January 31st, 2012

The one thing I'll definitely leave here with is that Bill got me hooked on Once Upon a Time. That new ABC series. I love it!
DAMN YOU BILL!
I still haven't turned on the TV but am watching it online.

New ballet teacher on Monday. Irene, a Russian, old school style. Took me right back to SAB. Tough but loving. I kinda dug revisiting that whole deal without the teenage angst. HARD class......

Katja came in very ill so Brigel had to learn and go into Whole. He is FAST. I mean I pride myself on being a quick study but he learned Katja's theme and then started layering systems on it and playing with the other dancers almost immediately. Very cool. Very impressive. Bill was tense at first but when he saw how fast Brigel was assuming into the fabric of Whole he relaxed.

The new piece Stellentstellen continues to come together.

Bill added a new element yesterday. He called it Naming the Abyss. David Hern sings this quasi country song he wrote and refers to a book that tells you how to do everything. In this case it's choreography.

He instructed David to stand on center and physicalize what the books voice would be and had dancers making "offerings" from down stage diagonals. It was really cool. The way David clicked into exactly what Bill meant and delivered. As soon as David began I got it.

From that point on the sequence of the piece remained relatively in tact and he started playing with more "framing"

At one point he had the entire company on stage just triangulating and framing each other. They did it for like a half hour and I could have watched it all night. Constantly taking cues from each other and moving at just the right time and at the right pace. Using time, texture and intent so beautifully.

It's really quite like Paul's posture studies like Epic but Bill is coming to it in his own way and with his own tools. I mean if you look at Bill's evolution as a choreographer from his very early Crankoesque ballets to Love Songs then what I call the hyperballets and tanztheater pieces to Isabelle's Dance to what he's doing now one can still see his own origins and yet it's come so far. I know some people want the "old" Bill but I'm so in love with this evolution. I think people like to have things just familiar enough so that they think they have some sort of ownership of it. Some proprietary claim. That's BS. Let artists grow and change and venture. Otherwise we'd all still be looking at Petipa and that's all. Just because someone might be going down a road that you don't understand or care for it doesn't make you look any less intelligent. We're not trying to make a fool out of you, we just want to see what's around the corner.

OK back to Once Upon a Time.

Later.