Antipode
Eleven weeks have just passed since the first day of rehearsals for our new Retina Production of Antipode. Eleven weeks might seem a long time to create an hour long work and in some ways it is but having said that I feel that the work is only just beginning. Yes, we have finished the piece, it is in fact 1 hour and 3 minutes long but while we were doing our first preview in Lakeside Arts Centre in Nottingham last Tuesday I could see the real potential of this work for the first time. It was the first time that we did it with all the elements of the production. Live music, full lighting, projection, even a select, invited audience followed by a feedback session. For the first time I could sit back and see what I had created. Where the dynamic changes work and where they don't work, where the relationship between the dancers works and the relationship between the music and the dance.
The day after we had an other preview in front of a group af students and during this performance things were even more clear for me. So today we changed the whole middle section of the work. Not the actual movement material but the intent, spatial arangement and the order of events. So tomorrow we will work some more changes before we do our last run of this rehearsal process. Then we have a month off, to reflect on the work before we get together again a few days before the world premier during Tanzkiosk in Hamburg.
I love the way a work is never finished and in a way it is good to have deadlines to finish something. But sometimes I dream of having the luctury of having our own production space where we can experiment and try and start again for as long as it takes so we can really finish something before we take it on the road and actually do a premiere where I can be proud of. In the past I have been proud after about 25 performance.
I have the feeling that I am going to be proud at the premier in Hamburg on July 17th.
Cheers
