How to be a choreographer

I got to hang out with my sister yesterday after we lunched with my parents at my grandparents' house. She stayed all afternoon and for dinner. It was good to see her and I wished she lived in BR.

We watched some old LSU dance tapes because we were in a modern piece together in 2006 that she hadn't seen since. Also, we looked at the other dance I choreographed. As fun as it is, it also kind of sucks to watch old dance vids because everything looks dinkier than you remembered it being. You remember working so hard and getting so excited and nervous to perform. You remember thinking this dance is awesome; it's my favorite or I knocked that out of the park or I fucked that up beyond belief. On the tape, it's just a dance that looks a bit dated and dull. Including your own choreography from seven years ago.

I showed her my song and explained about my ideas for the new dance. She liked it and said everything made sense and sounded like it was going to come out well. I asked her a bunch of questions about her process and she gave me some tips, like

• let the music inspire movement and don't think about every move before you do it
• not every move will serve the theme of the piece
• don't necessarily try to avoid "dance steps" (like certain ballet- or modern- based movement) to try to make the whole thing creative and pedestrian
• sometimes it works to just sit in a chair and listen to the music over and over again until you get ideas for movement phrases
• let formations happen organically and then set them

I thought that would have plenty of energy right about now, what with the kids being in the library for research (I forgot how much individual attention they need and how I am on my feet all day with them). I thought I'd be down to choreograph and plan my class this afternoon. Alas, I'm the mood to rest and to procrastinate. I'll at least force myself to make notes on the music and keep listening to it until ideas come. Look at me, making this potentially fun thing into a chore. That's what excessive fear and self-doubt will do to a project. At least Leif made me a green juice.

Dance and Death

Thursday's dance class went pretty well. Remembering what I was going to do for my warm up was kind of rough, but I knew the rest of my class pretty well since I used material from the summer. I want to do some new stuff this week, though, and that's going to take some thought and work.

The movement phrase I taught was somewhat interesting. It ended up being longer than I thought, so it took a while to teach and practice. I felt like I didn't know what I was doing, but Whit says that's how it always feels at the beginning of the process of creating a piece. Since it's research week for the kids at school, I hope to have some extra time and mental energy to fool around in the living room with dance stuff.

It's been a weird weekend. My Great Aunt Mona is on her deathbed with lung cancer. She's staying at my Aunt Lauren's (Mom's cousin's) house down the road from us. My mom came in yesterday to spend time over there (she's very close to this particular cousin and Aunt) and Leif and I brought quiche and bread over there last night. When we got there, Lauren's husband George's brother (who's a monk) was saying Catholic mass over Aunt Mona and Mom, Lauren, Lauren's sister, and George were standing around the bed. Leif and I kind of joined in and I said some of the Catholic prayers with them that I knew by heart and took communion and wine because participating seemed like the gracious thing to do. We all stood around crying and blowing our noses. Aunt Mona looked to be asleep with her mouth kind of open, but she wasn't, and she had a fever, so she had cool rags on her forehead and neck. She stirred every once in awhile and coughed a bit. (The pretty, gay black guy, who is one of her hospice nurses, told us a few hours later that her fever had gone away.) I don't know if that's the last time I'm going to see her or not. I thought it would freak me out, but it didn't--it was just really sad. She's a really extraordinary nice, funny, and cool person to be around and I wish she wasn't dying right now. But she is.

Then we went in the other room, ate dinner, drank wine, talked to the hospice nurses and sat around half watching TV. Mom slept over at our house and went back over there this morning. Dad's coming in today (he was preparing for a big trial all day yesterday) and Whit might come, too.

When we got home, Leif and I were talking about the reading we've done over the years about the Eastern way of looking at death. It kind of clicked while I was saying those prayers that death is benign and peaceful and not something to fight against (because it isn't possible) and it's the close family members who suffer the most in the process. I don't believe in an afterlife, though, so I still feel a lot of anxiety about the finality of it.

Today we are going to my dad's parents house to eat lunch and visit because my Paw Paw has been having trouble breathing and the doctors can't figure out what's wrong with him. I probably won't be grading papers or thinking about dances today. The weather's been overcast all weekend, and I feel exhausted. Aunt Mona's been declining rapidly for a month now--I can't even imagine how tired Aunt Lauren must be.

In its grip

I'm oddly nervous about teaching dance class tomorrow. The fear keeps buzzing around in my head--that I won't have enough material to take up the time allotted. This is an old fear that I used to obsess about when I first started teaching (which is funny, because I've always felt like I don't have enough time to teach what I want to cover with the kids). I'd been telling myself all week that I'd plan my class tonight. That I'd turn the music on and plan warm up, plies, tendus, developes, across the floor, and combination. Now I'm thinking that I'll just use stuff from my Shiva Rea Yoga DVD for warm up and stuff from my summer class for the rest.

But I still want to plan some movement phrases for the new piece. I picked one of Reid's songs to choreograph to. I hope my director will approve it. I guess I'll play with that tomorrow afternoon. She called me today and then abruptedly had to hang up because she was putting her daughter in the car. She forgot to call me back, I guess, and I took a 30 minute nap that turned into 2 hours (it had me in its grip!).

The other fear is that I won't have any ideas. That my phrases won't come out being interesting or enjoyable. It's my usual fiction-writing fear. I guess we'll see what happens.