SESSIONS -
PAPER
Capturing the Choreography of Canadian Choreographer Patricia Beatty
Mary Jane Warner, CANADA
In Canada relatively little has been done to document and preserve the works of Canadian choreographers until quite recently. There are several reasons for lack of work in this area: few professional notators are available, choreographers have not been trained in best practices; and funding councils have focused on new work not preserving masterworks.
How do we overcome such obstacles in order to preserve important works while there is still time? Several years ago I received funding to begin preserving the work of several senior Canadian choreographers using a variety of resources: Labanotation, Motif, videography, interviews, LMA, still images. The project is massive so I have had to find strategies for making it manageable. Although I have advanced notation training, I don’t notate on a regular basis so it would be impossible to do a full notation score for every work being preserved. Instead I select various methodologies based on each piece of choreography.
Each work is recorded in performance. In addition rehearsals are recorded then edited to show the choreographer or her assistant teaching the choreography to students. The viewer can see the full work being taught in considerable detail. I also write a description of the work based on Laban Movement Analysis. Depending on the work itself several other preservation methods are employed.
The first piece documented was Seastill, choreographed by Patricia Beatty, a co-founder of Toronto Dance Theatre. The work depicts the ocean ground with most of the dance happening in slow motion. A graduate student with advanced training in Labanotation was employed to notate the work. Unfortunately, he went for excessive detail thus only a small section was recorded in both Labanotation and Motif. The main tool used was a series of photos showing every position in the dance.
Around the same time that Seastill was begun, Beatty was invited to mount her solo First Music on graduating students at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre. I attended rehearsals to focus on taping the rehearsal process and producing a simplified score of the choreography. I made this decision because there are only a few Canadians familiar with Labanotation. By deliberately keeping the score as simple as possible, it is possible to provide the basics of reading notation fairly quickly so dancers can have access to the score.
The final Beatty work preserved was Skyling. This is a joyous dance with dancers skimming across the space in a series of runs and spins. For this work I have used motif plus very detailed floor plans because the weaving in and out by the dancers is quite complex. The actual technique is relatively free.
The presentation will show excerpts from each work and discuss further why specific decisions were made for documenting each individual piece of choreography.
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