Threnodies

Well... after some work (and some sleepless nights) the deconstruction/re-working/cutting and pasting brought us to a new order for one of the pieces. We are ready to bring in the band - phew! I forgot how consuming choreographing can be - a friend described it as like being in a new relationship. For me it feels like that and also like trying to solve a mystery,  like being Tom Hanks in the Divinci Code! The ensemble meets tomorrow for the first time. It's going to be great to hear the music live as we have been, up to this point, working with  recordings that were done in my living room.


I've been sick this weekend but the upside is that I've had some time to do some internet research and I finally discovered the name of the sculptures that have be in my mind. In September I was in Ottawa with Mocean Dance and we took a trip to the National Art Gallery. I was inspired by a series of sculptures that I saw and I wanted to use the images as source material for this process but I couldn't remember who the artist was until now - Louise Bourgeois. A French-born, American artist who recently passed away. The sculptures I saw were from her Echo series. They are pieces of her own clothing that had come in contact with her body and contained memories of people, places and relationships. She stretched, manipulated then cast the pieces of clothing in bronze and then painted them white. With regards the the connection of clothing and memory, Bourgeois wrote: “Time – time lived, time forgotten, time shared. What does time inflict — dust and disintegration? My reminiscences help me live in the present, and I want them to survive. I am a prisoner of my emotions. You have to tell your story, and you have to forget your story. You forget and forgive. It liberates you.” 


Many crossovers to what I'm exploring... Here's a video of Jacinte improvising with my sweater during the first week of rehearsal:

Here's a link to some photos of Louise Bourgeois' sculptures:
http://www.cheimread.com/exhibitions/2008-09-09_louise-bourgeois/