Quick Q&A with...Choreographer Vanessa Cook.

- Which ideas laid behind the physical tasks you proposed during your Choreolab in Bern?

Overall, I had the theme of ‘Creature’. I wanted to explore some ideas around human behaviors, instincts and interactions.

For example, I wanted to see if it was possible to find an audible journey that started with the kind of sounds we could  imagine might have been made by early man (Neanderthal man, for example) and evolved from that point to the sounds/words you might here from contemporary man.

Sitting opposite a partner, two people put this evolution into motion, using these sounds as an aid to find a corresponding movement vocabulary that evolved in the same way whilst travelling from one side of the room to the other.

What I observed was that the physical journey,  became more interesting when it was reversed.

It was like a slow process of falling out of love, shown in 30 seconds. Or, like seeing an organism decomposing. Devolution was more interesting than evolution! 
 
Each couple had different responses which allowed me to see a range of possibilities I’d like to develop further .
 

- What was the next step in the lab? How was the interaction/dialogue with the dancers to move on to the next level?

I jumped into 2 further choreographic tasks, after dividing the dancers into 2 groups. I wanted 2 groups, so that each group could comment on what they saw in the other group, without knowing beforehand what their task had been.

For one of the groups, for  instance, I gave them a physical task in couples of two, to evaluate different power relations. One partner stood completely still whilst the other climbed on them, only to slip down and have to try again. I wanted to see where the power would lie; in the person climbed or the climber?

I added briefs for the dancers to describe something as they stood/climbed. Depending on who the speaker was, the meaning and balance of power completely changed.

The most powerful interplay was different than I had imagined it would be, and having the non-participating dancers comment on what they’d seen was extremely helpful (actually, more helpful than hearing what they experienced when doing the task).
 

- Overall satisfaction: What did I bring home with me afterwards?

It was a productive time for me to be able to see an idea tried on different bodies. It was like a fast track choreographic process. I will use these ideas in a piece I will make in Spring, so it was very satisfying to have formed some specific ideas, rather than have them remain as choreographic notions in my head.