It's the start of finals week and I just wrapped up my 5th season with the Purdue Contemporary Dance Company. As I was working on my choreography proposal for this coming semester, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and watch videos of all the previous works that I have created since coming to Purdue. I watched them in reverse order, so starting with the more recent works and making my way back to the solo that I had to compose for my midterm project in Composition Class my freshman year.
That solo was titled "to be continued..." and I remember having a big discussion with Sally, the instructor who would later become one of my dance mentors, about the title of the piece. She thought it should be titled Black and Grey while I was dead set on having it the previously mentioned title. In the end, she let me choose what I wanted, but because of that discussion, I have always felt that the piece maybe wasn't titled correctly those three years ago.
But as I journeyed backwards through my work, I noticed a very large trend with my work. For a long time I have been fascinated by the articulation of peoples hands. Their other body parts as well like their feet, elbows, knees, heads, etc., but most of all the hands. I find them to be a beautiful part of the body and the emotion and feelings that can be conveyed through them astounds me. They sweat when we are nervous, they convey confidence or timidity in a handshake, we place wedding bands on them when we make those vows, we use them for everything. I composed an entire piece about the articulation of body parts for PCDC last year entitled "d i s c r e t e" but as I watched "A Phoenix, Buried" and "Doors" and "Crinkle" and finally "to be continued..." I realized that I had gotten to the choreography in "d i s c r e t e" by way of the rest of the pieces.
When I titled my solo "to be continued..." it was because to me that dance was representative of my life. It conveyed the struggle that I had with myself and with God about who I was and who I was becoming. The fights and trials I had suffered in my life, the perseverance through them, and the dedication to continue to fight those battles. to be continued was the phrase that I always felt about my life because I knew how much more I was going to learn throughout my days. But what struck me this evening when I was watching and looking at the piece, is that the majority of my work at Purdue has been greatly influenced by the curiosity that arose from me one day in composition class. The material that was put into that solo work has subsequently worked its way into every other thing that I have done in the past three years in some way or another.
So not only did "to be continued..." apply to the emotional connection I made with that first piece, but it was also foreshadowing the work that was to come from my dancing experience. Interesting to know that it has taken three years to get to a point where I am able to look back and see the growth that has occurred. It has also taken three years to be able to convince myself once and for all that "to be continued..." really was the right title for that first modern dance work of mine.
~A
