William Blake’s Inn: the beginning

On Wednesday, January 10, anyone who is interested should come to the Newnan School of Dance at 7:00 pm. We will listen/look at the complete Visit to William Blake’s Inn.

Interested in what?

  • hearing the complete music
  • discussing the possibilities for performance
  • hearing more about how we’ll work on this
  • setting up a schedule to work towards performance

What will we do?

  • Dale will project the score onto a screen and play the orchestrated work. There is about 34 minutes of music at this point.
  • Dale and Marc will discuss a structure for moving forward.
  • We will discuss the possibilities for turning this into a fullscale production, eventually leading to an international performance along the lines of Achievers International’s involvement in Scottish Opera’s Tale o’ Tam.
  • We will set goals and a schedule for the next three months.

Feel free to invite anyone you think might be interested (vid. sup.).

Conceptual Maneuvers in the Dark

I sent a couple of mailings to Dale a while back regarding Wm. Blake’s Inn. For the record, here’s the gist:

One was a photo which evoked a Blakean world for me, a background awash in a characteristic watercolor and a colorful costume choice, both from a design firm’s ad in Dance Magazine of all things. I can’t do the HTML magic to make the picture appear in this post, however….(Dale? Help? Dale, too, has been collecting images at his website.)

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What do you want of me?: Improvisation Suggestions

Let me try to lay out the structures for improvisation and then, afterwards, offer some variations and comments.

For two performers: A and B are the participants. B’s constant objective is to question A with some form of: What do you want of me? A has the opportunity to make any demands of B he or she wishes. B is to comply willingly. A decides when this first phase is complete. In the next phase, A’s objective is to ask of B: What do you want of me? B, then, has the opportunity to demand anything of A. B decides when this phase is complete.

That’s it. It is meant to be simple and lean. The intrigue lies in how the exercise is taken up by the participants and in the variations possible. Before exploring variations, have participants simply execute the exercise as it appears above. Discourage questions beforehand; the participants should be referred back to the instructions as an answer to all of their questions.

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