Tag Archives: choreography

Choreography

Choreography: (n) the sequence of steps and movements in dance

Producing a Broadway-style musical does require some choreography–just as putting together a Ruben sandwich means you’re gonna bust out some sauerkraut.

Many years back, when I wrote such a musical, produced it, cut the tracks, penned the script and found a cast, it came time to go into
rehearsal camp and I realized I needed a choreographer.

Just to make my story clear, the goal of a choreographer is to show up and know choreography to such a degree that this information can be passed along to others. Simply having the credentials, the desire or the reputation for dance and movement does not make one a choreographer.

To teach choreography, you must be willing to come up with a format which can be commonly performed by people who are normally actors and singers–and not ballet dancers.

So when my choreographer showed up and began to conduct classes with my actors in an atmosphere that landed somewhere between a séance and a giggle-fest, I saw that my people were not learning anything. Matter of fact, when my choreographer brought me in to show me that day’s progress, the cast was so confused that they were running into one other. A friend standing nearby suggested that it more resembled “collisionography.”

Complicating the matter were the expressions on the faces of my hired actors, who pleaded with me through their eyes to either kill them or the choreographer.

So I made an executive decision to nicely fire her–which is a simple way of saying I paid her off–and hired two other guys, who were even worse.

By opening night, the lines were well-learned, the music was beautiful, the singing was enchanting, the blocking was positive, the costumes, lovely, and the choreography–disastrous.

It was one of those moments in my life which was so poorly accomplished that the onus fell on me–the fool who had no idea what he was doing.

So the next morning, as we were getting ready for that night’s performance, I asked a question. “Can you explain to me what you know how to do and what you would be able to do tonight without hurting one another?”

They came up with four moves. We quickly incorporated them into the show–over and over again–and the second night went beautifully.

I do not know why my choreographer could not teach choreography to my actors.

She insisted they were mentally retarded. Having their applications in front of me, I knew this was not true.

I also realized that it doesn’t do any good to know how to do something if you don’t know how to communicate it to those who don’t know how to do it at all.

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Blasphemy

Blasphemy: (n) the offense of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things

Dictionary B

Sometimes I allow my idealism to take over the steering wheel and drive me to places of hope.

Generally speaking, there is a car crash along the way.

It’s called “human behavior,” or perhaps, human opinion.

Many years ago I wrote a rock musical called Mountain, which was the Sermon on the Mount set to music. I put together a cast and a twenty-five-city tour.

I was so excited.

The musical had what I considered to be good tunes, choreography, humor and heart.

But my balloon quickly sprang a leak and my dreams began to descend to the Earth.

For you see, some of those who attended objected to the fact that dance was included, since surely Jehovah God only marches and never does the fox trot.

But the most comical attack came from an individual who insisted I had committed blasphemy because in one of the scenes, when Jesus was preparing to share his message, he pauses, miming brushing his teeth.

We thought it was cute. Matter of fact, one of the cast members said “adorable.”

But apparently, to this lady in the audience, it showed great disrespect to connote that the Savior might have experienced halitosis.

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Backbone

Backbone: (n) the series of vertebrae extending from the skull to the pelvis; the spine.Dictionary B

It is what makes us Homo Erectus, which is really not a dirty term.

It means that we’re able to stand on two feet instead of crawl on four.

The spine itself is pretty important. People find out exactly how valuable when they accidentally break it.

But the term “backbone” is normally used to refer to some gumption that might suddenly come into the average person’s decision to be counted as something other than a sheep.

Matter of fact, I can tell you of a certainty, if you’ve never stood up for something eternal in a roomful of detractors, you’ve probably missed out on a particular portion of human growth that takes you from stooped over to standing tall.

Now, here’s the issue: what causes are worthy of such lonely last stands?

Because truthfully, there are many things that claim to be essential and are later declared either silly or maybe even dangerous.

I’ve always had a simple answer to that question: Anything that stifles joy is evil.

Now, I’m not talking about the maniac who joyfully murders people. I mean the basic units of human joy, which are:

  1. I am happy to be alive.
  2. I am happy you’re alive.
  3. I am happy we share this life together.
  4. I am hoping this happiness will continue.

Every time I’ve run across anyone who has tried to eliminate this glorious possibility, I’ve made a stand.

