ABANDONED THEME

So at to build the choreography for this passage, I explained to Lien the piano technique of this part. There are slurs between two chords and s I explained in the analysis, the Habanera motive is reversed. Therefore, the first chord has more weight than the second one.

In blue, motivic cell of Habanera rhythm. Bar 67

In green, the cell inverted.

My idea was to create something that could evocate my hand´s movement. I described to her my feeling: elegant, soft, refined... She quickly remembered the day when she drunk tee with a friend and they went shopping in a big mall. We thought that she could perform those activities in order to create the choreography.

This process is very common and some great choreographers used to create. As I said in chapter 2, one clear example is Jonathan Burrows. He uses daily usual gestures to make expressive movements. The choreographer takes gestures such as weaving hair or looking at a watch, and he abstracts them to the point that its original movement disappears completely.

Lien pretends she is serving tea to her friend to express the character of the section. She serves the tea, she shares the spoons, she gets sugar from the cabinet… The dancer abstracts every gesture to the point that the meaning disappears, and it just keeps the feeling and the character of the movement.

CODA

The coda is made by two contrasting themes that emerge without any connection. For that reason, Lien created two different movement sequences to express the distinctive characters.

For the Castanets theme, Lien makes very fast and short movements. To express the rhythm of the score, she makes larger movements in the long accents.

TEMPO GIUSTO

For the second time in the piece, the Tempo Rubato interrupts again. However, this time it develops into the first mezzo-forte of the piece. To show it, Lien opens her body and creates big movements. 

00: 03 She serves tee to her friends.

00: 06 She takes the sugar from the cabinet

00:08 She surprises about a gossip story

00:13 She provides spoons to the guests

00:18 She takes the sugar from the cabinet (bigger movement)

00:20 She surprises about a gossip story (bigger movement)

00:22 She lives the house

At bar 78 Tempo Rubato Theme arrives again. Lien makes again the tenuto accents, but differently. This time Debussy writes it in G# minor, This passage is in pianissimo subito, in a higher tessitura. Therefore, she recreates the same movements of Tempo rubato, but with a completely different character. This time the tenuto notes lift her.

In bar 87-91 Debussy creates a transition with the last cell of the Abandon theme and the Habanera rhythm. This transition seems to go to the main tone. In order to explain the recapitulation, Lien goes to the beginning point, as if she would start again. 

When creating the choreography for this part, the main goal was to intersperse the different dances without connection. However, it wasn´t that easy at all. 

The dancer couldn't look at me to start the new theme together. For that reason, I asked her to mark the entrance every time. This was a very good solution. One the one hand, she could create a safe time to start the next movements more organically. On the other hand, the music sounded much more natural, with freer transitions.

CHAPTER 4 

THE CREATION OF THE CHOREOGRAPHY

To achive the objetive of the research, I created a dance that could express with dance my performance of La Soiree Dans Grenade. I worked for six hours with the professional dancer Lien Baelde.

Lien Baelde is a contemporary dance Artist, a dance choreographer and a body movement trainer specialized in Dance, Barre, alignment and Yoga. Having completed her education at Muziek en Dans (CODARTS) in Rotterdam, she decided to enroll in AHK Amsterdam School of Arts, in the Modern Theatre Dance department, where she became experienced in a vast variety of techniques and vocabulary in the contemporary field During her final year of training at AHK, she was invited for 4 months to Jeruzalem as an apprentice for Lior Lev’s Jeruzalem Dance Theatre, here she took the opportunity to take part in numerous workshops by Batsheva Dance Company and Vertigo, as well as get in touch with the local dance scene.

