The first choreographer that we took inspiration from was Akram Kham with his piece Vertical Road. Vertical Road is beautifully told through a universal language and it explores, 'mans earthly nature, his rituals and consequences of human actions,' and with this draws us into a strange potent world of memory and self-discovery,(Vertical Road - Akram Khan Company, 2015). It combines a multitudinous amount of elaborate movements that are beautifully woven into the harmonious beats of the music, to create what The Guardian describes as,' beautiful and harrowing,' (Mackrell, 2010). As a group, we were encouraged by his approach to choreography which was to, ' take risks, think big and daring, explore the unfamiliar, avoid compromises.' whilst also maintaining artistic integrity, (About us - Akram Khan Company, 2015). Many of the intricate hand gestures and impulsive movements, (0:36 in the video), are a recurring feature throughout our choreography, illustrating 'restriction', 'confinement' and 'control'. Furthermore, from Vertical Road, we can see that khan is an innovative choreographer, who uses facial expressions as a means of provoking his narrative to add a depth into his piece. We were inspired by this because we were unsure of what we wanted our facial expressions to represent, however, by having Khan as our inspiration, we stimulated many powerful and sinister expressions that ensemble and complement our choreography. Furthermore, another reason we were influenced by the choreographer was that he approaches his choreography by posing himself a series of questions. This is evident in his work rush (2000) as he originated his choreography by thinking about the five senses to create idiosyncratic movements. Likewise, we began to ask ourselves questions such as: 'Are we scared of our surroundings?' , 'Is there someone that's holding us captive in our minds?' and ' Are we afraid to portray any individuality?' All of these questions have been answered thoroughly in our piece, (Sanders, 2003). In Vertical Road, there are 8 dancers which create many unique formations due to their 'churning vortices of movement', (Mackrell, 2010). At 0:22 in the video, https://youtu.be/vfflMh2BBqo they are all in a triangle formation which influenced us to use it in our piece. This impacted the audience due to its sense of urgency and imperativeness. We wanted to impact the audience in the same way, so beginning the climax of our piece with all of my group involved generated a menacing and ominous atmosphere. Furthermore, Khan also implied that the music is very significant within his choreography. He mentioned that with the music he wants to 'speak to it, rather than merely go with it.' This implies a predilection for complexity and he speaks of the significance of contrast, the use of simplicity and clarity in the body, (Sanders, 2003). Using this idea helped us within our piece, as there are many chances to use intricate movements with the continuous beat which are breathtaking in their simplicity.
The image above shows how we interpreted the formation of Vertical Road.
Another choreographer that influenced our piece was Jasmin Vardimon with her piece called 'Medusa'. This piece provoked us with ideas on how we can use contact work to show the resilience the 'patients' have to continue the fight for individualism and freedom. Medusa is known for its 'almost violent physical movements' (Winship, 2018). This comment, along with the video, provided us to think about the use of more expressive contact work and how we can be more daring to capture the essence of frustration. Both Khan and Vardimons choreography is associated with provoking a representation of what's occurring in the world and the issues we encounter. The dancers develop a deep connection with one another to show the audience a sense of 'power an imagery on stage', (Watts, 2018). My group wanted to create this same effect by working compassionately and collaboratively in the movements that we created. By bringing our own individuality, with the help of the chance method and translation task, we were able to elect many movement styles that showed intensity and intention behind our piece. By researching about these choreographers in further detail, we discovered that Vardimon enjoys providing separate contributions and she prefers to work individually because she believes it to be, ' the easiest way',(Watts, 2018). On the contrary, Khan enjoys collaborating with his dancers to create visually complex and multivalent work, (About us - Akram Khan Company, 2015). He does this by the form of improvisation, which we found useful when gong into our memory loss section, as the disorganized gestures manifest how we are suffering from insanity. Despite them having a different perspective on their collaborations with their dancers, personally, I believe it to have the same emotional impact on the audience due to all the dancers having no limitations. While Khans dancers ignite a passion within the audience members, Vardimons dancers show attentiveness to all their limbs which is a detail we need to be aware of for our final section. By having these choreographers as inspiration, my group now are determined and confident to take more risks and challenge our self, in order for our choreography to have that raw devotion that we see throughout Vertical Road and Medusa.
