Today I wrote a new poem. Only not with words, but with my body.
This poem is set to music, a slow, snake-like song called “The Sensual Chifti” which I fell in love with a few weeks ago upon stumbling across it on iTunes. My complete rendition comprises two minutes, thirty-eight seconds—not an epic by any means, but an average length, with enough rhythm, repetition, and surprise to sink your teeth into. The “writing” has taken place over several days in the clear but cramped space between my dining and living areas, close to where I’ve written the bulk of my novel, plenty of stories, and this column, to mention a few. Like any poem worth writing, the initial phrases flowed rather easily until I eventually hit a sticky spot or two where I wasn’t sure how to move forward. So I stepped away for a few days and when I returned, was able to push through and figure out the rest. There’s plenty of revising and polishing left to do, but all works of art, if they’re going to amount to anything, have to at least get off the ground. Or so said Billy Collins a few years back, at one of the Rollins College Winter with the Writers’ sessions.
I’m pleased to report that the aforementioned “poem,” my first choreographed Bellydance solo, accomplishes that.
What criteria warrants such a correlation between a poem, a literary work composed of words, and dance, an art form which relies solely upon the body, confined to space and form, and the movements capable of being articulated in that space? On the surface, one can conjure a couple of comparisons between the two readily enough—a dance choreography is set to music, for example, and what else is poetry but lyricism, a capturing of a certain emotional state and expression of that experience through rhythm, rhyme, and meter, not to mention other devices such as alliteration, assonance, etc. The restrictions of space and form apply to the page and poetry, albeit in a different way. Poetry and dance tend to be shorter forms (singular pieces may of course be collected or performed as part of larger works, but they are not by nature “long” in the way novels or symphonies are); and both contain a performance aspect. After all, one of poetry’s main distinctions from prose lies within its demand to be read out loud.
But there’s more to the metaphor, I think. I owe credit to my teacher, Suspira, who quoted a former dance instructor of hers who said, “Think of your choreography as a poem. A good choreography doesn’t mean cramming in every move you know just to show off what you can do.” In other words, like poetry, good choreography includes a careful selection of moves that capture the music’s mood, subsequently evoking varieties of mood in the dancer. And as with poetry, wonderful solos likely achieve their captivating quality by means of elegant simplicity and balance. In other words, what you choose to leave out is often just as important as what you choose to put in.
(It wouldn’t be unwarranted to use the comparison “a good choreography tells a story” either, but I’ll tackle that one in a future post. For now we’ll just stick to the poetry angle).
As a literary writer and occasional poet, the “choreography as poem” adage stuck in the back of my mind long after Suspira’s mention of it in class. When I decided to audition for a spot in one of Orlando Bellydance’s four dance companies, I called forth the analogy, for in order to audition a dancer must create and perform her own solo. So here’s how I applied my knowledge of poetry to composing my first solo dance. I think I might have panicked and ended up with one of those “overloaded” dances had I not kept recalling the metaphor—it’s an easy temptation to succumb to, especially when you hit creative walls and frustrations as you inevitably will in orchestrating your own piece. When you’re stuck, the mind is notorious for seizing hold and getting bossy, urging you to try cramming in this-or-that move.
1) “A poem has got to get off the ground.” –Billy Collins
I began by playing the song a few times to just see what moves my body responded with naturally to the music—much as a poet would do in writing a first draft. Focus, relax, and just observe what spills out on the page. In the case of “The Sensual Chifti,” I set a challenge for myself in that I find undulations, body rolls, and other slow movements requiring control most difficult to execute, and this is one of those snakey songs. But I forced myself to wait for the music, to take the entire count to render the movement without rushing; once I settled in, the moves seemed to naturally evolve from one to the next—just like how one image in poetry will lead to another, all the way through to the end.
2) Be mindful of transitions, and the need to create interest and surprise.
Transitions can be tricky. They can also be among the most wonderful opportunities whether you’re going from verse to verse in writing a poem, or the music you’re dancing to calls for a change in movements by the introduction of a new instrument, measure, etc. I included the requirement of “interest and surprise” in that as with writing, you don’t want to cram in too much but you don’t want to plod along using the same old moves over and over again, or the audience will get bored. Art contains repetition with variation—the variation being the key. Just as in writing, where you want to spot overused words, images or clichés, while you’re choreographing, ask yourself: am I leaving out the chest too often? The arms? And so forth. For me, it’s easy to rely on the hips too much and forget the upper body; hips and faster movements are my strong suit. In terms of surprise, you want to keep in mind that if you’ve been facing your audience for awhile, you ought to flip to the back a few times during your solo, in order to create a few “A-ha!” moments when you—surprise!—are suddenly facing them again.
3) What you leave out is as important as what you include. Jam-packed doesn’t equal complicated and artful. A simple dance, unified, resonating, and capturing the mood of the music, will often be more engaging to watch than a harried, overloaded one. Remember, once you’ve got your core choreography down, your “first draft,” if you will, with subsequent practices, you can revise. So don’t worry about figuring every look and hand flip from the get-go—that’s fine if they show up on their own, but you can add those layers later, bit by bit.
4) The creative process should be fun. Most of the time, anyway. If it ceases to be fun, stop. Walk away and come back later, because you won’t achieve the results you’re after by banging your head against the desk or hitting repeat for the hundredth time and swearing at the iPod docking station. In fact, you’re more likely to damage the work you’ve already done (not to mention the iPod) if you proceed under those conditions. Take a break, a yoga class, or make a sandwich; all that matters is you step away for an hour, maybe even a day or two, and a path to what should come next after the chorus or how to end that villanelle will likely have opened up.
This first choreography of mine is destined for improvement over the next two weeks, I know. But I’m confident that with practice and revision, it’ll get there; once the foundation is in place, you have something to work from. It’s the first choreography I’ve undertaken and therefore probably won’t be the best of my Bellydance career; I doubt it will be the last. But I’m hoping that like my first poems written in undergrad writing workshops a dozen years ago, I’ve created a solid work that will hold up on its own, one that reveals a glimpse of what I’m capable of in the future.