Research

My research began with looking into the powerful lessons that Owen's expresses can be learnt, through observing life around us. Delia Owen's own intimate connection to nature is what influenced her writing, as she received a degree in Zoology and Animal Behaviour, as well as spending several years in Africa, observing the social groups of mammals and becoming fascinated by the importance of female grouping and how strong the genetic propensity for female groups must be within our own species (About the Author - Delia Owens, n.d.). 

(Tucke, n.d.)

Parallels between Owens and Kya can be seen, as Kya watches the insects around her, learning to imitate the somewhat sinister survival skills ingrained in nature itself. For example, this quote demonstrates how fireflies cunningly lure in their mates for food, a cruel but necessary task for survival - "Female fireflies draw in strange males with dishonest signals and eat them: mantis females devour their own mates. Female insects, Kya thought, know how to deal with their lovers." (Owens, 2019, p.274). I am keen to explore this seemingly darker, brutal but completely necessary side to nature, through grounded, lurking and almost spider-like movements, highlighting a contrast between the breathtaking, swirling patterns of the marshland, and the harsh occurrences of life that exist within it. 

Another striking element to the novel, is the use of poetry throughout, which become confessions of Kya's innermost thoughts and exposures of her secrets. To incorporate these poems into my piece, I was drawn to an article about Daniel Stern, who explores the idea of vitality to show how language and movement can both convey a feeling and experience for an audience dependent on their dynamic (Thurston and Slee, 2017). He states that a movement 'unfolds in a certain stretch of time [...] Therefore a sense of time, shape and duration is created in the mind, along with the movement' (Stern, 2010), in the same way that words such as 'swelling, fluttering, rushing' have a different intensity and rhythm to words like brick, flick and snap. Therefore, Stern developed a great interest in the collaboration between language and movement, due to vitality dynamics being 'readily transferable between art forms'. Creating phrases based on the length and sensory quality of the word may be an effective avenue for me to experiment with. The article also highlights key methods used to develop movement from poetry:

• improvised movement and verbalization responding to pre-composed fragments of poetic text

• experimentation with textual mark-making as a movement performance using co-composed poetic material

• generating choreographed movement phrases within memorised and verbalised co-composed poetic text in performance

  This encouraged me to explore layering the results from multiple methods of choreographing in order to find the most impactful phrase of movement. Not only did I try methodically creating based on the length and structure of the poem, but I also used improvisation and movement directly symbolising certain words, to create multiple phrases inspired by both the literal structure, and the depth of meaning conveyed, from a singular poem. This poem explores the theme of Independence vs Human Connection, focusing on loneliness, and I chose to use the piece of music Clair de Lune to reflect on Kya's connection the moon.

  Independence vs Human Connection - Loneliness Section:

  (Debussy, 1905)
  
  
  
  (Owens, 2019, p.214-215)
  
  

  Through the dancer's experimentation in the article, they found that vitality dynamics were naturally introduced when both the 'drive of the action' rather than 'physical detail and aesthetic quality' were considered as well as formal poetic features such as syntax and enjambment, as the feeling of 'tensing' releasing' unfolding' were being communicated by both the movement and linguistic material at once (Thurston and Slee, 2017). 

  
                                                           (Richard Meftah Creative Imaging, 2014)
  
  

  Discovering a more fierce and powerful dynamic quality to my movement is something I hope to achieve, and to challenge myself to venture into ways of moving that feel unnatural and challenging, but also striking and exciting for me, as they contrast so greatly to my natural instinct and quality as a performer. Furthermore, I am keen to develop a confidence in forming movement from more unusual sources, as I have looked into with poetry and vitality dynamics, venturing into ways of choreographing that are different to methods I have used previously. Doris Humphrey insists that movement should be motivated, not intellectualised, meaning it should be driven by feeling and emotion, rather than numbers and formulas (Humphrey and Pollack, 1987). Although effective for quickly generating movement, I feel as though methods relying on chance and randomised sequences would be less appropriate for the meaningful and intentional emotion that I want to be expressed from this piece of choreography, and so, although potentially more time-consuming, I would like to challenge myself for each section of my work to be developed with a considered approach and to be a pertinent addition to my piece. 

  References:

  Delia Owens. n.d. About the Author — Delia Owens. [online] Available at: <https://www.deliaowens.com/about-the-author> [Accessed 11 October 2021].

  Tucke, D., n.d. Delia Owens. [image] Available at: <https://www.deliaowens.com/about-the-author> [Accessed 11 October 2021].

  Owens, D., 2019. Where the Crawdads Sing. London: Corsair, p.214-215, 274)

  Stern, D., 2010, Forms of Vitality: Exploring Dynamic Experience in Psychology, the Arts, Psychotherapy, and Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press

  Thurston, S. and Slee, S., 2017. Vital Signs: Poetry, movement and the writing body. Choreographic Practices, [online] 8(1), pp.9-25. Available at: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/41454/ [Accessed 18 September 2021].

  Debussy, C., 1905. Clair de lune. [online] Available at: <https://youtu.be/CvFH_6DNRCY> [Accessed 27 January 2022].

  Richard Meftah Creative Imaging, 2014. Sarie Mairs Slee and Scott Thurston, studio improvisation for Vital Signs January 2014. [image] Available at: <http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/41454/10/Thurston.pdf> [Accessed 11 October 2021].

  Humphrey, D. and Pollack, B., 1987. The art of making dances. New Jersey: Princeton Book Co.