The Choreographer’s Perspective and Creative Process

Returning to work again with Composer Martin Bresnick, I lean towards creating theater dance as opposed to a pure dance form.  Our process encourages me to tell a story, explore a specific personality, or bring a painting to life as in our last project, Tales of Hopper.  In each case I turn to human gesture to develop a movement vocabulary.  

In our initial meeting to discuss our current project, The Winter’s Tale, Martin suggested I utilize the concept of gestus – a device coined and practiced by Bertolt Brecht.  Gestus is an expression for gesture and attitude.  A specific gesture assigned to one of the characters in the play can reveal their person as well as their intention in relation to Shakespeare’s story. Brecht felt it was important to relay the story line as well as the interactions between characters.  Interestingly I would have followed this course naturally to develop a movement lexicon with my dancers.  The specificity of Brecht’s idea to develop and define character through gesture and intention, brought-to-mind the film, Drive My Car, that cast a sign language actor in the Chekhov play within the film.  She was so effective and moving as a signing actress that I decided to utilize sign language gestures, to help create a theatrical movement vocabulary.  I have chosen specific signs for each character as they convey the story in the various acts of Shakespeare’s play.  In the case of a central character, King Leontes, whose mounting jealousy ultimately destroys his family I employed the sign for infidelity.   Leontes is convinced that his wife, Queen Hermione is being unfaithful with his childhood best friend King Polixenes.  The sign for infidelity has such a potent impact in his movement sequences that we understand through the intensity of this gesture that he is accusing Hermione of betrayal.  

Before I begin to build material for the various acts of the play, I research the signs that depict aspects of the action and characters involved.  As a result, I am finding gestures that enhance the movement by expressing the tone and intent of the story and its characters.  This process has been very satisfying and supportive of my creative process with my dancers.  

In the end it is my hope to create a piece that encourages the audience to enter this theater dance piece with patience and curiosity.  Some of it is lively and very much dance material and other sections are quiet human interactions that allow the audience to have the time to feel what the dance artists are experiencing themselves.

ABOUT THE WINTER’S TALE

Based on one of William Shakespeare’s last great plays, The Winter’s Tale is a story of improbabilities, loyalty, love, and forgiveness. At times a comedy and others a tragedy, the plot resides in a patriarchal society in which the role of women is constantly thwarted and limited by male dominance. However, Shakespeare’s female characters contradict the gender mores of the period. These strong, grounded women display thoughtful judgement and compassionate morality. Utilizing gesture inspired by sign language, the movement vocabulary lends itself to the fervent emotional context displayed by the performers' embodiments of joy, madness, betrayal, jealousy, and passion. Several roles are portrayed by gender opposites to the original casting; Lavagnino utilizes this device to speak to the rich and interesting dimensionality of all people and urges the audience to lean into the acceptance of these differences to embrace the distinct expression of each individual.  

The Winter’s Tale is CLD’s third collaboration between choreographer Cherylyn Lavagnino and celebrated composer Martin Bresnick. Bresnick has composed the score in the last several months; during the initial creative development period, the company used the music of Max Richter. A final, fully-produced edition of The Winter’s Tale will premiere June 5th and 6th, at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York City. 

"Warm and heartfelt... beautifully choreographed and executed. Already a compelling piece of choreography and dance theater."

—Critical Dance on The Winter's Tale (2022)

CLD Founder Cherylyn Lavagnino on Teaching in the Time of COVID

Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance
December 1, 2020

As I sit down to write about my process as a ballet teacher, it occurs to me that this will be just as challenging as writing about my choreographic practice. So much of what we do is about the body. What we create springs from each individual’s mind-body relationship. As a result, a great many things emerge from intuition and innate creativity and are not necessarily translatable to words.

What is important to me? What do I hope to achieve? Where do I begin as I develop a curriculum for training gifted aspiring professional dancers?

The starting place is the body and its motion – alignment, coordination, movement sensibility, individuality, and musicality.

My pedagogical approach to ballet technique is built on the many years of personal research and practice in several somatic techniques, contemporary and classical dance, and my choreographic explorations.

