Analysing a peice of choreography from Justin Peck

Justin Peck's 'Rotunda' (excerpt) (Sadler's Wells, 2020)


Ihave chosen to look at a neo-classical piece choreographed by Justin Peck. Justin Peck is an American ballet dancer and became resident choreographer of the New York City Ballet in 2014 (M. Hanson, 2016). This particular piece I have chosen is 25 minutes long, but the snippet I have been looking at is a small duet. The composer for this piece is Nico Muhly, a neo-minimalist composer who's music is often very busy with “Complex rhythms that bubble along” (Harss, 2020). This music suits the movement very well because I also found it to be quite busy with no real sense of direction. It almost came across to me as though each dancer is relying on one another, and that without one person nothing would work. This could be linked back to our choreography piece as some of the formations would not fully come across and therefore show the message is as little as one person was missing. This also gives a sense of togetherness to the audience as the dancers really are dancing with each-other and not just on the same stage. There is a distinct connection between them.

 

Peck’s choreographic process can go from something that he comes up with really fast, to something that he can spend up to years working on. For example, Peck chooses a piece of music and listens to that piece over and over. Sometimes for years. Once he knows every single marker/beat in the music he will start to move to in in the studio. He could spend several hours doing this. Then, once he has a string of movements he is satisfied with he records it on his phone as a ‘sketch’ or ‘lego’. These go on to be the units of new work he creates. (Weiss, 2018)

 

 

Bibliography

 

Sadler's Wells, 2020. Justin Peck's 'Rotunda' (Excerpt). [video] Available at: <https://m.facebook.com/watch/?v=231107924717371&_rdr> [Accessed 3 December 2020].

 

M. Hanson, K., 2016. Justin Peck | Biography, Choreography, & Facts. [online] Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Justin-Peck> [Accessed 3 December 2020].

 

Harss, M., 2020. New York City Ballet – Classic NYCB II Bill With New Justin Peck – New York. [online] DanceTabs. Available at: <https://dancetabs.com/2020/03/new-york-city-ballet-classic-nycb-ii-bill-with-new-peck-new-york/> [Accessed 3 December 2020].

 

Weiss, S., 2018. Justin Peck Is Making Ballet That Speaks To Our Everyday Lives (Published 2018). [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/magazine/justin-peck-is-making-ballet-that-speaks-to-our-everyday-lives.amp.html> [Accessed 3 December 2020].

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Structuring our Piece

Image
What is the structure of our choreographic piece and how did we develop it?   During our choreography class, we all as a group came together to discuss how we should structure our choreographic piece. Firstly, we listened to our chosen piece of music and took note of the elements in the song. For example, the instrument/s used at that time, the pauses and the tempo. Once we were aware of all these elements and when they happened we could create a sort of story line for our piece and give it an initial structure. After we had created this initial structure/story line, we could decide who was going to choreograph certain parts. Overall this makes the choreography process easier as everyone can take time outside of class to work on their assigned part and then bring it back into class to teach to everyone.    What are we going to have to do to fulfil the structure we have created? To fulfil this structure/story line we have created, we are going to have to carefully craft pi...
Read more

Choreographic Devices

  We have now started to choreograph our piece as a group. One of the choreographic devices we have used so far is formation. Our piece begins with a formation on     centre stage. This is meant to resemble the brain which is the focal point of our stimulus. We then proceed to all move out of this formation using pathways, thus representing the different emotions. Now we have created a split focus effect as everyone is moving in deferent ways, which is another choreographic device. Once we have all separated, we were planning to carry on with the split focus but by using levels. A group will be dancing centre stage on a higher level whilst surrounded by everybody else on a lower level with their individual movements.   During the choreography process for this section many decisions were made based on the last movement. For example, when everybody splits from the initial formation using pathways, naturally it lead to split focus which we then incorporated into the nex...
Read more