So I came across my subject for this week's blog by creating and rehearsing the piece I submitted to Roxey Ballet for the River Dance Festival this year. The first of the two is the Prelude to the Rhinegold - first opera of Wagner's Tetralogy - with a rhythm complex and difficult enough to choreograph, so simple to listen to however! The second piece is a song that I discovered at least 6 or 7 years ago, and which I've instantly fallen in love with: Crystallize, by Lindsey Stirling. The version I'm using is the solo violin version, where all the electronic instruments in the background have been muted, so Lindsey's exquisite violin playing can more fully be enjoyed. There is something special about Lindsey Stirling that evokes with special power the symbiosis which can be achieved between dance & music, or more abstractly movement & sound. First of all, all who've seen her live performances have probably been awed by her unique way of combining intricate dance choreographies with the pieces she plays. She writes her own songs, and dances as she plays her instrument. The remarkable element about this is that her dancing skills are principally self-taught, an amazing achievement in regard of her already virtuosic violin playing. Some have even doubted, when watching footage of her concerts, whether the audio was added afterwards on the video! But those who've seen her live performances confirm that she does play while moving.
The second reason I picked that piece by Stirling and regard her work so highly, is because I feel movement is evoked in a very free, transcendent manner by her music. The flowy phrases, the momentum of the structure, the repetitive patterns, all powerfully evoke the joy of organized movement, which we call choreography. In keeping with that subject, one might ask: what does choreography mean? What is the difference between choreographed and non-choreographed movement? And additionally, what makes the beauty & harmony of choreography? These questions call to mind several significant words. The first of those is organization. As stated above choreography is organized movement. Why is that so important? To answer that question one might look for insight of the feeling of a dancer when performing a work learnt by heart, as opposed to improvising. Let's compare these two situations, improvisation and memory performing.
Lindsey Stirling in concert, in one of her stunning poses. Her movements are often in perfect symbiosis with the notes she produces.
Improvisation is an art that any artist more or less learns after a while of experimenting with their art form and of course acquiring skills. As we learn a discipline we become more comfortable to execute sequences, and eventually, we become able to ourselves determine not only how steps should be executed, but also how they should follow each other, and transition into one another. We therefore become capable of being at once performing and creating artists, and especially in the performing arts this is a very highly prized achievement, because this is a field where time & tide wait for no man! It is perhaps also there that it is the most relevant, since the joy of dancing and of watching dance is essentially a joy of transitions - of watching a succession of beautiful movements flowing effortlessly into one another. These are all the nice points about improvisation. But improvisation is difficult, and requires that the dancer be focused as much on the intellectual aspect of their performance as on the physical. They must take care to still execute the movements well, and the way they're intended to be executed: at the same time they must think of the best and most efficient ways of carrying out their transitions and following up sequence after sequence. This in itself is part of the whole art of choreography.
But there is another aspect of choreography which I particularly want to talk about, and that is, pre-created choreography, whether by the dancer or by someone else: the sequence has been learnt and rehearsed until the dancer has become quite familiar with the transitions of movement. Every dancer knows that point when one particular piece has been so many times rehearsed that the mere doing it becomes almost a second nature, and transitions are more felt than thought of: the succession becomes almost instinctive. This is the moment when the dancer can focus entirely on executing the movements well, because the transitions have become so familiar to them that they need not think about it anymore. This is precisely the stage which that particular piece of Lindsey Stirling evokes to me, and I suspect, would evoke to many listeners.
In an evocative setting, for the official Crystallize video.
The music has in it a flow which is quite truly hypnotic. There are silences in the music, not a lot of them, but they're placed exactly where they must be to keep that "continuous flow" going, almost like in Wagner's Tristan for instance. In fact, that aspect of the music almost reminds one of Wagner. This is part of the reason why I selected that piece to create my choreography for this year's River Dance Festival. I think every succession of movement should be hypnotic, unceasing, and always expanding and growing into something more intense. There is a suspense in the choreography of any sequence of organized movement, that makes it thrilling, gives it meaning and power, and this is what makes choreography what it is, and such an exciting thing to create.
Now a few words about Lindsey Stirling who created - and plays - that wonderful piece. Lindsey Stirling is a violinist, songwriter, and dancer. She displays all three talents admirably in her live performances. As a dancer she is mostly self-taught, recalling in interviews that when she was a child she wanted to learn both dance and violin. She had to choose one, and she chose the violin; however, the presence of dance in her performances is essential, and gives her concerts a trademark that is unforgettable. At the age of 23 she made it to quarter-finalist at America's Got Talent, the judges calling her performance "electrifying" and in 2013-14 she made her first world tour, being noticed by Lady Gaga's manager, Troy Carter, because of her meteoric rise in the media, which demonstrated that she knew how to draw audiences' attention. This was a combination of good marketing techniques and genuine talent. Stirling's style strikes one as quite unique, being a blend of different influences, ranging from the classics - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, which she also performed - to pop and rock, as well as electronic dance music. It is probably her simultaneous dancing which makes her performances so unique. As she states in an interview, dancing while playing is not something natural even for an artist who is good at both - doing both together is a different thing. She states that she has to get familiar with a song and learn to love it, and to play it, in order to naturally be able to dance to it afterwards. And this is precisely what makes her interpretation unique: she loves what she does, she feels the music, and strives to express it through every possible means.
As a Wagnerite I've always held in high regard artists who venture beyond the mastery of any single discipline: those, who, fascinated by the power of art, strive to express it in every possible means, and associate them to produce something entirely unique, a synthesis of movement & sound, of visual and tonal beauty. Lindsey Stirling is one of those artists, and this is something which has to be taken into account when creating choreography on her music. I believe her vision can be heard in her music, in that continuous flow which seems to guide the notes, half instinctively, to fall into one another, one by one, until there is nothing left but silence, and fascination.
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