Researching Christopher Bruce (3)

We chose Christopher Bruce as our practitioner as we hadn't heard of him as much as the other choreographers and it sparked our interest as Rambert have become one of the centre points for contemporary dance, and he was the artistic director until 2002. His choreography caught my attention because of his fusion of so many styles together such as contemporary, jazz, ballet, tap, and ballroom and how easily he blends them together. I researched Ramberts web page for information about Christopher Bruce and his works.

I hadn't realised it until we watched some of the videos on YouTube of 'Rooster' that I actually had heard of Christopher Bruce before, I remember watching Rooster last year and being fascinated by it. His themes are vivid such as youth that we wanted to make not of stylistic techniques he uses to get his messages so clear.

Rooster (2022)

We also watched 'Swansong' which gave us another angle into his stylistic features. I noted he uses symbolic and repeated movements in his choreography

I was intrigued how he used both classical and contemporary movements without one overshadowing the other. We noticed he draws on the Graham technique and long balletic lines with attitudes and tilts. He uses ballet steps but changes their direction, angle, or weight placement to create a more contemporary movement. 

Researching Christopher Bruce has definitely effected my choreographic process, I've learned you can draw on many different styles and blend them together, using aspects from one to benefit another. I plan on using his way of obscuring balletic lines to create contemporary movement. I really like his repetitive movements to emphasise the message of the piece, the effectiveness of this has inspired me to incorporate this into my creative process. His emphasis on a strong motif has inspired us to delve into how that could be portrayed and emphasised.


Rooster (2022) Ballet Ireland. Available at: https://www.balletireland.ie/whats-on/rooster/ (Accessed: 16 October 2023). 

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