I am interested in ballet training that emphasizes sound skeletal alignment, mechanical efficiency, and
gravity. These principles can enhance each dancer’s structural support, to encourage an economy of effort, physical freedom, and a deeply considered presence. Through the release of personal and physical tensions, dynamic and expressive range is continually developed to enhance an honest, vulnerable level of performance. As the dancer strips away any affect or unneeded tension, the unique individual is revealed through their movement and expression.

In addition, I ask that each dancer address musical and performative complexities as they deepen their practice.

What emerges is a fully-physical, engaging dancer that is able to impact the audience through technical expertise and a vulnerable, open performance ability.

CLD Dancer Gwendolyn Gussman on Going Virtual and the Pandemic

Gwendolyn Gussman
November 23 2020

I think many of us can agree, these past 8 months have been a time of unexpected (and sometimes unwanted) change. When NYC announced it’s first stay-at-home order on Friday, March 13th, I had just taken ballet with Kelly Slough at Mark Morris and was on my way to rehearse for the 3rd day with a few dancers, musician and scenographer at The Cell Theater in Chelsea as part of our artist residency for my company, HOLDTIGHT. Just two weeks prior, I had finished a joyous season with Cherylyn’s company at The DiMenna Center. Little did I know this would be the last time I would dance in person (for now) with the CLD company, in which I've been privy to share the stage with since 2016.

Since late March, I’ve been living with my parents and my partner, Alex, who is also in the arts, in my childhood home in Denver, Colorado. It’s been quite a big shift from my near-decade of living and dancing in the big apple. I have a deep longing for the city and the community that supported my growth, pushed me, provided me some of my wildest, challenging, and most wonderful experiences plus introduced me to people I now think of as family. The dance community is one of those families. CLD is one of those families. During the first few months of COVID, Cherylyn hosted zoom cocktail-hours for the company-- this was a beacon of connection for me, a sweet and sometimes awkward new foray into staying in touch, giggling, seeing each other's faces and making sure everyone was staying healthy and doing OK. It was during one of these chats, that Cherylyn brought up the idea of relating the company’s latest work, ​Tales of Hopper, ​to a digital, and possibly Zoom, medium. We began ideating, chatting about inspiration like director Richard Nelson’s latest zoom play for The Public, and other work that was speaking to us during this time. In late summer, the cast of five of us from ​People in the Sun,​ plus Cherylyn and Corrine, began rehearsing and dipping our toes into how to translate the pre-existing work into something similar to the concert version, yet somehow a bit more raw, and extremely relevant for the current time. Cherylyn directed us while Corrine helped us navigate Zoom, reminding us generously of who was to whom’s left in the grid of boxes, etc. During the first rehearsal, I remember the feeling of giddiness, and I remember feeling happily surprised that the work, the community, the sense of creating, could transmit through all these layers that many of us aren’t used to working with so closely. The vibe of the piece began to shift into a darker, perhaps more frustrated, and at times bewildered characterization of the original choreography. Hopper’s painting took on a new feel for us all, one that I found had altered nuance and tapped into a different set of emotions and subtle gestures to play off of, within the piece.

It’s safe to say that these past few months have offered me new insights and taught me more about things that I feel are heavy and light. One of the greatest insights has been about connection, art-making, and the intense meaning that the sharing of art and creation has on my own life, and the lives of many in my communities, in our country, and in our world. There have been times, just like in “real-life” or should I call it, the in-person world, when I’ve felt drained or lackluster about an upcoming rehearsal. Yet, I try my best to make it a priority, and I’m always grateful I did... especially during this time. While many of us have experienced varying degrees of grief and loss over these months, I have found beacon’s of fulfillment and hope with action. Some of the most special experiences and moments i’ve had over the past 8 months have been with those I get to continue to collaborate with, like CLD, as well beginning a new creation for Vanessa Walters’ ‘Ripening’, as well as continuing to create and present my own work with

HOLDTIGHT and my awesome collaborators, both through digital platforms with The Cell Theater, as well as a series of live performances in Denver we did earlier this fall.

