I began this process with thoughts about places and the concept of place. Places, and the concept of place, are under constant change. The spaces that we use everyday, the places that we remember, or the spaces that we imagine and hold in our minds lend structure to our lives and are changed by human actions. Places are transformed through cycles of use and maintenance, through the discovery of new functions for existing forms, and through the generation and application of fresh information that changes our perceptions about those places. Places are changed by how we think about them. With this context, I set about translating these ideas into a way to work within the performance space and a method to approach the making of a dance.

For our purposes, as performers, the concept of place is multi-fold. We have the actual place of the Barnevelder Theater, which when set up as a proscenium establishes two spaces within one space: audience space versus performers’ space. Our arrangement for this show is intended to be a room within a room, like nesting boxes, with the audience among, and in very close proximity to, the dancers. In developing the choreography, “place” has become translated to “space”, meaning the dancers’ spatial relationship to each other, to the floor area and to the audience. The spaces between the dancers, i.e. the empty space, can be as important as the filled space (though the dancers, who have worked very hard to fill that space with their artistry and skill, may not be happy to read this!).

I find myself at a point in my life where I don’t care too much for dance movement, I’m more interested in energy, intention and effort. I don’t want to see dancers pretending to do something, I want them to be who they are. And the thought of costumes makes me cringe. Maybe this is a backlash from our last piece, I Love Mumoo Ba, which was all about clothes.......no, I like to think that I’m maturing!

So when I began this piece, the only thing I knew for certain was that I wanted to do everything differently than the way I usually do, and that the seating would be in-the-round. I forced myself to work in a way opposite to the ways and methods that I knew to be successful and to give reliable results. This meant that I really didn’t know how to begin. So I wrote down the sequence of things in the order that I ordinarily get a new work together: select the type of music and the color scheme for the costumes, create and teach movement phrases, manipulate the phrases with the dancers’ input, create an order and transitions for these manipulations, put them to music, set these into a piece with a beginning and an end, finalize the pieces, set the show order, make transitions between the pieces, discover the arc of the show. I then rewrote the list in reverse order: set the arc of the show, make transitions, set the show order, finalize the pieces, set the groupings of manipulations into a piece, put them to music, create an order and transitions for the manipulations, manipulate the movement phrases with dancers’ input, learn the phrases, select costumes/types of music.

Well, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t make myself begin with determining the arc of the show before I’d even started creating the show; apparently, my mind doesn’t work that way. So I went down to the next item on the list: make transitions. That was a lot easier. Make transitions between things that don’t yet exist. I’d actually always wanted to do a show that was only transitions. It seemed like it would be very freeing. This also went along with the idea of place and objects in space and relationships between people in space........ So I began by placing people onstage and sending them off again. After we had set five minutes of this, we put movements to it. That ended up being the opening of the program. I eventually did create some phrases. They do provide some matter to build upon. But I made an effort to stick with the philosophy of a show built of transitions.

I know someone is going to ask me about the name, “Drift Battalion.” I looked up the word “group” in my thesaurus and got “assemblage, battalion, posse, squad, band, fleet, corps, troop, cluster, batch, bunch”. I was drawn to words like “posse,” “squad,” and “battalion.” I paired “drift” with “battalion” because I wanted something that created a contrast, an evocation of a slow, steadfast movement along with a forceful, anarchic movement. Also the word, “drift” brought to my mind images of continental drift, tectonic plates, icebergs moving slowly across. See, I was also thinking about landscape and vistas ( I almost called this program Vista Obsession) because of my interest in place. So there are some glacier-like, mass movement moments in this piece as well.

Another issue to face is the fact that the theater is transformed to being in-the-round. The audience seating risers are put away and the seats are arranged in a single row on four sides. There are regular gaps between the chairs, which are used as entrances. As the dance will be viewed from all sides, it had to be interesting from all four sides. This was a challenge, since I usually only have to worry about one side being interesting, but it was also liberating. I feel that the piece is less claustrophobic. It has more air in it.

Up until now, a few weeks before the show, we have been working with no music at all. The dance is allowed to be itself. We do have a live microphone, which I, and occasionally a dancer, will be using, and I am planning to add a little music, but really just enough music to be a suggestion. The costumes ..... well, apparently I do still care about what the dancers wear! My intention is that the mood be casual and unpretentious, and that the dancers are themselves. So the costumes are t-shirts, warm-up pants and sporty zippered jackets. I had to pick them and couldn’t let the dancers wear their own clothes - which would have been more true to the intent of the piece - because I had to make a color balance. I just had to. As rehearsals progressed, the piece itself took on a sporty vibe too, along with a sense of humor.

I think this is a really different kind of work for Suchu Dance and for me personally, and I’m really eager for people to come experience it. So please do!

Sincerely,

Your Artistic Director

Jennifer Wood

I am Suchu Dance.

March 1, 2007