The Installation "About maps and choreography" was the result of the residence Inkubator developed in April and May of 2016 in the Tanzfaktur in Cologne. One of the outcomes of this residence was the creation of maps. These maps were drawings, which symbolizes the trajectory developed during my creative process.
This installation was created having these maps as starting point. It guides the audience to a thinking trajectory, using this trajectory as creative methodology.
An idea is a network. Creativity is not something, which happens linear, but it follows the logic of going forward and backwards, makes circles and alternative trajectories.
The way created in this post is a representation of the way I think when I am creating. One can say that it is my methodology of work.
In the next pages and in the next rooms I invite you to go through my way of thinking when I am creating a choreographic work.
To start the trajectory you need to have an idea or a topic that you would like to work on.
This trajectory is a suggestion and it works for me and to my creative process. You can follow it as I am suggesting, but you don´t have to. You can also find you own way to follow these instructions and to go through this path.
Take an idea, a wish, a topic you want to develop. It can be an image, a theoretical text, a journalistic fact.
Why did you choose this topic?
What motivates you to work on this topic?
What interests you most in this topic?
How or in which format you want to express your idea?
Do you imagine to make a piece, an installation, a film or another format or a hybrid format?
Where would you like that your idea to take place? (Theater, gallery, open space, public space, a house, etc …)
Task: Create a map of your ideas, where you draw what is going on in your mind.
To create the map, you can use the paper and the pencil placed near to the window. When you finish it, continue following the instructions on the wall.
What makes this idea specific from you?
What is your personal vision about this idea?
How could you communicate your idea in one sentence?
How do I translate my idea artistically?
This part of the text is dedicated to figure out strategies that can help you in the process of transforming ideas in one or more than one concrete creative proposal (s).
I invite you to play with your idea, in order to find one idea that you are going to work on.
In this fragment you will find stations. Each station is a suggestion about how you can work on your idea. I invite you to visit the stations and to try out what each station suggests.
You are encourage to move on the space, go to a studio or big room, to use the objects and people around you to work on that.
Station 1
- with what do you relate this idea?
- How can you relate this idea with some images, movement, text, etc?
- Which are the key words of your concept?
Create another map based on these questions
Collect images
Or texts you could relate with it in case you still don´t have it
Station 2:
Catch a key word of your concept. Words are also images.
Let´s play with this word.
Create a task with this word. This task can be:
- Imaginative/memory: exploring a memory or an imaginative situation
- in relation to the space: try a clear task in relation to how you use the space and relate with it
- a movement proposal: a movement quality or something that can lead you to a movement quality
- a game between the dancers which suggests an interaction.
When you create a task think that you are giving a rule for someone else that will follow it.
Station 3:
Repeat the task you create in Station 2 in different ways. Create and recreate your own proposal.
Play with it.
And don´t think too much.
Overlap tasks.
If you create one, try it and now overlap it with another one, creating tasks even more complex.
Station 4:
Use objects to concretize your idea
You can create a task exploring the objects or create a choreography with them.
End Station:
Now that you went trough this phase, I ask you to pick up one or two ideas that you like most, before go into the next room.
- But … what to do when I don´t have any idea?
- How a state of not knowing can be creative and direct me to knowing?
- How to Know the unknown?
Use the not knowing as creative impulse and let yourself be guided by this fear of not knowing.
Trust your intuition.
The next part is dedicated to the outcomes of the trajectory you create until now.
Here is the space to focus your thinking in just one idea.
(I mean, one task, one image, one insight from the many ideas you had before)
This one idea can also be a combination of ideas, which generates a third one.
Take the idea that most makes sense to you and that mostly dialogues with your concept and develop it.
Find the layers, textures and contradictions that belong to this universe you are creating.
On the other posts you can see other outcomes from my thinking process.
If you want, you can expose your map or your maps on the wall and organise them