References:
Akram Khan Company. 2015. Vertical Road - Akram Khan Company. [online] Available at: <https://www.akramkhancompany.net/productions/vertical-road-2010/> [Accessed 26 November 2020].
Akram Khan Company. 2015. About Us - Akram Khan Company. [online] Available at: <https://www.akramkhancompany.net/about-us/> [Accessed 26 November 2020].
Mackrell, J., 2010. Akram Khan Company | Dance Review. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2010/sep/17/akram-khan-company-review> [Accessed 26 November 2020].
Medusa Trailer Jasmin Vardimon Company. 2018. [video] Directed by G. Amotz and R. Gabriel.
Sanders, L., 2003. Akram Khan. [online] Akramkhancompany.net. Available at: <https://www.akramkhancompany.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Akram-Khan-by-Lorna-Sanders-May-2003.pdf> [Accessed 26 November 2020].
Vertical Road / Akram Khan Company. 2010. [video].
Vertical Road / Akram Khan Company. 2010. [video].Gorgon For The #Metoo Era. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/oct/23/medusa-review-a-snake-haired-gorgon-for-the-metoo-era> [Accessed 26 November 2020].
Winship, L., 2018. Medusa Review – A Snake-Haired
Watts, G., 2018. #Metoo Medusa - Dancing Times. [online] Dancing Times. Available at: <https://www.dancing-times.co.uk/metoo-medusa/> [Accessed 27 November 2020].
Well done Lucy. I really enjoyed reading this blog post. Is there any choreographic processes which you have used due to the inspiration of Khan? Were these effective?
ReplyDeleteThis blog is really detailed and you have explored Arkram Khan really well. I love the sections were you have explored the pieces which inspired you for your choreography and the impact this has had on your choreography and how your influences link to your own choreography. Did you find having this inspiration helpful and were there any particular methods the practitioner used and you referred to?
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ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments Sadie. We used improvisation which is one of Khans choreographic methods, as it brought out our individuality and devotion to the piece. Within this method, we felt like our movements became more expressive and the intensity became stronger and more evident as the improvisation continued. This was very effective within our piece, as we linked it to memory loss which reflects a patient called Beulah Jones. By us all developing individual movements, it created an ominous atmosphere which we hope the audience will be captivated by.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments Abigail. I found these choreographers extremely inspirational as there movement style captivated me. The passion and devotion that they portray through facial expressions and intricate pieces of movement, inspired and influenced my group. Like I said in my previous comment, Khan used a lot of improvisation to collaborate with his dancers. This sense of individualism that is emulated through this piece fuelled the dancers to move with expansiveness and captivating presence which we hope to illustrate throughout our piece. Within the Medusa piece, there weren't any particular methods that we referred to, but we were inspired by the use of breath in this piece. We have started using this method in our choreography as we found that it relaxed all of our movements and made the more classical movements flow more.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments Abigail. I found these choreographers extremely inspirational as there movement style captivated me. The passion and devotion that they portray through facial expressions and intricate pieces of movement, inspired and influenced my group. Like I said in my previous comment, Khan used a lot of improvisation to collaborate with his dancers. This sense of individualism that is emulated through this piece fuelled the dancers to move with expansiveness and captivating presence which we hope to illustrate throughout our piece. Within the Medusa piece, there weren't any particular methods that we referred to, but we were inspired by the use of breath in this piece. We have started using this method in our choreography as we found that it relaxed all of our movements and made the more classical movements flow more.
ReplyDeleteI really like how you've showed the pictures how you have been inspired by Akram Khan's piece in your choreography. If you could choose between the two pieces and choreographers that you researched, which piece was your favourite?
ReplyDeleteI would definitely say that Vertical Road by Akram Khan was my favourite and it was him who influenced many sections of our piece. This piece was my favourite because he had many intricate hand gestures and impulsive moments throughout the piece that captivated us from the very beginning and held my attention all the way through. We wanted the same effect on our audience so took this as inspiration and weaved it into or choreography. Furthermore, his facial expressions were sinister and ominous which accentuated our piece dramatically.
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