After our last rehearsal I’ve realised that the work needs quite a bit of ironing out.... finding connections between the material that was originally created in sections and making these connections look like natural transitions like segues in thought.

On the costume issue, we’ve decided to go with opaque black tights under the dresses after much debate....the high slits on the sides of the dresses come up nearly to the hip and to just be wearing dance shorts underneath was decided distracting. So the tights will make for a cleaner line and put the emphasis on the movement as opposed to bare legs.

Tomorrow we have another long rehearsal where I am hoping I can get the material videoed in order to draft a storyboard for the lighting design.....

Presumably, I should be able to do this:

Thought people might like to see this, John Healey's site, complete with a new look since last I saw it. Wonder whether John did his own site ... could we call him back to the Newness Dance fold for a bit of design consultancy I wonder...?

Hooray! We finished the work today! At the moment it stands 22minutes long. The ending has good progression full of lifts. The next few weeks really need to concentrate on getting the movement into the body & finding the intent. Rehearsal tomorrow – to just start running it in costume and finding the flow.

Almost finished! The work is now 15 minutes long and with an 8 hour rehearsal tomorrow I am hoping we can squeeze out another 5 minutes. 25 minutes would be an ideal length but at this stage I’ll settle for 20. Phil Harle who took some great publicity photos for the brochure attended rehearsal today & took some more pics of Sus & I dancing in costume....it is worth checking these out on his website www.virtualtraveller.org

It was a day filled with some doubt about the movement. Getting frustrated with really trying to get the choreographed material inside the body and realising that the piece still needs a bit of an emotional edge—how to fill this gap with a precise movement phrase?

Dancing in costumes today also raised the issue of their appropriateness....black dresses with huge slits up the sides—I felt a bit over-exposed in terms of the amount of flesh on display-- especially after rehearsing up until now in the usual baggy layers of dance wear. I could use crossed fingers for tomorrow.....until then.

Just finished two days of rehearsal—still many gaps in the choreography. We’ve got so many small separate segments of movement material and it’s been difficult to try to find the transitions between them. The upside is that we’ve found the music & this is the first work I’ve made where the music isn’t brought in the day before performance, so it is nice to feel a bit of congruence between sound and movement early on. I’ve set the goal of having a completed the work (the structure) by Sunday.

OK, the ad-banner should have disappeared now. Right?

Thought people might like to see these photos of April and Susanne dancing around.

Welcome to my new news feature. Generous thanks to my talented website designer. I am hoping to use this space to record my choreographic process for my new work, Talk Less. London contemporary dance followers will know that the Resolution! season is already underway at the newly renovated Place Theatre (now the Robin Howard Dance Theatre). With any luck, I shall be seeing the show tonight, hoping to get a boost from the performative atmosphere, in preparation for my heavy day of rehearsals tomorrow.

OK; a new section for the site. Using the service provided by blogger, this will allow initially April, and potentially other members of the Newness Dance team to add new content to the site easily. April hopes to use it to document the process of making the new work, Talk Less and in future any fresh Newness Dance news can be posted straight on here by whoever is in the know without recourse to me. The ad-banner at the top will go as soon as my pay-pal account is activated and I can give the guy who runs blogger his $12.