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[HEAVY FOOTSTEPS]
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[Beth Gill]
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My intentions going into this particular project were
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to work less conceptually and a little bit more
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imaginatively, which is to say that I was interested
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in spending some time at the beginning of the
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process by myself working kind of with visualization and
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my own imagination to see things and then slowly
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to connect the dots between the things I was seeing
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and build out a piece from that place.
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A lot of the process that I have been doing and
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that I continue to do here at MANCC was a
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somewhat like analytical process of trying to
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understand some of the initial images that...
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that we've manifested.
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[Gill speaking to performers]
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"And open that left foot.
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And start to think about
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the heading leading forward."
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As I mentioned, so much of the process is about
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finding an inquiry into what some of the visual
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images might represent or sort of the meanings
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that might be coming off of them.
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I thought it could be interesting to gather together
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a somewhat diverse group and kind of pick their
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brains in that way.
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I think everybody is a faculty member here at FSU
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but coming from very different departments,
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we had somebody from psychology,
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we had somebody from theater,
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somebody from dance,
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we had a photographer there, other visual artists.
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I was really excited inside of the entry points
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conversation because I felt that although each
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person sort of had a different language to kind of
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attack what they were seeing and
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what it was making them think about.
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I felt like everything I heard was part of the larger
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canopy of ideas and thought that had come up for
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me and for the dancers as we've been
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interrogating sort of these images on our own.
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[original composition by Jon Moniaci playing]
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[Gill]
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We had roughly two weeks here at MANCC.
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In the first week, we had the entire cast as well as
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our composer, Jon Moniaci, so that first week was
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spent continuing to work kind of structurally to
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understand the layering and weaving together
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of these different choreographic lines.
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All of that work that I was doing with the dancers
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sort of in the room was a kind of active space for
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John to keep cultivating the palliative sounds that
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he's working with and building more specific
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musical compositions to match some of the
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choreographic material.
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So that's kind of how we were working in
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the first week.
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In the second week, I've been primarily working
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with Stuart Singer and Heather Lang.
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They are somewhat intertwined into a kind of
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single choreographic stroke.
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One of the things that we uncovered at the end of
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the week was the possibility of working with this
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material of theirs in kind of a retrograde format.
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I think the interest, or at least my interest still in
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that is to sort of place this very precise, formal,
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frame on this material that is very weighted and
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sensuous, and this is just a very sexy material
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where their bodies are intertwined and you're
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watching these contours glide over each other.
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So that process has been very brain-melting and
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we've spent pretty much an entire week
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working that way.
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[dialogue between Gill and Lang]
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[Lang] “So then it pushes back first, then the right goes,
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then with the left, this guy.”
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[Gill] “Good.” [Lang] “And then”
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[Gill] “Okay just that forward.”
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[Gill] I feel like what ended up happening is
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we kind of unlocked this potential with
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Heather and Stuart and kind of dug into that work,
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but what is exciting when I think about moving
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forward when we get back to New York is getting
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to bring this new material that we've been
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developing into the studio,
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and the excitement of getting to see it
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kind of juxtaposed against other bodies and
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some of the other material that we have.
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But there's still a lot of figuring out that needs to
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happen in terms of where these particular bodies
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and roles and choreographic lines are kind of
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going and some of that is sort of in relationship to
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just a kind of weaving a very loose narrative that
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isn't really written out, yet. That's kind of the work
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that needs to happen.
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What do some of these particular choreographic
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lines want to say?
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You know so what is their trajectory and then
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thinking about those kinds of questions in terms of
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just the framework of the whole piece too.
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[original composition by Jon Moniaci playing]
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[SUSTAINED AMBIENT MUSIC]