Dance film - Idea

My Idea:

I intend to create a dance film surrounding my personal experience of the work of, talking therapy, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing).

I had a broken up timeline of my own life which I couldn’t join. I went to this therapy as i needed help to deal with issues i had growing up, these issues, as i hadnt dealt with them, ended up cutting themselves apart, and so looking back on my life i didnt see one string of life evening, i saw broken up fragments as individual versions of myself at different ages. this therapy takes you back to your worst moment at whatever age your breakage is, your therapist will ask you to take yourself back to that point, get you all worked up and you literally feel everything you wouldve back then. after this she asks you to look at the tips of her fingers as she moves her hand side to side, after a while she will stop and you both take a deep breath, this continues until some how your brain has been able to desensitise its self to that issue, meaning i could then join that dot. 

Using a chronological structure outlining 5 major key life points (organised by age) to symbolise the therapy and its impact, the journey I went on from start to end of the therapy. i did this therapy for nearly a year, where i was able to join all my dots together by the end of this period. The ages I have chosen to focus on are age 5, 10, 14, 16, and present. Each age will have its own dancer, own dance style and own section in the piece.

i have written a brief outline of the kind of personality/dance styles i will be looking for, these are subject to change as i dont know what kind of dancers i will be able to find. i have laid this out in age order, with a brief reference to general personality and attitude:

Age 5 - bubbly, care free, happy, upbeat, fun. (Open to dance styles, possible ballet?)

Age 10 - loads of energy, musical theatre, freestyle, cocky,  fun. (Performance based dance styles eg: musical theatre, freestyle, possible contemporary/modern, etc)

Age 13/14: teenage angst, emo, angry, confused, releasing anger and built up frustration (dance styles: break dance, street, urban, etc)

Age 16/17: investigation about yourself, learning what your body is and who you are, starting off struggling, becoming stronger, better, confident, finding your feet. (Contemporary specific)

Age 18/19: receiving the therapy and it taking effect, finding a fantastic support network, great and supportive friends, relying and accepting support from one another, happiness, fun, upbeat, yet controlled. (Ballroom/Latin.)

 These will depict what I was like at that given age, for example, when I was 10, I was cocky, confident, rude, and hyperactive. I am also relating the dance styles to styles I was studying at each given age, as an example I studied street at 14. And so I will be using dancers trained in these areas. However the dancers will be in the mind set of their given age as I don’t think it feasible to use children due to legal restrictions, etc.

The piece will run in age order, each dance will progress and then switch into another as another dancer takes its place, showing progression in age. The final section of which I am present age (19), will be performed by 2 ballroom dancers performing a jive, showing how they rely on one another to dance, and teach each other to have fun with it. 

After (up to) one minute of this piece, these two dancers will proceed to weave around the other four dancers, a sequence showing this will occur and finish with them standing in a line, age order one behind the other, with present at the front, the camera will pan from showing the line of people from the right hand side, to the front to only show present, revealing that I have now managed to join each age together thanks to the help of the therapy. 

WHY?

the reason why I have decided to choose this concept over the others I thought of is because I have been wanting to work around this for ages as it is what brought me together as a person and back to reality. it literally helped to make me who I am, and put me together where I was separated. also as dance has always been there in many forms through out my growing up, it felt appropriate to explore this through this task.