“To me, a building – if it’s beautiful – is the love of one man, he’s made it out of his love for space, materials, things like that.”
– Martha Graham
“Safety breeds stagnation. Stagnation breeds death.”
– Robert Kurvitz
Stadium View (Package)
Church View (Delivery)
TALENT
BEHIND THE CAMERA
Motion as a series centered around dance and the unspoken language of the dancer (i.e. body language, the State, etc.) requires a more refined and considered emphasis on the visual execution of it all, at least compared to the average series. As a result, if Motion is to be executed right, certain roles obviously take on more crucial importance.
Without surprise, these roles are the director and the choreographer and, alongside the showrunner, form a sort of creative triumvirate. Obviously, as it is television and ultimately a narrative, the showrunner will still navigate the general waters of story and theme but the director and choreographer should each have a hand on the wheel and the three should always be in coordination with each other. My personal experience falls short here so I will not elect to speculate on the nuances of production and the realities but reiterate the importance of these two roles and the teamwork of the three. As the State can only be reached when the head, the heart, and the body work in simpatico, Motion can only be great when these three creative titans do so as well.
IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA
Obviously, the demands of the piece, world and story, require talent that is more experienced or talented in dance than the usual actor or actress. However, while retaining the more selective prerequisites for casting without resorting to any workarounds like the body double, I offer a potential solution, casting directly from contemporary company dancers.
I believe that there is an untapped reserve of acting talent within the dance world that has simply never had the opportunity to get in front of the camera for something like the role’s found in Motion.
As I was doing the research from this piece, I interviewed a number of dancers. It was in one of these interviews, a conversation with a successful working professional, that she discussed the relationship between acting, dancing, and singing. Citing the fact that from her perspective as a dancer, there were many, many more dancer-actors in her world than there were dancer-singers. While this evidence may be anecdotal, she then went onto discuss her belief that the requisites of physical presence didn’t just translate more seemlessly from dancing to acting, but also by nature of the role-based style of casting native to dance that there was an innate kinship between the two.
To be fair, my evidence of this evidence is anecdotal as well so I admit the fact that I could be wrong, but, as I do believe there are seeds of truth in nearly all things, that this is an avenue worth exploring.
THE REPERTORY
Wolf Street, as a contemporary repertory company, is an environment that licenses pre-existing works to use. Ideally, Motion should strive to honor this element as much as possible by licensing the works and staging them. Doing so will not only bring it an obvious value as a piece rooted in authenticity and reality, allowing it to evoke and reference stories, ideas, and other thematic ideologies already deeply thought out and explored in pre-existing work, but it will also pull it closer to the dance world and allow more opportunities for collaboration, experimentation, and general inspiration with choreographers, dancers, and other figures of force, gravity, and knowledge. Potentially adding a liaison like Misty Copeland as a consulting producer would obviously carry its own set of considerations but would also bring upside in this latter regard.
However, as it has been stated above, a choreographer should be deep within the mix for a variety of reasons and this would be another one of them. In the context of this conversation, the choreographer would be potentially able to create custom pieces of choreography that would not just mold around the character and talent but also be considered with the screen, music, and State in mind. As it relates to the pilot, this idea in action could ostensibly be used to replace Sena’s choreography for the piece titled BUSK by Aszure Barton (although, it should still be mentioned that Busk does have extreme thematic relevance to the larger themes at play.) There are a few top choices I have in mind but would obviously depend on their availability, interest, expectations, and the like.
These two ideas, licensed repertoire and commissioned choreography, are not necessarily exclusive, Motion should ideally be able to strike a balance in utilizing both of these approaches. Citing repertory when needed for the story and using a commissioned choreographer to train and create for the more extreme instances of the State (e.g. Sena’s finale dance sequence).
Either way and just to reiterate for the sake of its importance, as ad campaigns were to Mad Men, the choreography will be to Motion so this aspect is obviously of the utmost importance and should be further discussed if or when it ever gets to the point of discussion.
THE MUSIC
As Motion is already so music-oriented given the nature of its story and subject matter, the approach to music will obviously be a crucial one and will need to balance a general score alongside the various music used within the varying repertoire / choreography. To attain this balance, I would imagine a more minimalist approach to the score would be key but as I am a musician only in spirit and not in any meaningful technical way, I shall go no further with my imaginings.
THE EFFECTS
The surreality components of the State, at least up until a certain point, should ultimately be able to be handled by practical effects or technical direction but past that point, where the State becomes much more surreal and demanding, there is another kind of consideration that should be considered.
Some of this should still ultimately be able to be handled by production as that is the gold standard (see, Spike Jonze’s Homepod commercial or Fatboy Slim music video) but there are moments where digital effects will come into play (see, Spike Jonze’s Kenzo World commercial or the image of Sena on fire.) There is an obvious conversation to be had here and, without going too far into it, I will just say that this is a piece designed to reflect the contemporary age in a number of ways, both spiritually and technologically. The execution of digital effects is a question that I believe can be answered by certain, specific kinds of technological means.