Yes, these past months have been weird and very unsettling, and I imagine much of that will continue. AND, I continue to count my blessings, to feel a little spark of joy each time I login to Zoom knowing I am in a position of health and opportunity to continue to collaborate and create with my fellow artists. And for that, even when days feel dark, I can see the light.

CLD Dancer Corinne Hart on Tales of Hopper

Corinne Hart
October 9, 2019

Tales of Hopper has been a process unlike any I have experienced before on my artistic path. Choreographer Cherylyn Lavagnino’s interpretation of Edward Hopper’s various paintings and her biographical readings string together her fictional narrative for this new work. My role is the character of Josephine, the red-headed wife of Edward Hopper himself. The narrative Cherylyn creates through her choreography and staging of this section of the work is one of betrayal and heartbreak. Josephine’s husband has taken a lover and she has the proof: a slip of paper with a name, phone number, and smudge of lipstick.

This role requires more acting of me than ever before. I am challenged to put myself in Josephine’s situation and feel through her emotions which are a duality of anger and sadness-- anger that her lover and life partner would betray her in this way, and sadness over the loss of his trust, love, and companionship. It’s not to say Hopper actually ever committed unfaithful acts against his wife, who was almost always his model for any of the female figures in his paintings, yet Hopper’s history of disappointment in intimate relationships, learnt from Cherylyn’s biographical readings, influenced this narrative choice. 

Through my formal education at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, I’ve taken a few semesters of acting classes and learned a few of the formal acting methods. The challenges of this new work have required me to tap into those lessons and tools. Cherylyn has used the umbrella term “theatre-dance” to describe this new work and I don’t think it could be more accurate to describe the emotionality and techniques it requires of the dancers.

Cherylyn is very particular in the way her choreography is portrayed - it is understated work filled with nuances and subtleties. In rehearsals, she asks her dancers not to act with our faces but with our bodies-- through posture, touch, tension, and release. It is a challenge to not “over act” the thoughts and emotions running through my head as Josephine. Anger, hatred, love, and sadness are all such strong emotions, yet I must exude them in subtle, considered ways to encompass Cherylyn’s vision of the piece.

Thankfully I share the stage with remarkably experienced and gifted artists Justin Faircloth (Hopper) and Claire Westby (the mistress). Working with these mature dancers is simultaneously inspiring, motivating, and alleviating of some of the pressures that come with such a serious and artistically challenging role.

Tales of Hopper: A work in progress by Cherylyn Lavagnino

Cherylyn Lavagnino
May 5, 2019

Having worked with Martin Bresnick on a recent project and discovering a harmonious collaborative and creative relationship between us, we endeavored on a new work for CLD. He proposed two ideas: a Shakespeare project and an Edward Hopper project. I was simply intimidated by the prospect of a work on Shakespeare and, at that point in time, knew of no one who had made a work on Edward Hopper. (I came to find through my research later that Bridgman|Packer Dance had done a work with projections and imagery reflecting Hopper’s paintings.)

I did a great deal of both reading about and looking at Hopper’s work to prepare for the rehearsal process. From this research, it became clear to me that my approach to movement needed to be very distilled and that I should move away from a lot of large movement and toward a more pedestrian vocabulary utilizing gesture, acting, and a carefully considered movement vocabulary. What became fun and imaginative for me as a choreographer was creating the scenarios related to the paintings, connecting characters from various paintings, and creating relationships between them. Hopper preferred his audience not to see what objects and narratives were in his paintings, but to feel them. This particular directive has informed my creative process. Rather than be explicit about a story line, I am working with the dancers to create an emotional narrative that is evoked by gesture, proximity, and stillness.

In this new chapter for CLD, the workspace has become increasingly collaborative between my wonderful dance artists and myself. They are very much enjoying expanding their range and stepping into a role that requires more acting skills than ever before. At this point, we have created a series of vignettes created directly from his images. I plan to place them in an interesting set that will abstractly evoke his paintings with the intent to find a visual and emotional arc that will take the audience on a journey as they witness these very human moments.