A Reflection on the Effect of Exhaustion on Creating Something Worth ________
A lot stood in the way of me and the completion of the production of this piece. Per usual, I experienced a lot of back-and-forth and struggle to make decisions throughout the process of my multimedia project. Things on the preference-based side (deciding which artistic choices I wanted to make) to the technological side of things (losing my computer in the Kansas City Airport) impacted my process in ways I didn’t expect them to, and somehow still had an effect on what I wanted to say with my work. From an artistic standpoint, I initially liked my sound project so much I was improvising to it in the studio a few times, really excited at the potential of choreographing something to a sound bit that *I* designed. After a lot of rumination I ended up going with a different piece ("The Creator", by Piano Marine Mike.) My other piece, although containing a lot of aspects unique to me, just wasn't sparking the kind of inspiration I needed at the time. Especially as I was getting into the depths of The Nutcracker and rehearsals, the burnout was feeling really real. As a first-year conservatory student, I wanted to be really authentic with how I presented myself and my works in Making & Reflecting. I wanted to make it very apparent to my peers in this class that although this is one continuous “pinch me” kind of dream, it also takes a lot of one’s essence to be so deeply involved and surrounded with art, creation, and the study of your craft all the time. I think at its core, that’s what I want to say with my choreography and dancing (my multimedia project). Around the start of our final project, I had been listening to this particular song over and over and it was really helping me not feel so low all of the time. I spent some more time improvising in the studio, but this time to the songs that were helping me process my emotions towards being burnt-out here. I’m still incredibly interested with how the change in song and shift in energy somehow catapulted my work forward–when I more expected it to slow me down and intensify my struggles with choreographing and dancing at this state of self. Choreographing came a lot more easily to me after that because I was able to channel my thoughts and my emotions into movement, somehow. I spent a while throughout the actual creation of new movement taking breaks to improvise and find movement that felt authentic to my feeling because choreography is still something pretty new to me. I kept forgetting that the limits are only what my body was capable of, and reminding myself of that brought me to a whole new space creatively. There was a lot of repetition in my movements and I recognized that I kept going back to the movements that were the most comforting to me emotionally. I also noticed a lot of physical themes as I was improvising and creating movement so I decided to start recording bits of the process, hoping to find something to analyze to bring further subconscious meaning to my art. Within my work, there's a notable amount of floor work–which I noticed almost immediately during the process. One day in particular, I was improvising after having had a really rough day, and I found sitting/laying into my movement to be incredibly comforting. Visualizing things like tracing shapes in the sand and pretending my limbs were covered in paint to color a glass floor were especially soothing to my art-making and I hope bring a grounded and calm tone to my work. Generally, I think I learned a lot about myself as an artist and choreographer, and I also got to facilitate a bit of mindfulness and movement therapy for myself within the creation of this project which helped immensely in my burnout for the final weeks of school. Wrapping up this semester, I’m reflecting a lot on how this semester of school shaped me as an artist and person. I think I grew a lot not only in my understanding of my training, but also became more versed in art-making due to the nature of my Making & Reflecting class. There’s a lot for me to learn about how to facilitate my burnout cycle while at School of the Arts and keep creating things that are notable to myself–communicating what I want to communicate and being proud of that process. I have a bit to go, but I also am proud of how this class has pushed me in these ways.
https://open.spotify.com/track/036BnwgnaYlur0yqlj7IRS?si=sDDdfFG9Tnaps6_eYiLvBA
Postscript - Due to me losing my computer, the mobile device I’m using is unable to embed the links and videos AS videos, so the formatting of my blog is not what I wanted it to be. I’m so sorry. Thank you for your patience navigating my blog.
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