Rehearsal Report

The showcase at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) conference on Jan. 8, 2010 went really well. We had a great audience and some folks from InterNations came to the showcase. I decided that week to interlace the dance sequences with the documentary film I've been working on. The interviews I've conducted with Third Culture Kids have spurred a lot of inspiration for the dance. It is amazing to meet and talk to interesting group of Third Culture Kids from all different walks of life. Their stories and experiences are touching and I hope that this project will help them cope with any TCK difficulties they may face. After the showcase, I met some great people who could relate to being a global citizen/multi-cultural/cross-cultural individual and dealing with the same or similar problems that most TCKs face.


Here are the pictures by awesome dance photographer, William Hebert:

















The past couple weeks in rehearsal, I've spent working with each individual dancer on their respective solos. Their solo material is created collaboratively between choreographer (me) and the dancer. I had each dancer come up with a prose or poem about a favorite memory they have and then I had them extract specific words out of the original. The original movement phrases were created from those words. I gave specific movement ideas to each individual dancer based on their phrases to formulate a truly individual story that is unique to the dancer. The finishing touch will be interviewing each dancer and juxtaposing their words to their solo.

I hand-picked each dancer not just based on technical ability, I picked each dancer because of her background story. Her cultural upbringing, her personality, her openness to learning about other cultures. It was important to me to have dancers that can relate to the project and invest their time in rehearsal. (Dancers if you're reading this, THANK YOU! You inspire me!) They come from a variety of cultural backgrounds (more on this later...) and it is stunning to see this cultural exchange in rehearsal every week. :-)