Personal Development

 PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

In this blog I will be going in depth with my choreographic process and further discussing my challenges within this development. 

Right at this stage of my choreography, I would say that I have a rough draft of my solo but not a finished product. I have a clear vision on what my final piece will be which includes my 4 sections and have yet to come up with an engaging ending. I referred back to Kate Flatts book 'Choreography: Creating and Developing Dance for Performance' where she states about the structure of choreography. She mentions about how it's important to ask yourself, what do you want the audience to take away with them, alongside a set of bullet points with a series of questions relating on what you want the audience to see, hear, feel e.t.c

During these few weeks, I found myself struggling to decide whether to extend my 3rd section to finish the choreography or to include one more section. To finalize my decision, I referred back to my research I found at the very beginning of this process and picked out parts that I found captivating to me and could be to an audience. One thing I was particularly interested was how other people felt about the statue, where its location is and if there was any information about how other people felt about it instead of my own interpretation. Upon my further research, I discovered an article which is based on how the island of Milos is "fighting to get its masterpiece, the Venus de Milo"(McKenna, 2018). It was said that a French naval officer named Olivier Voutier was to have negotiated the purchase of Venus de Milo when Milos was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The sculpture was presented to King Louis XVIII and moved to the Louvre in 1821. The push for its return is even similar with Italy demanding the return of Leonardo da Vinchi's "Mona Lisa". Gerasimos Damoulakis, the island's mayor, states "It is our obligation to our ancestors and our children to bring back this historical treasure to the island"(McKenna, 2018).

Based of my findings of this in particular, this has inspired me to produce a new section and ending to my choreography, The idea of being pushed from one place to another has allowed me to create new motif's that will be shown in my piece.

After looking into this in particular, this led me to do my own personal research into the Greek island of Milos and if they had any specific dances and Greek dances as a whole. It is a very old tradition and there are many different styles from all of the islands. Each place in particular have created and formed its own style to fit with them specifically. With it being a primarily social activity, Greek dancing brings the community together and usually performed on celebrations. As well as this, "Dance could be included in hunting communities, initiation ceremony rituals of age, marriage, and death, entertainment, dance festivals and religious activity"(Fitton, 1973). This gave me the idea of including this style of dancing in my choreography to show a clear relation to the sculpture and its history of Greece.                                    

Attached below are some videos of me using what I have studied and learnt from clips on Greek dancing and how I have explored on how to interpret this into my choreography.

https://youtube.com/shorts/zWYH1ilWTXw?feature=share

https://youtube.com/shorts/ABAOMy1yenE?feature=share

Flatt, K., 2020. Choreography : Creating and Developing Dance for Performance. The Crowood Press.

McKenna, J., 2018. How the tiny Greek island of Milos is fighting to get its masterpiece, the Venus de Milo. i,.

Fitton, J., 1973. "Greek Dance" The Classical Quarterly, Vol 23. 2nd ed. pp.254-255.