With a full creative team now in place for the devising of Dance in the Dark and buckets of inspiration from the children and families we've been working with over the last 6 weeks it was finally time to head into the studio for the first week of devising.
Week 1 of rehearsals took place at Warwick Arts Centre and also at The Albany Theatre in Coventry. My aim for this first week of rehearsals was to roughly plot through the whole show, revisiting all the material from the R&D that I wanted to keep and beginning to play with and develop some new ideas which had emerged through workshop play with families, much late night thinking and creative discussions over the last year.
For this first week of rehearsals I wanted to come away with a sense of the whole show to digest over the christmas break. It felt helpful for the composer, set, lighting and sound designers to also have a sense of the whole show for their planning/creative process and I had a new dancer to bring up to speed who had not been involved in the R&D. I resisted the urge to work in detail and not solve every problem, knowing that I would have time to do this later in the process.
The first 3 days at Warwick Arts Centre was spent with the performers, Ant (musician and composer) Ayesha (dancer) and Katie (new dancer). Dance in the Dark will have participatory elements for the audience as well as set dance pieces, live music, including the performers all singing a lullaby, and sound design. With a new performer in the cast I wanted to build the relationship between the cast members. Our daily warm-ups for everyone included playful improvisation tasks and games, as well as more traditional dance technique.
Ant, as a musician and performer in the show, is not static and I want him to move and be a part of the action as his character (dad) dictates. I am lucky that he enjoys moving and is keen to not be one of those musicians that just sits and plays. There are challenges around how and when he moves so that the quality of his playing (guitar) is not compromised. Movement improvisation and warm-up games, which everyone takes part in, provide a starting point to discovering what might be possible. I start from a place of playfulness as I look for humour, interaction, relationships and what might engage a small child. This is true of both my work in the studio with professional artists and out in the community with children and families.
Working with Dramaturg, Lou Cope has really helped me to make narrative sense of the work, at a much earlier stage than I would usually. Lou and I communicate regularly on Zoom calls, giving me an opportunity to chat through my ideas, she listens, questions and offers feedback. During the R&D I had played with many different ideas, ghosts and ghouls, object manipulation and animals to name a few, now I needed to pin down what exactly the show is. After Lou encouraged me to 'kill my babies' I was able to refine my ideas and pin down nocturnal animals as a recurring theme integral to the show. The idea that we can use our imaginations and creativity to overcome the fear of the dark led me into exploring a reoccurring structure of fear-play-sleep throughout the show. As the show progresses it will journey from being rooted in reality and develop into a world of fantasy/imagination. As the imagination takes hold we journey outdoors to dance happily under the stars.
Lou joined us in the studio on Thursday observing and provoking dramaturgical discussion. Amongst other things, we discussed the role of the audience/children and their relationship to the performers when and how they were invited to join in. The tone of the piece will feel emmersive as the audience are at a sleepover with the performers, rather than being performed to.
We were also joined by Kirsty Harris (set and costume) on Thursday and Friday. Having Kirsty in the studio, means that she is there to respond to what we are creating, offering a different perspective and helping to solve problems as they come up. It is so useful for Kirsty's design to respond and evolve organically with the process.
We explored a bit of everything in this first week, including; getting ready for bed with cleaning teeth (a favourite from the R&D and subsequent workshops), magic noctural animals emerging from a bedtime story and gorgeous vocal harmonies in a lullaby. The world of play indoors with fun percussion explorations using blanket boxes, dressing gown foxes, sleeping bag slugs, magical fireflies, plastic bag moths, scary blob shadows and dancing frogs. And the world of play outdoors which included a storm, beautiful dancing with the stars, hand shadow animals and an array of night time creatures made with bed socks.
Not bad at all for week 1 and I achieved my goal to get to the end of the show in the first week...
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