A Time for Everything...

well my time teaching has come to an end, at least for a couple months while I focus on School. It's my senior year at Poly and I only have 8 class, equalling 2 quarters left. One of my classes this quarter conflicts with dance class (I'll arrive a little late to rehearsal this fall)

It pains me to have to give up dance time for school but I just have to remind myself it is only a little longer than I can focus on dance for the rest of my life, or for however long it makes me happy to do so.

Tuesday September 14th was the 3rd week in a row for me to teach and to work on this phrase. It has transformed greatly from a couple of awkward trees swaying in the breeze to a true forest full of critters, grass, trees and wind. I still need to work on the components and really refine and complete the movement.

here is 2 runs in a row with me in them

Beginning Combo 9-14-10 from Lauren Chertudi on Vimeo.

here is 2 of the dancers alone

Beginning Combo * dancers only 9-14-10 from Lauren Chertudi on Vimeo.

Compare to

week 1
week 2


after that I asked if I could use my 3 lovely ladies Mac, Caren and Kathy as guinea pigs and play with some ideas I have for the final piece.

I worked with layer, level and dynamic, here is the result:


(video on the way)

That called to an end my short stint teaching the beginning modern class. I'm hoping to guest teach at Nipomo a couple of times later in the quarter and year and when December/January rolls around I will hopefully be back in rotation for teaching at VV. So never fear this is not the end of Movement Tronic... there is always more! Seriously my head is a never ending abyss of dance crazy.

The trees have evolved!

So as I said I scrapped most of last weeks phrase and started again... this time using Zoe Keating music like I want for the Nipomo dance.

I kept with my forest theme in the piece and still didn't get to finish the phrase so next week look for more changes and additions!

here it is

Beginning Combo 9-7-10 from Lauren Chertudi on Vimeo.

Beginning Combo *Dancers only* 9-7-10 from Lauren Chertudi on Vimeo.

I like being a tree in your odd little forest

Tuesday Aug 31 I taught the Beginning Modern class for Variable Velocity. On Tuesday I was thinking about the class and that I wanted to use it to work on ideas and play around with material for Nipomo High School.

I know that I am interested in the idea of layers, levels, and as usual dynamic opposition. That led me to the idea of a forest and the layers of a natural forest with tall trees, bushes, grasses, critters, the wind, etc all working together to create this environment with so much life, energy and movement.

I am considering using this Zoe Keating song because I only get 3-4 mins to show a complete thought which is very difficult (think about taking gone with the wind and condensing it to a paragraph)

However as I started thinking about the movement I found myself very stuck... I had choreographers block. I couldn't shake it my body wouldn't flow, my mind wouldn't open, and for the life of me I couldn't visualize anything.

So I went for a walk, possibly the best thing I could do. I went out I found some trees, the wind was mighty that day and the sun was bright. I breathed the air and soaked in the sun and had this Balmorhea song on repeat on my ipod. I had found the music but not the story yet.

It took me almost 3 hours to bang out some semblance of a phrase... that frankly I'm not a huge fan of and I plan on scrapping 90% of it. There are bits of it that I like and lots that I don't but that is the nice part of setting the movement on these dancers before the Nipomo kids. If Mac, Caren and I can't make it work, then no one can.

So here is the phrase that consists of all forest things, starts with grass then trees and moves to wind and critters and those bushes and ends with a falling leaf.

take a look, tell me what you think, and look for a drastic change next tuesday!

VV Beginning combo 8-31-10 from Lauren Chertudi on Vimeo.

The dancers are rock stars working so hard to make this look and feel decent. I had no specific timing or counts and no real definite structure to movement quality.

VV Beginning Combo *dancers only* 8-31-10 from Lauren Chertudi on Vimeo.