8/24/14 This will be the final post for my summer apprenticeship with Denita and Desueño this summer, and I am ending on an exciting note. Denita has decided that Mi Bongo, the piece we’ve been working on, will be a duet. It didn’t feel like a great time to push all this new choreography onto […]
The artist’s intent in Latin dance choreography
8/17/14 As we continue to work on the bachata choreography at Desueño practices, I love feeling the steps become more familiar. Unlike Llego, I was able to learn this choreography from the first day it was taught, which makes it much easier to commit to memory. Today Denita added arms to the choreography, so there’s […]
Shadowing Denita in Madison
8/10/14 This was a pretty exciting week! On Thursday I met with Denita at MMA with four more 8-counts to add to the Mi Bongo choreography. First we rehearsed what we had put together last week, and we had both forgotten certain aspects, so I was glad I had taken a video. When we danced […]
Mapping it out, slippery foundation
7/3/14 This week I got to make my own energy flow chart for the mambo piece I would be helping create! After listening to Mi Bongo, the mambo song we’d chosen, over and over several times, I made that horizontal line that represented the length of the song and divided the song into sections based […]
Creative Methods
7/27/14 Earlier this week I met with Denita and she walked me through her process for creating choreography. After selecting the song, she creates an energy flow chart for the song to map out what she envisions the dance will look like based on the different sections of the song. For a salsa song for […]
Desueño Photoshoot!
7/21/14 This Sunday Desueño had a little photo shoot at Links Hall, a seductively hidden arts and performance space complete with an old-fashioned wooden bar. I helped by taking videos of the dances against the backdrop of the wooden auditorium seats. It’ll be useful to have this footage on file to draw on for samples […]
First look, first practice
7/17/14 This blog will be about my experience practicing with Desueño for the summer of 2014, and learning from Denita Inez about her process creating choreography and managing a career in dance. She’s described to me the different methods that artists have incorporated to make a career in dance work, such as specializing and developing […]