As it turned out, every other participant in the workshop, including the facilitator Julie Mayo, was female. I was the only one in the workshop with chest hair. That wasn't bad, though. Besides having one huge dorm bathroom for my own usage at any time and not having to share it with the 6 other girls, I got quite the inside scoop on how girls think and feel and talk when they are alone. I mean, I was around them, but they didn't really pay much attention to me, and when they did, I don't think they really saw me as a guy, but just as another workshop participant. It was fun :P
Now about the workshop itself... oh man it was quite an experience. While it involved a lot of dance, the focus was on creating choreographies. Hence the name: ChoreoLab. We had Mon-Fri to work on, every day from 10AM to 5PM or so, with a 75-min lunch break in between. I have a rough mental sketch of what we worked on each day:
- Monday: General workshop intro. Individual intros. Skinner Releasing Technique in the morning, involving: several "partner graphics", where people pair up and touch and press each other in specific parts of the body, I guess to stimulate perception and stress release. Lots of relaxing, lying down on the back, focusing on individual body parts, feeling relaxed, listening to relaxing ambient music. Then relaxedly moving around, relaxedly getting up, relaxedly feeling your environment, and relaxedly walking/moving/dancing around, in whichever way you felt like. Each Skinner Release session lasted between 1 and 2 hours. Then lunch break. In the afternoon, each one of us was asked to go "onstage", one by one, and perform some kind of dance or movement that we simply felt like. I did one where I started by rolling forward, then moving my legs and my arms out around me, keeping my body balanced, playing around with my body's capabilities, one or two jumps, and then a jump forward that I landed with a forward roll. And that was it. After that we were told to dance, also something improv, but with the "agenda" of things that we had done during the last 24 hours. Some people decided to go literal, and some of them went abstract. I showed myself sliding down the water in Flatrock in Linn Run State Park, then talking to Laura while sitting down on the stream. Then walking on sharp pointy rocks back to the car, then washing off my feet from rocks in the stream, then driving to Chambersburg by pulling myself around the dance floor with my hands and legs, and then just falling asleep suddenly because I was tired. After the single dances we worked on duets. Laura directed me first, telling me to move my arms somehow, grab a yoga ball, throw it, go get it, and simple things like that. Then I directed her into some leg stretching positions, and going to the mirror and exploring herself there. And that was about it for Monday, I think.
- Tuesday: Skinner Releasing Technique in the morning. I remember there was something about... breath? Breath become wisps of white smoke that permeated the body -the skin, the muscles, the bones, and everything became relaxed and soft. Then the freestyle moving and relaxing, maybe a graphic, and that was it. Oh, one of the graphics involved skull strings! We had skull strings, and those kept our skull up effortlessly, leaving our necks relaxed. In the afternoon we started actually making choreograhpies. Julie just told us "OK, you're going to sketch 5 choreographies on paper. You've got 18 minutes. Go." I was like "woooow, FIVE!?!", and I started frantically drawing on a piece of paper. I managed to finish 2 with the time allotted, but then as other people presented their choreographies by dancing them, I managed to finish off the other 5, and at the end I presented one of my choreographies - the one with head and arm swaying. I'll write those up in separate posts. That was it for Tuesday, I think.
- Wednesday: Morning: Skinner Releasing Technique. This time we were given a real sea sponge to feel up at the beginning, and then we were told to imagine feeling spongy as we listened to the music and moved around. After feeling spongy for a while, we were told to imagine strings pulling our hands up from the sky, by the place on the back of the hand where the middle fingers joins. Also, we had skull strings. That time I really felt that image. I moved around for a long while, I felt the strings pulling me up and moving me around, and keeping me balanced at all times. It was nice. In the afternoon, we began working on choreographies. During the first round, I got to work with Heather in a collaborative duet. We made this story out on the Lenfest Commons octagon about a guy who sees some kind of fairy or nymph or something, and then they meet, and the guy pursues her all around, they go around the octagon, they sit, she flirts, the guy tries to flirt with her but she doesn't allow it, he gets mad, they have an argument, he comes back to her, they do a little tap dance, then they get close, they hug, and during the hug, she leaves off running without the guy noticing, and leaves him alone, suggesting it had all been a dream. That was nice. Then lunch break. Then a couple of more rounds occurred in the afternoon. I made a solo with metronome soundtrack and sliding socks. It was cool :D. Then I believe I worked on another duet, but I can't remember which one that was. That was Wednesday, I think.
- Thursday: Skinner Releasing Technique in the morning. Working on choreographies, I made up a solo about a being experimenting with movement and sound, and suddenly finding himself in a mirror, and discovering himself little by little. It turned out horrible in performance, but I kinda liked the idea of it. In the afternoon, I was part of several duets directed by other people. Nearing the end of the day, I was too tired and had to leave early. I had a 3-hour nap until 10PM or so, and then at night I decided I wanted to make another solo, since I hadn't had the energy to make another one during the day. I went into the dance studio and worked on a choreography between 11PM and 2AM. It was accompanied with the Slow and Easy song by Satriani, and it was about waking up. I liked it a lot - it fit the music pretty well, I thought.
- Friday: Skinner Releasing Technique in the morning. Practicing Cathy's Inferno piece for the first round, showing and changing Heather's choreography with me and Ashley later on. Then I made up a solo with strings that I asked Julie and Megan to buy for me while they went to Target during lunch break. Then I showed the waking up solo, then we did a lot of showings for the last showing of the week, to which a lot of other people from Wilson College attended, and then I showed my strings solo, which I thought came out a lot better than it could've, considering it had not been rehearsed at all :). Later that night we all went out to Norland's Pub and talked/drank the night away. Not too much - we left sometime between 10PM and 11PM.
- Saturday: Woke up at 9AM, Megan had already left, Ashley/Heather/Laura/Cathy went for breakfast at Molly's downtown, Laura V. went to have coffee with Julie, and I went to the studio to play around for a bit. A few hours later, Laura and I helped Ashley to pack up everything in the dorms and to leave everything presentable, and then we roadtripped back! It was coool :D.
Quite the experience!! I'm not much of a dancer, but the whole thing felt sooo good!!
Update: Some of the ChoreoLab videos at http://picasaweb.google.com/antoniojl/ChoreoLab.
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