Fire Extinguisher

There are seventeen of us in the dance company for our next piece, which is an awesome amount of energy and talent in one room.  Our small rehearsal studio is teeming.  During these early stages of the process, we spend a lot of rehearsal time working individually on solos and duets, and most everything requires extensive discussion.  That means seventeen dancers moving and talking simultaneously.  It's quite a sight.  If you were to walk into the studio during one of these rehearsals, here's what you might see:  Johannes crouched in a corner coaching a solo or duet while the Slovakian throws the Spanish girl who then yells at him for tugging her arm too hard.  Against the wall, the two Taiwanese chatter about their plans for a theatrical scene while the Italian lifts an American up from the floor, asking "Like zees?"  The Polish girl asks the Colombian guy for tips on that backwards barrel turn jump thing, and an American tries to make the Finnish girl laugh.  Someone else writes in a notebook, or mumbles text out loud, and there's always someone stretching, and at least two people improvising in the corner with headphones on.  It's a madhouse of creativity.  It's completely inspiring, at times deafeningly noisy, and always intensely chaotic. 


Today was our day off, so I jumped at the chance to have the studio all to myself for a movement phrase I've been developing.  The task is to use foreign looking movement to make a phrase where you're controling someone, but I like to think of mine as the "oriental arms meets break-dancer legs" phrase.  I'm not sure how much of that you'll see from this clip, but what you will see is that even being alone in the studio doesn't mean you're free from interruptions and distractions....