January 10, 2012
Setting intentions in preparation for going back into rehearsal in about a week. Desire: to shift focus away from vocabulary (abstract form) and toward image.
Desire: to create from a more emotional, less intellectual, place. Tonight I was reading some Ezra Pound and was struck by a series of statements of his, all variations on “Emotion is an organizer of form”:
“Image refers ultimately to emotional condition. Inside expressable by outside…There must be intense emotion before language simplifies itself to the point of Imag[e].” The greater the emotional energy, the greater the “austerity and the economy of the speech.” Emotion is the “fusing, arranging, unifying force.” It is the “primary energy.” It causes “pattern to arise in the mind.” –Ezra Pound
(Substitute “choreography” for “language” and “speech.”)
Desire: To trust emotion as an organizer of form (rather than habits of deductive reasoning).
Do habits of organizing thought in order to make an argument run counter to the practice of responding instinctively to feeling?
Reluctant Light (the new work) is about the struggle in experiencing intimacy and emotional surrender.
Desire: To be intimate with the dancers with whom I work. To be emotionally intimate with myself.
How can my choreographic process reflect these desires?