What was the inspiration or starting point for Chapters?
I was interested in creating a work comprised of many short stories. Over the past 20 years I have created dances on many different scales: some of them immensely physical and large in movement vocabulary, some of them finely detailed portraits in gesture, some intensely dramatic and emotional, and others humorous or purely abstract. I love that I can juggle all parts of my creativity from one dance to the next. With Chapters, I am striving to find a way to place them altogether within the same framework. I have been collecting quotes and sayings from literature, film, overheard dialogues on the street, fortune cookies.. anything that compels me to want to create imagery from it. Chapters has been loosely created from 22 of these ideas.
What has the process been for creating the work?
The process has been very satisfying. I have placed an entire year aside for creating this work and that is an unusually long gestation period for me. It's been a great revelation to work at another speed and to let mistakes live and breathe until the answers are found to fix them. It has been luxurious, tension free. The dialogue that I have with my dancers, which is always rich and fulfilling, feels even more encompassing as we have been discovering new ways and methods to create material and dramatic intent.
What was the greatest challenge you faced in making this work?
I have been struggling to decide whether or not these dances tell an interrelated story OR are if they are purely a series of stories that live under the same roof. The dance maker in me wants to weave them together in some way, building a structure and form that is recognizable. But the realist in me knows that these dances need to live separately enough to give the viewer breathing room for many possible interpretations. The path of least confusion, I call it. In the end this will be the stronger message, if I can smartly organize how and when each dance is seen in context to the next. Although I have 'conceived' the work as a full evening, I am also allowing allowing dances to be pulled from the whole to make shorter more concise suites.
Is there anything else you want to say about the work or its work in progress showing at Bates?
Creative time at Bates has always led to tremendous work for us. Something about the atmosphere, the time and space, the support. I am excited to be completing the work this summer and to be sharing it with the dance community at the festival.
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Lux from Doug Varone on Vimeo.
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