Interns: Building and Adapting Phrases

By Laila Fatimi

This week, we’ve been working on building phrases. Before building a phrase, Nicole had Elyssa and I read a chapter from “The Intimate Act of Choreography” by Lynne Anne Blom and L.Tarin Chaplin. While reading the chapter, a few concepts stood out to me. One: there should be a distinct beginning, middle, and end to each phrase no matter how long or short. This gives the phrase a structure. And two: There should be a high point at the beginning, middle, or end of the phrase.  “The impulse serves as an impetus out of which the movement flows necessarily and organically” (Blom & Chaplin, 25).

 We then had to build phrases of our own, using what we had just learned. Once we finished our phrases, the task was to  pick 3 characters, and represent each character through the same phrase. Depending on the different characters we were focusing our phrase on, we would emphasize certain parts of our movement. For example, make our movement slower, or make it faster. The characters I used, were Carmon (from Spy Kids 1, 2 AND 3), Gatsby, and Willy Wonka. 

 For Carmon’s version of my phrase, I made my movement quick and sharp. A drawn out develope turned into a powerful kick. For Gatsby I made movement slower and more grand. And finally, for Willy Wonka, I made the phrase slightly faster, happier and added a couple skips in.

 This exercise taught me how to adapt a phrase, just by changing the feeling behind the movement and to make the phrase own a different identity.

Works Cited

Blom, Lynne Anne, and L. Tarin. Chaplin. The Intimate Act of Choreography. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh, 1982. Print.