Choreography with Text

A short exercise to develop work from text.

My text:

I fear for flickering images of me atrophying in someone's mailbox, and then to be re-cast like a bad pirate VCD on someone's memory. Like a photograph that no longer flatters its subjects. Or like magazines out of time in the doctor's waiting room.

Strategy:

Each sentence, phrase or fragment - dissected into tableaus. I suggested we join the tableaus with individual improvisation. A free for all. Moments in time when all performers synched, and when they didn't. The 'didn't' would make the 'did' do more.



Methodology:

The tableaus came out of
1. flickering images
2. re-cast
3. photographs
4. doctor's waiting room

I asked team members to interpret the above phrases, and selected from among what was done. Every choreo-phrase started and ended with the selected frieze. Within it - a free-for-all moment.