Many years ago, I wrote a play which included dancing, and I took it to some churches, where great objections were offered due to the fact that these evangelicals deemed choreography to be immoral.

I made a stand against them. I was one fellow in a room of 30 arguers. But I had no doubt.

Dancing brings joy. And “the joy of the Lord is my strength.” And since it appears in the very Bible that most of them thought they were defending, I thought I was on pretty safe turf.

Years passed, and dancing is now included in worship services of every denomination.

What is the new attitude which is stifling joy?

Find it. Get some backbone.

And speak for what will last … instead of being intimidated by what is popular.

 

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Awoke

Awoke: (v) past of awake.dictionary with letter A

Just like the next guy sittin’ around waiting for a bus, I love a good story, especially if it’s sprinkled with a little mysticism and the possibility that there might actually be a God somewhere who gives a damn.

Because to be quite blunt with you, I do get tired of believing in things that don’t occasionally offer a dividend. If God wants my life, my repentance and sometimes my money, every once in a while He ought to show up and do a little two-step, letting me know that He’s still involved in the choreography.

I know that to some people, this may sound irreverent, but true irreverence is to continue to worship the irrelevant and insist that it’s meaningful.

So as a writer, I have, on occasion, felt divinely inspired to pen some thoughts which I felt came from a genesis other than my own heart, soul, mind and strength.

Yes, there have been those opportunities when I awoke from a dead sleep with a clarity of mind that could only be described as celestial, to grab pen and paper and write down a thought, a poem, a lyric or a paragraph which was flowing out of me like heavenly milk and honey instead of reluctant glue.

Now I will be honest. Sometimes, when I awoke again in the morning to arise from my bed, and I looked at the scribblings, they had the sentence structure of the Rubik’s Cube.

But there are those precious moments when the original inspiration is still so fresh on the paper that I fear the ink might smear.

So if I find our there is no God, I still feel I am better off by believing that every once in a while, when I awaken in the middle of the night to scrawl a thought or two… it was because God had become my alarm clock.

 

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Ailey, Alvin

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Ailey, Alvin: (1931-89) U.S. dancer and  choreographer. He founded the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater in 1958 and helped to establish modern dance as an American art form, incorporating ballet, jazz and Afro-Caribbean idioms in his choreography.

Being a writer carries with it a certain amount of arrogance. There is the contention that one has something worthy to be said, and therefore read, and also the annoying predilection to associate everything you hear and see into your own spectrum of thinking.

Yes, it’s truly overbearing.

And when I came across this fine gentleman who was so progressive in the art of dance, because I lacked a lot of personal experience with his work, and fearing that merely taking a journey through Wikipedia to impress you with minor details would be presumptuous, if not comical, I decided to sit down and ask myself what I thought of dance. Realizing that this may be completely irrelevant to you, it is my connection with this journeyman’s craft.

As a lad I didn’t dance at all because my church believed that it was the devil’s two-step. One of the deacons in my congregation insisted that it led to lust. When I explained that at fifteen years of age, merely saying a girl’s name aloud could produce great fantasies and tremblings, he didn’t think I was funny.

So it was after I left home and began working in the music field, and decided to compose a Broadway show that, I began to think about choreography, movement and dance. Matter of fact, for my first production I hired a bunch of freelance musicians and singers to perform–all with an amateur status. Failing to realize that just because someone can sing a tune does not mean their feet will coordinate with each other, on our opening night, one critic deemed our staging and dancing to be “collisionography.”

Later on, I tried choreographing myself. Even though I am built more like a water buffalo than a graceful deer, I pranced around stage, learning my steps, acting as fluid as I possibly could, trying to discover my “center,” which ended up being very large because of my midriff.

But I enjoyed every minute of it.

I was thrilled with the audacity of daring to erupt in front of other people, while projecting emotion and ideas through the gyrations.

So when I look at the work of a man like Alvin Ailey, I realize that even though some folks think such shenanigans are evil, despicable or lascivious, life without movement–often purposeful–is bland and motionless.

Matter of fact, there are times when I have jobs to do and I choreograph every single endeavor to produce desirable results.

We come into this world, squeezing through a tiny opening, landing on our butts, learning to walk, so that hopefully … someday we can dance.