A series of post-it notes…

Rehearsal 2_The Basement

The main choreography for Digital Tattoo at this stage is made, each section has a meaning, a name, but does it have a place in the work? Within the second rehearsal, I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity by South East Dance to work with Dramaturge Lou Cope who has previously worked with Gary Clarke and Tim Casson. Having worked together on my last commission, I was really excited to be challenged at every angle of the work to decipher the relevance of each section and to create a journey throughout the sections.

Meeting in a cafe pre-rehearsal, we discussed the sections and the feel of the work: the work happens in sections, the work goes between a more playful state to something more serious, the work has two people, and raised important questions which I needed to answer, are these people ideas or do they have personalities, if so what is their relationship, what do I want the audience to leave thinking and who are my target audience..?

Getting into the studio, I gave the dancers an order to put the choreography into to be presented and to test it. We also timed the work for the first time, with it magically meeting the full forty minutes. Lou then feed back to us what she saw and questioned me on certain points, allowing me time to decide which of her thoughts to go with and which to ignore in order to shape the work, whilst also asking my dancers what they thought their role and relationship was and what they were trying to convey.

Having decided on a subtle relationship between the two performers, we looked at the order of the sections to decipher how the chronology fitted both with the idea of how we present ourselves online, the digital tattoo, but also their relationship. Writing each section on a piece of paper, we put them into categories: beginning, middle, end, finally working them into an order.

Watching the sections in the new order, it made me realise how important it is to test and trial different sections of a work together as the clarity and journey of an idea can be changed immensely due to the juxtaposition of two sections. Although the rehearsal still left me with some questions, such as where does the projection happen, does it make dramaturgical sense for them to get undressed and if some sections were relevant enough to still exist within the work, I was surprised at how the work took shape so easily.

Thank you South East Dance for providing me with the support from Lou.