Tiny Dance at Brockport – “Waiting Scales”

My friend Colleen, who is getting her MFA at SUNY Brockport, graciously offered to let me collaborate with her on developing a dance (since when I first met her, I told her about an idea for a ballet, which we still might pursue someday…).  “Waiting Scales” started with a piece of music by Debussy:  “Feux d’artifice,” from Préludes Book II.  To me, some music, such as this composition, just itches to be danced to (although not by me!).  Colleen was open to having a ‘plot,’ rather than choreographing something purely abstract, and a small sculpture, called “Watching and Waiting” (by Patrick Farrow), provided the inspiration:  expressing through dance the different emotions one experiences – anticipation, worry, anger – while waiting for someone who is late.  In choreographing this piece for her Tiny Dance project, she drew on her training in Laban Movement Analysis to explore different Laban scales and match them to the development of the scene.

Although she has credited me as co-choreographer, I really felt more like a co-writer/director – suggesting various broad gestures, a few props, some of the transitions.  My contribution to the actual dance part was limited to suggestions like, ‘can you do a twirly thing here?’ and ‘how about leaning, like in the West Side Story dance at the gym?’  But it was great fun meeting with her to flesh out the piece, and to watch it evolve from concept to reality.  It is only 3’20” but it feels like forever when you are trying to figure out how to move through the space, and especially how to marry the movement to the music and the mood, and to convey the emotion without being too literal or devolving into a pantomime instead of dance.  It was exciting to watch her perform it for real, for people other than me, and to get feedback for improving it (as if it would ever be performed again!).

Hers was one of 11 pieces presented by NDEO Brockport at their 4^th Annual Tiny Dance Concert at A Different Path Gallery in Brockport.  Each dance was limited to a 6’x6’ space in the gallery, and the audience sat or stood right at the edge of the taped outlines.  There was a mix of ballet and modern dance, and it was clear how much effort and talent went into creating and performing these tiny (in space AND time) dances.  The finale was a strange but extremely creative piece called “Glassy Ladies,” set to Bob Seger’s “Night Moves,” in which three attractive young women forcefully mashed small hand-held windows onto their faces, alternately distorting their noses, cheeks, chins, eyes.  When they sang the final refrain of the piece along with Seger, they sounded like the monster in Young Frankenstein, which complemented the grotesque faces we were seeing through the windows.

One of the things that struck me is how difficult it must be to study dance.  If you are studying acting, there are libraries full of plays to perform – you don’t need to create your own script each time you perform.  Similarly, if you are studying an instrument, you don’t need to compose a new sonata or symphony for each concert.  But with dance, although there are sets of ballet moves or other movement building blocks (e.g., the Laban scales), there isn’t a trove of choreographed dances just waiting to be performed.  So each of these student performances involves not just performing, or interpreting, but also creating.  Talk about grace under pressure!