It's been awhile since I've written about my workshops, and yet they have continued, Monday to Friday of every week, from 2-5pm. There's a lot to say, and it will take me more than one blog post to say it (and no doubt I'll forget half of it, or come back to it some weeks from now), but I thought I would try to put something down into words.
I'm not sure where I left it, maybe somewhere during the first workshop when the kids were finally starting to understand what was going on. Understand it they did, and went crazy the final week with creating their solos. The day of the showing they brought in costumes and make up and various other extravagances, and quite thoroughly made an impression on the Cambodian Living Arts staff that was not expecting to see anything quite so well put together.
The second workshop, on group choreography, was a very different group; while the mean age for the first was somewhere around sixteen, this was more like twenty. The first day I had about eleven kids, but three of them must have decided it was too much, as I finished with a good group of eight.
The thing about that one was that I had designed it awhile ago and had included a lot of improvisation. Knowing at that point how little improv these kids had done, if at all, I was pretty worried for how well it was going to go over, but surprising me greatly - and pleasantly - it was no issue at all.
In fact, the workshop was a really great success, shorter but more intense and ultimately more productive than the first, and they finished with two group pieces of four dancers each. Well-thought out, crafted, interesting pieces each, and again wowed the CLA staff, enough that the program director suggested we start looking for a way to do a public performance to bring these pieces to a wider audience.
(Maybe I've already mentioned this before, but I can't say just how excited I am about this idea, and how it has sparked the resurrection of Gillian-with-a-project and kicked the six week slump to the curb. Whereas my personal pet projects are going nowhere, this idea has energy and movement, and I'm ready to jump in with both feet. Something about regular performances and spaces to create work...)
These were the kids that wanted to eat together after the showing, the ones who are now not just my students, but my friends, and four of them returned for the third workshop. Two have been with me since the beginning. Two of them had sat in to watch previous workshops. Out of the eleven total, two are women, and the mean age is probably around twenty again.
This last workshop has been really interesting, some good, some bad. Besides the daily standoffs, this one is about how to choreograph, and I'm finding it somewhat tricky. I have redesigned most of it on the fly because I don't like the exercises I'd planned. How do you teach someone how to create?
Mostly I've just been trying to show them a bunch of stuff, lead them through exercises to get them to explore all the various possibilities for movement and for structuring the work. I've had to explain it a few times, and have gone off on a couple rants about taking responsibility and taking charge and not looking to anyone else for validation.
I think some of it is working, at least, I hope. I can never tell. On Friday I had them use what they'd learned to make a little mini-solo -- each one a wonderful expression of its dancer's style and personality -- and then put it on someone else. It was a fascinating experience, and while it was too short of a time to really properly teach the solo, I noticed one of my guys was nervous when his dancer was performing his solo.
He had taken ownership of that little solo to the point that he was nervous about seeing it performed, and it made me so happy. Yes, I wanted to say, it's ridiculously nerve-wracking to see your own work on the stage. Because it's yours, because you love it, and because you can't do anything else but watch.
We'll see how next week goes -- each student gets forty five minutes to set their own dance. I'm worried that they'll try to do too much and make long dances, when forty five minutes is nothing at all and if it were me, a minute long would be pushing it. But hopefully it will work out, and I'm very excited to see what they come up with.
The fact of the matter is that these kids have become incredibly important to me. I think they're incredibly talented, curious, and courageous. I want to do everything I possibly can to help them to be professional artists, to get them in front of audiences, to offer them a space to create and refine their skills. Let it no longer be said that Khmer people can't/won't/don't know how to create.
In fact, my only problem is getting them to stop creating long enough to be good dancers for each other, and not frustrate the heck out of whoever is trying to tell them what to do.
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