Choreolab 2005

Bu Julia Sadler

Choreolab 2005 was held from the 26th Jan - 10th Feb at Tarrant Dance Studios in Wellington, the home of Footnote Dance Company. This year dancers from Australia, New Zealand and the United States leapt at the opportunity to attend Choreolab with guest choreographer Jeremy Nelson.

Jeremy was born in New Zealand, though has been living in the United States and working throughout Europe for the last 20 years. He is currently a member of the teaching faculty at the Movement Research Centre in New York and last year he was a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship award. In 2004 Jeremy ran workshops at the Impulstanz festival held in Vienna. These workshops were attended by many enthusiastic NZ dancers who ensured Jeremy's reputation as an inspirational teacher and master choreographer preceded his arrival in New Zealand.

Jeremy's Choreolab classes and workshops were appropriately titled 'working from the inside out'. These classes were based in Klein Technique and incorporated a focus on anatomical alignment, internal/structural imagery and efficiency. His classes were playful, challenging, refreshing and intelligent. Jeremy's inquisitive, fearless and enthusiastic approach to movement was infectious.

This year I was invited back to Choreolab as lab choreographer after previously attending Choreolab for the last three years as a dancer. There were also many workshop participants who took the opportunity to explore their own choreographic work. Jo Randerson, Fenn Gordon and Nic McGowan ran workshops in writing, production and sound.

I was fortunate to have 20 dancers to work with and I enjoyed the enthusiasm and energy of this large group. These dancers came from various training backgrounds and it was a pleasure to work with both students and graduates. This year the recent Unitec graduates were well represented and many Choreolab participants will be attending Unitec to continue their training.

I came to Choreolab with a previously devised movement vocabulary, though I was interested in seeing this material on a large number of dancers. Therefore I was able to play with formations, partnering and structure. The challenges in these workshops were in finding ways to include all the dancers while still exploring my choreographic direction, maintaining a constructive environment and allowing time to fully develop and define new points of interest.

However all the dancers inspired new directions for this work and Jeremy's choreographic workshops also influenced my process. My initial focus on group movements and unison began to shift to individual motivation, solo movement and relationship dynamics. Halfway through this process my desire was to construct a work. However Choreolab is a process-based workshop so I continued my exploration in response to feedback and mentoring sessions with Deirdre Tarrant and Jenny Stevenson. I appreciated the time I had to work alone with the dancers, though I now see the importance of receiving feedback and initiating discussion with my peers and artists who I know and trust.

Choreolab culminated in an informal showing which allowed me, Jeremy Nelson, workshop participants and Footnote to present any work to the Wellington community. Unfortunately time is always limited in these situations so any response to the work shown took place at The Bristol later that night. It has to be said that Choreolab 05 was a particularly supportive and social environment with one of the highlights being the magical boat trip out on the 'Sweet Georgia'.

Choreolab establishes strong connections between emerging dance artists, encourages choreographic interests and gives a practical perspective to those artists entering the professional dance community. It is important that these connections and relationships are valued and sustained as this will ensure that dance opportunities are created and that new work continues to be made.

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