Alexander Whitley Workshop - 19th september 2016

As part of my course at uni we are visited by various practitioners and artists in the first couple of weeks. this allows us to look and understand how they work and practice, learn a little bit about their style and the projects/ performances they are working on!

The first of our visiting artists was Alexander Whitley, a London based choreographer who has created work with Rambert, Ballet Boys and the Royal Ballet. Establishing is own company (Alexander Whitley dance company) in 2014 he aims to develop 'a creative environment that attracts and nurtures enquiring people'  creating work that provokes thoughts and emotions.

His latest piece pattern recognition works with multimedia and film. Working with beams of light that the dancers interact with, the lights being projected are pre-filmed which means the dancers must have brilliant timing and spacing to match up with what is being projected on the stage. the idea behind the light is that the light is a sensor to the various points on the body, much like on an Xbox connect, the lights are a rough guide to the different parts of someone's body, this is where the idea stimulated from and give the performance an extra layer. Use of media/lighting and other constituent features helps to add another dimension to a performance when used effectively (of which whitley does), it can enhance the audience understanding of the message/idea you're putting across.

Talking to alexander whitley we know that many of the movements are initiated by the use of the spine and this was something that he looked at and choreographed from, its interesting as looking at the performance (or the clip) you wouldn't necessarily know that this was a starting point when he was creating because he's used the spine in different ways and explored different ways of using it.

View clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY4GvnDpMaE


 For the workshop we started with some warm ups of ballet and contemporary technique, focusing largely on warming up the spine.
in the workshop we were taught a 1 min- 2 min phrase from pattern recognition, the movement was very athletic and contemporary, it demanded a large amount of technique and flexibility. Majority of the movements are initiated by the back and use of the spine, demanding good core strength to balance, pull up from the floor and give momentum to spin. I really enjoyed the workshop and the t routine, to me it had a really nice flow and smoothness to it, with built complexity through layering different choreographic principles such as dynamics, directions, travel and gestures. Prolonged pauses and use of extension through the body and particularly the spine made it seem elegant, showing Whitley's background in ballet and development into contemporary.

I found that certain movements due to layering were hard to pick up straight off but were a lot less complex once broken down.  this was something that i found Whitley did very well, he broke down the choreography  in a way that we all  understood and was happy to go through with us. I personally really enjoyed the workshop and the routine due it being in a ballet/contemporary style, which is enjoyable and familiar to me.


Unfortunately i was unable to see the show, however I'll be looking out for more of his work in the near future!
Many thanks to Alexander Whitley for a brilliant workshop!

Reference: http://www.alexanderwhitley.com/#home

Emma Louise xx