At 24, I have to shamefully bow my
head and admit: I’ve become a rough draft person. Remember how English teachers
taught the importance of doing a first, second and third draft of a paper? How
we drilled editing techniques and became mistake-finding gurus? Well somewhere
along the way, my third draft in choreographing became non-existent. Soon, the second draft
slipped away too and I found I had completely adopted an edit-as-you-go method.
I would simply give the dance phrase my best first shot and pat myself on the back for
even doing it at all. A year after graduation, I had an epiphany. How can I be
a choreographer if I always neglect the second and third drafts?
I always had a hunch that I wasn’t
putting in enough effort into my Beginning Dance Composition class. I knew I
could have spent more time editing my dance phrases and feeling
more confident that I had them memorized. I had no way of qualifying what it
was that I was lacking. The answer was most definitely “the second and third
drafts”. I took more than 7 months off from dancing on a regular basis after
school. Of course, I stretched and choreographed short blips of movement, but
my life dream has always been to become a professional performer and
choreographer. Short blips of movement won’t cut it. Today I was trying to
figure out why I could not motivate myself to choreograph something complete. I
decided to read Twyla Tharp’s The
Creative Habit. There is a chapter entirely dedicated to knowing when
you’re in a stubborn rut or a blissful groove. That sounded exactly like
something I needed to be reading. And that’s when I found the line: “We get
into ruts when we run with the first idea that pops into our head, not the last
one”.
Good
ole Twyla. She’s right. I find myself in a dance rut because I don’t push for
the next options- the better options. The first ones are usually pretty
unoriginal and basic. But I settle for that with my choreography right now- telling myself, "at least I made something". So
far, I’ve been taking baby steps in my dance career- fearful of not making it. It’s time to take bigger steps. Leaps
even! It’s time to start consistently writing the second and third drafts.
Current choreographic inspirations: Alexander Ekman. Crystal Pite.
William Forsythe.
