- How did the site of DongMen alter the choreography that you created in the classroom?
- Now that you know this site better; If you were to go back to Dongmen what would you add or subtract from your choreography to make it stronger?
I wish more people had gone to see the Dongmen market before the shoot on Tuesday. I got the feeling that it was all very rushed. If the dancers had known what it was like there, there wouldn't have been complications like "the floors are too dirty to lie on" (hall), "
this is the escalator?" (escalator) and "this clothing line won't work" (rooftop). If these things had been out of the way from the start, there would have been less complications on the day and much less time wasted. Some of the choreography had to be changed at the last minute. So now that everyone knows this site better, if we were to go back and re-do it, the choreography and preparation in general could be improved. Also, we didn't get to do as many shoots of Max as I initially wanted to. Now that we know the place better, we could have gotten through the scenes faster, and actually get into the "breaking down", which is one of the things I had been really excited about, but we didn't get into in depth.
For that whole period on Tuesday, I was only with my hall group and Max for most of the time, so I can't say much about the others. The hall group had to completely re-do the choreograph because the floor and the walls were too dirty to touch, apparently (hadn't we agreed to bring dirty/old clothes for this?). As for Max, he did a great job considering we practically started from scratch. I think I'm sounding too critical... I really like what everyone did and what they put into the shoot on Tuesday, it's just that I had this great vision, but we didn't have enough time or preparation for it.
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I agree that things were a bit rushed because of time constraints. I too wished that others had checked out the site beforehand, but I think changes were made that didn't take away too much from the original vision. Again, as a director some of those changes can come from you. I enjoyed watching you in a leadership position and I would like to see you continuing to be a leader in our class throughout the year. In retrospect, what would you have done differently as a director? What worked and what didn't work in terms of your leadership?
November 24, 2008 at 9:04 PM
I do think that we "lost" some things in the original vision, but that's okay. It's not so much what was lost, but that it was slightly different from what I imagined. But in the end, this performance isn't only mine; it's everybody else's visions as well. I actually hoped I could have done more in my role. I don't think I was involved enough because it was hard to be everywhere at once. I didn't want to get in the way of the filming as well, so most of the time I spent talking with my group about changing their performance, and with Max's scenes. I would have liked to spend more time with Max and focus on the "breakdown," as I said before. Overall, maybe I'm just not experienced enough in this role so there were some time management issues on my account, although it was a nice experience.
November 27, 2008 at 11:39 AM