Individual Identity
A brain with ADHD by Becca Harris
For my choreography piece I decided to portray something that I have personally struggled with along with many others in the world. ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder). I wanted to try and shed some light onto the disorder as it is often misunderstood. It is often understood that it causes a person to not be able to sit
still and concentrate, and while that it the case for some, it is not the case for all. I for one do not have a problem with being able to sit still, I can do that perfectly fine. However, I have issues with distraction, losing my train of thought and understanding the emotions that I am feeling. I decided to try and create something that would allow neurotypical brains to try and understand what this disorder is like.
Alix Dugre, Sara Rantala, Becca Harris, Beth Jarvis, Chiara Pagani
Maggie by Beth Jarvis
For music I wanted to create an uncomfortable atmosphere. I found a sound score on youtube which I was going to try and do something similar.
It is uncomfortable to listen to in a
way because it is overlapping and there are lots of different things that your ears are trying to listen to. This is what I wanted to go for because people with ADHD struggle to tune out different sounds and it can get confusing and it means we can miss important
information.
I took the 4 key words of ADHD. Hyperactivity, impulsive, hyperfocus and distracted and gave each of my 4 dancers one of the words. I wanted them to portray that word
throughout the piece and then the audience would be able to understand how the words
integrate with each other and whether they have the potential to help or hinder the individual. I wanted the piece to look as if the four dancers were ‘in a brain’ and they had a task to do. I showed this by having all the dancers start together. Due to the differences in the words it meant that certain people may ‘forget’ what they are doing, ‘go quicker’ then the rest of the group or ‘fall behind’ all of which were intentional.
Clothes Make The Man by Alix Dugre
My piece entitled “Clothes Make The Man” was explorative work into how the individual
could become apparent through clothing. Clothing and fashion is an intimate way of
protecting, covering, revealing, preforming gender, making political statements,
conforming, but mostly exposing our identity no matter how understated. I mainly
aimed to work through the question of whether or not it was possible to bring out the
humanity, individuality and nuances of a person through clothing.
While devising the piece I asked my three dancers to bring clothes, accessories and or
jewelry they had a strong emotional connection to. Subsequently, my piece was devised
with the individual as the focal point. I worked with the three dancers for the first few
weeks understanding each individuals attachment to clothing/fashion and their own
clothes. The majority of the time was spent playing, observing and attempting. I interviewed
the dancers individually to understand why they picked each item of clothing, we discussed
the importance of clothing, I had the dancers embody each other’s clothing to observe the
change in identification etc.
The piece itself had a simple structure wherein all of the clothing and accessories (laid on
the floor) were visible on stage right with dancers standing behind them. A cyclical pattern
was established; one dancer would grab an item off of the floor of their choice, put it on
them as they walked to center stage and then performed one of three things. The dancers
either improvised with the item of clothing, performed a sequence they had previously
created or posed. This was followed by dancer walking upstage and back to stage right after
an item of clothing had been removed from them. One aspect that was also crucial was that
although I created structure and guidance I wanted to piece to come from the dancers and
their own interest in the possibilities.
The purpose of the choreography was never to reach a perfect performance or be at a place
where there was no longer improvement, rather it was to play with and fiddle at the idea of
bringing out the individual in a piece and explore the possibilities of the question I posed
myself at the beginning.
Trust Me by Sara Rantala
Aufheben by Chiara Pagani
A JOURNEY IN THE SELF: ‘AUFHEBEN’
Choreography and music: Chiara Pagani
Collaborators and dancers: Harriet Gill, Holly Morris
‘Aufheben’ is a German word with a philosophical notation that presents a doubled meaning: it means both to cancel and to preserve at the same time’ and it symbolizes the culmination of the process of transition from one version of the self to another.
The research beyond this choreography has been inspired by Paul Valery’s poem ‘La Jeune Parque’ and further developed through the philosophical lens of Hegel’s dialectics. This piece explores the conflictual nature of the self, which fluctuates, transforms and develops constantly throughout the course of our lives.
‘In my own arms I became someone else…’
(Valery, 1997, p.53)
The interest in this research is to witness the ‘other’ inside ourselves and see how we deal with it, how we both are linked and detached from it.
‘And knew of the body I once felt as mine
Nothing- only a fire on its far edge:
Goodbye, I thought, to me, the mortal sister, the lie…’
(Valery, 1997, p.31)
According to Hegel’s philosophy we need the element of othering, the ‘negation’, to begin an inner fight with the self we ‘affirm’ we are.
It is only from this fight between the ‘thesis’ and the ‘antithesis’ of ourselves that our identity arises. There’s no winner nor looser, everything is synthetized in the ‘Aufheben’.
This piece is an encouragement to embrace our oxymoronic nature despite the suffer of surrender and the fear of recognizing the ‘other’ inside of us.
‘My mysterious self, my me, you’re still alive!
You are going to recognize yourself at daybreak
Bitterly still the same…’
(Valery, 1997, p.47)