“Portales! We’re doing portales piquitos and then portales grandes, right?” Erin asked. “Si! Si!” we replied in turn.  Despite the fact that none of us actually speak Spanish, in the context of our rehearsals, we did. The five ‘portals’ scattered around the perimeter of the stage in our structured improvisation became ‘portales.’ We had slipped into another language, just as we slid down the oil ramps of our ‘portales’ to enter into a new state of being where we had no skin—just blood, bones, and muscle exposed to air.

Breaking out into a foreign language was the perfect metaphor for dancemaking, which is essentially learning to speak another language. It was easier to put it in another language; that way, words, movements, and concepts were expectedly unfamiliar, and therefore liberating. Speaking Spanish in rehearsal was novel, just as the ideas we were working with were foreign. We were creating a new language through our bodies, embracing and reveling in its inherent strangeness.

We fell into the varied landscapes of Murakami’s novels, shimmying down to rest for a moment beneath their skins. Taking a line-by-line approach, we held photocopied pages of his text in our hands as we stepped onto the smooth studio floors and allowed his words to direct our movement. We climbed across ladders on the painted white wall of the stage and constructed wells within our minds. I felt the cold on my skin and the blackness around me within my own well.  The darkness was total inside and outside and in that moment, I could not remember the shape of my face. We translated our internal landscapes into physical movement.

And then the movement ceased to matter.  We had been transformed. The piece developed a life of its own, with its flickering walls, the projected images that would engulf us or replace us. We became its willing or perhaps unwilling inhabitants—isolated, observing, waiting.”

pg 17
“As a human being, he was far more complex, elusive and indeed more magical than any reductive media incarnation.”

pg 18
“…Rather than waiting for someone to disappoint he provokes them into a hostile reaction which confirms his worst suspicions and justifies his own behavior.”

pg 19
“It had very little to do with the clothes and more to do with him as a person. And it’s fundamentally true of anybody. Any interest in the clothes is secondary to the interest in a designer. You need to know you’re a good designer as well though…”

pg 20
“We’re not talking about models’ personal feelings here we’re talking about mine. It’s all about the way I feel about my life.”

pg 26
“He always needed to see how far he could push things, how far he could push himself and everyone who worked with him.”

pg 30
“You’ve got to learn the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.”

pg 74
“There’s blood beneath every layer of skin.”

I knew when I started this piece, music would figure in significantly to it, and my musical selections might not match audience expectations. When you think of a soundscape to define Murakami, your first thoughts may tend towards atmospheric, mysterious music. Check out Murakami’s website, and you’ll hear what I mean.

However, that sound is rarely found within Murakami’s novels. Instead, he uses a great deal of specificity about music, down to the conductor, artist, soloist or label. He incorporates various genres of music inside each chapter – ranging from jazz to American pop in the 60s and 70s, classical and J-Pop.

Most of Hotel in a Bottle has been created in silence, with music entering into the process only in the last month. Because music can have such a strong effect on movement choices, I wanted to develop the dance first. Hotel in a Bottle incorporates a sonic pastiche, with music and sounds taken from several different novels. Typically, I incorporate a wide variety of sound into my work, and it certainly has been a pleasure selecting from such a broad playlist.

Working with Bert Bergen has been a treat; he has opened my ears to new sounds and genres in this process. He has helped me to find the sound of Murakami without always going for the most well-known songs. This allows the piece to create new connections to Murakami without necessarily triggering memories associated with popular songs.

Two weeks to go!

Erin blogs regularly about her process at erinmalley.tumblr.com

I had the whole sky in my eyes and it was blue and gold.

is life to be lived rather than mulled over or dreamed about?  do we exist among or against each other in a brutal adventure, to which we must by our actions give meaning?  is our direct experience our only guide?

When I set out to integrate video with dance, I had this idea in my head that I would let inspiration come only from video – that somehow there was supposed to be ONE foundation in the work, end of story.

I quickly discovered that sometimes we just needed to work on sections of the dance, and integrate a design concept later on. Or sometimes the video design really did feed the movement, and I needed to let that be the impetus. Either way, I got a taste of how integrated the project really is when we had our fundraiser on Saturday and the video that I showed was…a little boring.

Okay. It wasn’t REALLY boring, but without the context of the dance around it, the video just didn’t stand up on its own. And while I was slightly embarrassed at how tepid the response was to the video, I realized that this was ultimately a successful design – for Hotel in a Bottle. The scene leading up to the video – and what happens during the video – is what makes the video work inside the context of the piece.

If I may examine this from another angle, I am constantly hearing about how important it is to be able to see a dance work “on its own” – that it is somehow the measure of a piece’s success. How could that be possible in an interdisciplinary piece, if the intention is to blend the elements in a cohesive fashion? To create a dramaturgical arc, or special “moments” within a piece, sometimes you absolutely MUST lean elements against each other. Sometimes when the elements stand too much on their own, they never quite cohere together. Food for thought.

And with that, we’re back to the creative plate. Next up: the integration of music choices!

Erin also writes about her process on her own blog: erinmalley.tumblr.com