Lien has several experiences on professional dance companies such as Off the rails company (Belfast) , Far From The Norm Company , (London), Danstheater Rum (The Netherlands), Chronos (Amsterdam). Next to collaborations with many choreographers such as Judith Sanchez Ruiz, Liat Waysbort, Spikey Lee, Lien was involved in several short movies as a dancer and producer such as Thuis, Home, Heimat by Miloushka Bokma, Nightfall by Daphne Ooms and Roos Pols and Colors by Robert Prein:

Together with Lien, we created a choreography of La Soiree Dans Grenade, linking all musical ideas with a movement. To work into the whole piece, we needed 3 rehearsals. Some musical ideas are linked to a set of exact movements. However, we used other ideas to create stories or situations on which Lien could inspire her movements. In this chapter, I will explain the connection of every musical idea with the choreography.

INTRODUCTION

The movement begins with 5 levels, starting from the low register of the piano to the high notes. For that reason, Lien starts the choreography on the floor and step by step she stands up. Lien chose a space on stage, and she always started dancing from there. When the first theme is coming back later, she makes the movements in the same space.

After this beginning, Lien represents the Arabic melody. To express the pianissimo written in the score, the dancer makes soft movements. In order to recreate the vocal character of the melody created by movements of semitones, she makes wavy movements. To represent the long notes, she just flows as a conclusion of the last movement, recreating the resonance.

For the Abandoned theme, the dancer shows the movement she set before to this theme.

In bar 15, the composer writes ritenuto. Lien moves more to express the tempo changes and the strife between triplets and sixteenth and eight notes. 

TEMPO GIUSTO

As I explained in the analysis of the score, Debussy sometimes presents a theme suddenly and other times he creates a transition for it. Tempo Giusto appears abruptly, presenting a different character. For that reason, the dancer never foresaw this part. Every time I played that passage, she showed a genuine surprise, creating interesting and curious reactions to this surprise. Once, she covered her ears because of the frustration. That gesture could be a good idea to represent the contrast of this character with the whole piece. It is also very visual to explain the lack of connection.

TEMPO RUBATO

For the first time in the piece, Debussy writes Tenuto in the triplets. To represent that, the dancer makes clear movements with a precise and accurate character. 

The listener is expecting the first theme of the piece again. However, TEMPO GIUSTO pops up, developing to a contrasting character.  This contrasting passage uses the motive os TRES RHYTM but in luminous and bright. When I explained this to the dancer, Lien thought that she could look at the light and extend arms to reach it. This fits perfectly with the high notes of the piano.  The dancer interacts with space and the light. It is very refreshing to see how Lien reacts to every hall differently, looking for the light.

The first video is in Keen Van Barenzaal hall, at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. The next video shows the dancer at Studio 1, also at the Conservatory.

TEMPO RUBATO

The tempo rubato appears again, and Lien continues marking the 3 tenuto notes. However, this time Debussy adds an accent on even bars. To reproduce the accent, the dancer acts like someone is hitting her like a bell.

At the end of the piece, the Arabic melody comes again, so Lien follows the same movements she set in the beginning. In the last bars, Debussy adds the Habanera rhytm at the end of the keyboard. When explaining this passage to the dancer, I told her that I needed to play that last rhythmical pattern as if another person would play it. For that reason, she had the idea o adding that notes to her choreography. As the video shows, in the last bars, she approaches the piano, and she plays that notes. 

Lien never had piano lessons. Furthermore, she doesn´t look at the keyboard while playing that part. For that reason, she touches my arm and she follows it until she arrives at the little finger.  So as to finish the piece organically, she drops her hand to the floor, and in that exact moment, I clear the sound with the pedal.

TRES RYTHME

This passage is the first time that there is have a regular tempo and beat. For that reason, Lien sets dance movements that are normally identified to a ballet.   In bar 38, the melody goes up and there is an accent on the hight notes. To represent this, Lien jumps. The melody swings between mezzo forte and piano. To represent that the dancer also waves from left to right. When the melody moves to the medium register of the piano, Lien performs the same, but with smaller movements.

COMPLETE CHOREOGRAPHY

To conclude this chapter, here I present the complete choreography. This is the try out we made in the last rehearsal.