"Snow" In August.

(Disclaimer #1: The above video is VERY boring and the product of too much free time in Montana to play with iMovie and YouTube. The shoes are also the clunkiest. shoes. ever.)
So boredom has officially taken hold of me. It has been one day and I am already going a little crazy. I think that my body just kind of shuts off when I am on vacation and even though I am not doing much I feel about 10 times more fatigued than I do at the Met. Kind of strange, no? Missoula is a beautiful place, but seeing as the state is burning down at the moment (a common occurrence for August) being outside doesn't have the same beauty that it usually does. So today I decided to go have breakfast with my mother, do a little shopping (somehow Missoula has a handful of really great clothing stores) and then......cue the dramatic music....I went into the studio for the first time ever with a definite mission to choreograph.

Over the past year, and many times as a child, I have tested out the idea of choreographing and while it was always appealing it was always extremely frightening as well. When I was a child I had no inhibitions and as I matured I slowly started to become more and more cautious of what I was putting out there. When I work on something at ABT I am always worried that someone is going to be walking by and judging me and I find it so hard to find original ideas. I am happy to say that I am learning to let that go. Over the past few weeks I have seen some of my favorite dance pieces ever ("Telophaza" and "Artifact Suite") and found myself inspired by the use of the corps in each. Both are contemporary ballet (or slightly more modern based with "Telophaza") but each showed incredible and innovative ways of using the corps that could be applied to classical movement. As I sat in the audience for each I tried to just soak up the patterns and the ease of moving the corps around that both of these choreographers showed with their work. I find it so difficult to choreograph transitions without making them look like transitions and as I worked for a little over an hour today, I found that difficulty to be a hard thing to jump over.

For those of you who haven't read my blog recently, I have agreed to do the choreography to the "Snow" scene in my old school's production of "The Nutcracker". Even if you haven 't read my blog, I imagine you have heard of that ballet. That's part of my difficulty as well....the fact that EVERYONE seems to have done a version of Nut makes it seem an impossible task to not replicate versions I have seen before. So I am playing with creating a few motif's that I am going to incorporate throughout the scene to give it a slightly modern twist while retaining the classicism that Montana expects. I have about three weeks to get the majority of it done and there is a high possibility I won't be able to work with ANY dancers during that time. WISH ME LUCK. For a choreographer starting out, there is nothing more difficult or daunting than the idea of creating a corps work without the actual corps in front of you. The video above shows me "marking" the few things I threw out today and of course most of them will be done in various formations, canons, etc., with about ten more dancers. Needless to say, this video is probably going to look like a disaster to many of you. Disaster or not, it's a start.

I have talked a lot on here about here about how creation is something I fear but over the past few weeks I have come to the realization that I MUST get over this fear. Some of the friends I have hung out with since the end of Met season just seem to exude creativity with every breath and that has never been the case with me. I know it is in me, it just takes a little more work to get it out. So while Montana is burning, I will be in a studio creating visions of snow. I'll keep you updated.

(DISCLAIMER #2: This video was made for the purpose of helping me remember what I worked on today. Most of it isn't full out, most of it will be with at least 10 other people, and (hopefully) look much better being danced by GIRLS in pointe shoes....not me in those clunky jazz sneakers! Just had to throw it out there.)