As an author I have written thousands of words of critique for my workshop peers. This is how you learn from each other's mistakes, as well as your own. You have to be honest in your critical writing. If not, you aren't doing anyone any favors. You're simply wasting both your own time and theirs.
So my signature quote on my workshop profile comes from Oscar Wilde.
A good friend stabs you in the front.
The art of telling a story through dance is not for the faint of heart. It requires a firm grasp of the source material and a clear understanding of how you want to interpret it and make it your own. It goes without saying that you must be skilled in the correlating arts of choreography and artistic direction. At the very least, you must be able to adapt established choreography to fit your interpretation.
I love ballet. I love to see my friends perform. I'm thrilled for them when they achieve all the advantages of a generously supported full time company. I feel for them when they freelance with part time pick up groups running on tiny local grants and the goodwill of friends. Companies where everyone, artistic director and dancers alike, work muggle jobs to make ends meet while trying to keep the dream alive. Instead of relaxing on weekends they load their meager sets and costumes into the tiny community performance spaces they've managed to wrangle their way into, taking the stage for an audience comprised mostly of extended family and devoted friends.
Let's say you're a good choreographer, and you've managed to draw a group of dancers strong enough to bring your work to life. It's dangerously tempting to take everything to the limit, trying to be as cutting edge as possible. A full time company with a generous budget for sets, costumes, and music can walk that fine line with confidence and still make some serious stumbles. For a small part time company working on a frayed shoestring, even the slightest misstep can make for an irrevocable artistic disaster.
The trick with any form of storytelling is knowing what to leave out. This is especially true with dance, as it is extremely difficult to illustrate abstract concepts with movement. One has to rely on sets, costumes, and props to convey the context of the actions portrayed by the dance. The more complex the concept, the more difficult it will be to get your point across. Toss in the road block of budget constraints and the difficulty quotient goes even higher. Add the spice of an insatiable desire to dabble in burning social issues, stuff that will not only be complex but will date the work and make it harder and harder for an audience to put it into context and your difficulty quotient shoots off the charts.
I recently sat through an afternoon of wonderful dance. Had it been presented as individual bits of choreography tied together by a simple theme, it might have been a tour de force. Unfortunately, more layers of complexity were added than either the budget or the story could bear. One could simply put forth the excuse that this was a part time freelance company, but while that might be a reason, it isn't an excuse. I've seen a major company make an even bigger - and far more expensive debacle - out of similar source material.
Given the tools at hand - budget, dancers, venue - it is up to the artistic director to keep a firm hand on the work, regardless of who is creating the choreography. Where one company ran amok with the budget and overwhelmed the story with gimmicks and complex sets, the smaller company, having no budget to work with, overwhelmed the story with too many plot twists, then cheapened it by trying to do too much costuming with too small a budget.
Ray Bradbury's advice to working writers is to produce a thousand words a day. Stringing together a thousand words a day is quite simple. But in order to produce a thousand words a day that are actually worth reading, first you have to string together about ten times that many.
Then you have to decide what to leave out. When you've pared away nine tenths of all the ideas you've tried to cram into your artistic endeavor, you may have finally produced a winning piece.
So my signature quote on my workshop profile comes from Oscar Wilde.
A good friend stabs you in the front.
The art of telling a story through dance is not for the faint of heart. It requires a firm grasp of the source material and a clear understanding of how you want to interpret it and make it your own. It goes without saying that you must be skilled in the correlating arts of choreography and artistic direction. At the very least, you must be able to adapt established choreography to fit your interpretation.
I love ballet. I love to see my friends perform. I'm thrilled for them when they achieve all the advantages of a generously supported full time company. I feel for them when they freelance with part time pick up groups running on tiny local grants and the goodwill of friends. Companies where everyone, artistic director and dancers alike, work muggle jobs to make ends meet while trying to keep the dream alive. Instead of relaxing on weekends they load their meager sets and costumes into the tiny community performance spaces they've managed to wrangle their way into, taking the stage for an audience comprised mostly of extended family and devoted friends.
Let's say you're a good choreographer, and you've managed to draw a group of dancers strong enough to bring your work to life. It's dangerously tempting to take everything to the limit, trying to be as cutting edge as possible. A full time company with a generous budget for sets, costumes, and music can walk that fine line with confidence and still make some serious stumbles. For a small part time company working on a frayed shoestring, even the slightest misstep can make for an irrevocable artistic disaster.
The trick with any form of storytelling is knowing what to leave out. This is especially true with dance, as it is extremely difficult to illustrate abstract concepts with movement. One has to rely on sets, costumes, and props to convey the context of the actions portrayed by the dance. The more complex the concept, the more difficult it will be to get your point across. Toss in the road block of budget constraints and the difficulty quotient goes even higher. Add the spice of an insatiable desire to dabble in burning social issues, stuff that will not only be complex but will date the work and make it harder and harder for an audience to put it into context and your difficulty quotient shoots off the charts.
I recently sat through an afternoon of wonderful dance. Had it been presented as individual bits of choreography tied together by a simple theme, it might have been a tour de force. Unfortunately, more layers of complexity were added than either the budget or the story could bear. One could simply put forth the excuse that this was a part time freelance company, but while that might be a reason, it isn't an excuse. I've seen a major company make an even bigger - and far more expensive debacle - out of similar source material.
Given the tools at hand - budget, dancers, venue - it is up to the artistic director to keep a firm hand on the work, regardless of who is creating the choreography. Where one company ran amok with the budget and overwhelmed the story with gimmicks and complex sets, the smaller company, having no budget to work with, overwhelmed the story with too many plot twists, then cheapened it by trying to do too much costuming with too small a budget.
Ray Bradbury's advice to working writers is to produce a thousand words a day. Stringing together a thousand words a day is quite simple. But in order to produce a thousand words a day that are actually worth reading, first you have to string together about ten times that many.
Then you have to decide what to leave out. When you've pared away nine tenths of all the ideas you've tried to cram into your artistic endeavor, you may have finally produced a winning piece.