Also I'm very interested in magnifying details and in an atmosphere of intimacy, not in using big brushstrokes accompanied by grand music. Much of the movement is small and detailed. Most of the music is quiet, or skeletal. Some of the music is a sound score taken from recordings of the dancers’ voices and bodies on the floor while we were in the process of creating the pieces. Some of the music is derived from field recordings from the neighborhood of the Barnevelder Theater or around my home. I'm trying to be as real as possible, and to use real things.

This work is one that highlights the everyday and quotidian, presenting things as they are and without a veneer or layer of presentation. The name,`8:10 Assembly’ ties into this. I was thinking about what actually happens in the theater, what are the dancers actually doing? And the answer I came up with is that it is a gathering, a coming together. `Assembly’ seemed to fit the quality of everydayness that I am trying to maintain, sort of like a school assembly. `8:10’ because that is typically the time when our show actually begins. It also happens to be the end time of our mid-rehearsal break on weekday evenings, when we head back into the studio for the second half of rehearsal.

Another change for me is a new interest in slowness and stillness (space for the viewer to place his/her own thoughts, visual space and temporal and kinetic space - part of the spareness philosophy.) In the design of this show, there are no wings or stage legs obscuring the dancers on the sides of the stage. This creates more space, so the audience can see the dancers as they wait to go onto the performing space, what they do when they are not dancing, what they are doing at the moment they are about to step into the piece. Another design aspect of the production, is the slide projections we will have on the backdrop. They will be images of found surfaces that embody the ideas of flaws and irregularities, naturalness, and elements of decay, which I find my eye drawn to at this time.

8:10 Assembly has numerous constituent scenes and parts, some of which include:

• a trio that uses a sound score of the dancers’ voices commenting on events that happened while we were creating that piece, manipulated with the computer so that there is a soft, dreamy effect of cascading, overlapping sounds.
• a group piece built from irregularities and randomness - the dancers were all given exactly the same instructions and each came up with something completely different
• a solo created six months ago, rehearsed intermittently, then intentionally left untouched and unrehearsed for several months, and then reopened/revisited close to the show’s premiere date. This is a prime example of seeing how a dance will decay, the inevitable attrition that occurs. Each time the dancer and I got together, each of us would remember it differently (if at all, in some cases), so we kept reconfiguring it according to our memory of it. We went through four or five rounds of that. I find this process really interesting, seeing what is highlighted in our brains. What resulted is a combination of what we each remember, which consists of incomplete memories and manufactured memories (remembering the steps differently than they actually were or just making something up, but believing it was a memory - I'm the most guilty of that.).
• a quartet in which a single detail - in this case, the act of pivoting - is made to be the theme of the whole piece
• a male duet based on prolonged slowness, something to which these two dancers are relatively unaccustomed
• “break for lunch!” - This is part of my keeping everything in the everyday, here and now. plus I thought it would be amusing; it goes with the concept of being at a real assembly, seeing dancers eat onstage.
• “break for talent!” - I asked the dancers what their hobbies are or if they had a secret talent, and the answers ranged from juggling to sleeping. The reason for the breaks was that I had a feeling about the arbitrariness of schedules, especially when you are still in school with a bell ringing, telling you what to do. And anyway, I always like to put in surprises and abrupt and unexpected changes of mood.
• a large-group, fast-paced, big and energetic movement piece. This section provides some contrast in the show and is the most upbeat of any of the pieces.
• a redo of a 2003 piece - This is a rarity for me. I took a piece that is part of an evening-length show we did in 2003 (Skylark, on the very first Big Range Dance Festival) and I have recast and reworked it, giving myself the freedom to have no allegiance to the original movement, structure, costumes or music. I ended up keeping a lot of the original, but it is changed.

  
  In general, I prefer to make work that provides plenty of room for ambiguity and a degree of obscurity, which I think enables more of a conversation between the work and the audience. I invite you to (buy a ticket and) be part of that conversation.

   

  Jennifer Wood

   

  February 20, 2008