Jenna Middlebrooks, Casey Finkle, Hannah Chang, and Brock Cooley performing A Line in the Sand at Northern Kentucky University. Photo Credit: Photo Credit: Mikki Schaffner
In 2013, I was invited by Professor Jane Green to present my choreography at Northern Kentucky University. I was thrilled to bring a group of ETSU students to perform The Physics of a Teardrop, A Line in the Sand, and Get Me There.
About A Line in the Sand
I really wanted to challenge the choreographic process by confining myself in terms of space and time. I decided we would work within a square shape. We imagined that the dancers were standing outside a square that was outlined with sand. They then step over the sand (crossing over the metaphorical line drawn by the sand) to begin the dance (at one point, I thought we would use sand, but of course, practicality won over!). After creating a constraint with space, I also wanted to play around with timing, specifically with stillness and slow motion; I wanted to explore the challenge of engaging through continuous controlled movement (only once in the dance did they move quickly).
Thematically I was thinking in terms of questioning, “Do the dancers cross the line in the sand in their relationships, which often requires a good deal of compromise, or do they retreat to their own island, their own way of doing things?” So, it was this back and forth of making and breaking bonds that we were exploring. I had the basic outline of the dance, which was quite simple, but I wanted to reach out to visual art to help in creating the moments of stillness. I chose a handful of abstract sculptures and brought pictures of the sculptures to the dancers, and together we embodied the sculpture pictured as best we could. Now probably no one would look at the dancers in situ and see any resemblance to the sculptures, but it was a really invigorating way to get the creative process going. I can easily say that had I not constrained myself in terms of space and time, the dance would be completely different.
