Storytelling Part II

Storytelling continued today with a dynamic and invigorating jam session!  We had three new jammers join us, which is always wonderful - we thrive on that new energy and perspective.

For today’s work, we took one story - the Brothers Grimm’s version of Rapunzel - and split up the jammers into three groups - two groups of three and one of four.  Each group had to devise a retelling of the story or part of the story and each had a different lens with which to tell it:

1. 
   
   Narrative voice
   
   
   
2. 
   
   Genre
   
   
   
3. 
   
   Time Signature/Tempo
   
   
   

It was a great exercise in perspective and again, there was a wonderful payoff in seeing a story that you knew taken apart, reassembled or re-imagined.

Highlights (there were so many, really):

1. 
   
   GENRE: The delicious and detailed French-speaking version with a Rapunzel that provided her (his?) own sound effects. It managed to humanize the “evil” witch all the while make smoking a cigarette a la film noir seem new again.  It also gave new meaning to the song: “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”
   
   
   
2. 
   
   NARRATOR: The giddy and quirky version interrupted by an inquisitive narrator that used feet to act out the critical points of the story.  It was a great reminder that sometimes the simplest act can have a magnetizing effect - no need for costumes, light, set, etc.  At that moment, all we wanted to watch were the feet!
   
   
   
3. 
   
   TIME/TEMPO: This was a beautiful and haunting deconstruction - I wished we had more time to let this one keep unfolding (maybe next session, guys?).  It’s outside narration and morphing characters really tied into the primal and emotional elements of the story.  The group used great imagery - Rapunzel and her hair dragging her Prince across the floor.  Economy of text and use of still moments made this really mesmerizing to watch.
   
   
   

I’m really looking forward to our next session at the end of this month.  Perhaps we’ll continue with Storytelling through the end of 2009.  There seem to be so many places to go!

Storytelling Part I

On Saturday 10/3 we had the pleasure of working at one of the studio spaces at Dance Theatre Workshop.  It was gorgeous - huge, lots of windows, full of light, nice sound system (so I didn’t need to bring my portable speakers after all!).  We had an early start - 10AM! - but you know what?  It was so awesome to really be starting the day with a training session.  How lucky were we?

The session was really refreshing, perhaps because we all knew that we would be continuing our work and exploration beyond just this one day. 

Each jammer was asked to think of a story they were told as a child.  It could have been a fairytale or a family legend - whatever first came to mind. Then, I asked each person to create a series of five pictures or tableaux in which they could tell the story without text.  Placement in the room of each tableaux was important; ultimately we decided that the audience would sit in the middle so that the stories were told around us.  We told the stories in four rounds:

1. First showing, followed by observations.
   
   
2.  Second showing: each artist was asked to make a change to their style.  For example, Jennifer (company member) has a very definitive style to her movement - it is very contained, purposeful and controlled.  So her challenge was to be lose and free and uncontained. 
   
   
3. Third showing: a genre was assigned.  For example, new jammer Joy (welcome, Joy!) was asked to do her story a la hip hop. Jam regular (and Rogue Artist), G, was assigned horror (which turned out to be a prescient suggestion!)
   
   
4. Fourth showing: the artist could now use any version of his or her story (based on the previous rounds) but could now tell their story with text as they moved from picture to picture.

It was a really satisfying payoff at the end to finally hear the stories, especially since we had each started to form our own narrative or ideas based solely on the movement-only version.

Two moments stand out to me:

1. When Katy, who has a great sense of shape and using or enveloping space with large gestures and an expressive face, was challenged to tell her story as Kabuki theater (OK, none of us are experts in this, but the idea was that her movement was limited and gestures were enhanced and more detailed). The result was both beautiful and awkward. We all agreed we could have watched Katy’s expressive hands for the rest of the jam!
   
   
2. Sonja was challenged to flip her storytelling from graceful and innocent to a sultry cabaret act.  Once we heard the story at the end - which would never have “logically” been set in that genre, it was a real eye-opener, similar to the moment in Gypsy when “Let me entertain you” goes from vexing nursery rhyme territory to seductive strip-tease.  It was a great reminder that context can reveal so much about a story or a situation.