out. I would like to show sharp and rapid changes in direction with a forceful, erratic, and uneven movement quality. This will show the concentrated energy and the outburst of movement in a more internal and fixed way.

Like a tornado when it runs out of energy and gives up, I would like the end of my choreography to have the same change in dynamics and movement quality. Not adding an abrupt stop will allow the debris to settle like the calm after a storm. I questioned myself, what do I want my ending to say? What do I want people to remember? Do I want to link the end to the beginning? After the climax I would like to explore the aftermath of chaos whether that may be in my movement or in the mood of the piece and looking at my piece as a whole I feel I wanted a conclusion, like a summary of what the audience have just watched. During the climax and my movement experiments I felt the chaos in my body, holding my breath and showing tension I wanted to be able to show a release a relief like breathing out and an enjoyment of freedom and movement. Going back to my original inspiration of movement for movements sake. Dancing with an emotive release similar to the movement quality.