Martha Graham's Limitations Analysis

With our country in such disarray racially and politically, the image of African American women raising their fist really spoke to me. Using the fist as my motif, I spent a lot of time experimenting with movement that could be done while holding a fist. In hopes to avoid my choreographic habits I tried to reflect on the Martha Graham’s Lamitations piece I viewed earlier this week. Her movement was so simple, which was what I tried to reflect in my original piece. However I took the simplicity without the development. Unlike Martha I lost growth and improvement in my dance. I just repeated the same motif over and over. Ironically I was moving not only in my preference but I was being a lazy choreographer. In pursuit of being abstract by give

viewers time to think I lost momentum in my movement. I never really applied what I learned in class to my own choreographic process. After receiving feedback I knew I had to adjust. Completing one of the movement studies in chapter 12 from the book “Choreographing from within” gave me guidance on how to re-approach my solo. I first wrote down actions and state of mind words that I wanted my piece to reflect. I came up with grab, fight, stand, and push, with these verbs in mind I had a starting point for movement. For state of mind I want to reflect yearning, strength and pride. Lastly I decided that I would focus on the Laban efforts of direct, heavy, and sustain to quick movement. Then I looked back at my picture. I reminded myself that what was most important was intent and emotion needs to be shown through dancing.
This time I reflected on the action of making a fist and what it represents. Struggle, frustration, and pride, I am sure were all felt when that fist was put up in the air. I thought about how you have to first open your hand to close it. With that in mind, I moved away from simply holding my arms up to find ways of showing opening and closing. I spent some time watching myself move to make sure I was doing things that reflected my goals. Another exercise I found in in the book in chapter one was the act of visualizing what you do before doing it. I used this technique to make sure that I stayed on track with my intent. I imagined each step and saw how it connected to the previous one.
My preferred movement qualities are, heavy, sustained, and direct movement.

My main focus was to abstract my movement and push myself. The main adjustment I made was the change in pace. It was suggested to I show more struggle and fight throughout the piece; I do that now by increasing the speed of the movement. Quick actions of reaching, grabbing and pulling all translate the external and internal conflict the women in the picture might have faced. Moving fast is not something that I enjoy doing, for various reasons. Besides the fact that I feel as though quick movement put a lot of pressure on my joints, I also have this mental stigma the causes me to believe that moving quick has an impact on how clearly I communicate the intent of the piece. Subsequently I tried to make sure my movement had a clear purpose.
When my partner originally looked at my piece she really enjoyed how dynamic it was. This was one of my original attempts of creating, which I created right after we experimented with movement quality. Somehow I lost sight of that quality in the piece. Feeding off of that comment I decided to take a new approach towards the piece. I travel around the space more, I change levels, speed, doing these things not only creates dynamics but also is much more interesting to the

audience.
Creating this piece was a learning experience. It was eye opening to my ability to apply what is learned in class to my own choreography. I have discovered that my movement preferences are becoming hard to avoid. I am trying to take my creativity in another direction but I find myself creating whatever feels and looks comfortable. My take away from this project is to spend more time creating various pieces just to practice pushing myself choreographically.