Panoply choreography

Today I participated in the preliminary round of Panoply Choreography Competition. I took a tap piece called "stop and smell the roses" about how you sometimes have to get out of the daily grind and "smell the roses" in order to be able to keep going. I got nowhere per usual, but it was fun. I'm not entirely surprised because a. I'm very non-traditional and odd and b. I honestly wasn't entirely sure that the performance was good enough to give a clear picture of the choreography -- the gist of the piece definitely came across, but I don't know if the whole picture did.

Anyways, conceiving a piece and developing it over time is always a fun process, and I will keep doing it until I can't--even if I never get so much as an honorable mention. As much as I would really like a little recognition, It's not about that.

When I was freshman in college, we had to do reviews of dance shows, and one of the required ones was a faculty choreographed show. My ballet teacher, Bill, apparently didn't like the way we wrote our earlier dance critiques and was giving us an explanation when one of the theater majors blurted out "Will you give us an F if we bash your piece?" He very calmly turned and said "No. I didn't put it [the dance] out there for you. I put it out there for me." That changed my whole way of thinking about dance and choreography. Prior to that my dance experience had been performing something or creating something for the purpose of winning a competition or otherwise getting praise. Now, I create for me, even if it means spending a lot of time on something that I perform only once for a small crowd. That's 1000 times better than having something in me to say with dance and never saying it.





P.S. I would like to give a shout out to Sanspointe who has a piece in finals tomorrow. Michelle Wittington, the founder of Sanspointe, has made Panoply Choreography finals several times and has won both category and overall awards. I am definitely looking forward to seeing their piece tomorrow.