Annenberg Beach House Artist in Residence

After a few weeks of wondering around the spaces of the Annenberg Beach House, I have defined four forces that will drive the rest of the creative process:

1. To explore the relationship between movement and rhythm from a multicultural perspective
2. To explore partnering interactions in diverse dance contexts rhythmically and culturally,
3. To identify, design, build and/or incorporate, objects, paths, and relationships that bring in to the piece the concepts of nomadism, migration, wondering, traveling, gypsy life style, displacement, and any other way of living in which the concept of home evolved into a notion that is no longer linked to stability nor to a specific piece of land.
4. To build an open narrative that serves as an anchor point from where to imagine possibilities.

I still wonder what is the role of the sea within the piece, and how the history and evolution of the Beach House is related to the driving forces of the piece. I feel that I should find those connections to be able to claim my work to be site specific, but I haven't yet.  So far the connections with the space are mostly stablished by intuition and attraction.

Last Friday Willy Souly, my movement collaborator, and I had our first rehearsal/studio encounter. We talked about the driving force of the piece and we improvised. We also exchanged movements and information about how each one of us understand rhythm in relationship to our specific training and background. I participated in his African dance class last Friday and it was not only very fun but it helped me to start to understand who he is and where does he comes from.

Last Sunday I had my first meeting with our costume designer who is building two costume pieces. We made decision about colors and materials based some fabrics samples that she brought to the meeting. We also started to define a timeline.