Circadian Rhythm Process
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In my proposal for this project I wrote:
"The theme of my piece has not yet been decided upon, but I have already started my research and would like to explore themes of tension, limitation, and stress. Through visual research and self exploration I will create a piece that is striking and invoking. My work for this project will include designing and creating sculptural costume pieces with the supervision of Sherry Harper-McCombs; creating/ choreographing movement and dance with the aid of Sarah Skaggs through auditing her Applied Choreography class; and performing in the piece with additional supervision and advice from Sarah Skaggs and other faculty." My research began with several images that evoked for me a visual interest, a texture and emotions that were things I wanted to explore. These images came from online searches, and do not belong to me: 
Through exploration and creation of the puppet, this idea was altered, and the puppet became more of a mask, and shared its body with the performer.
The hip shape changed through the process, to represent more what the pelvis acts as in the body.
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These images lead me to ideas of being bound and stuck. Previous ideas of working with puppetry and mask lead me to create a relationship between a puppet and the puppet master.
This puppet had several forms, starting at first as a puppet that shared its legs and arms with the puppet master. 
The puppet's pieces were carved out of foam and attached to a black morph suit. The hands were held by the performer, rather than being attached. A long zipper in the back of the suit was used to get out of the puppet.
The video below is the first showing of this project, while still untitled and in progress.
The idea for stripping out of the suit was an early concept in this project. What the performer looked like inside changed throughout the process.
I knew I didn't want the performer to look like a naked person, but I wanted them to look stripped and alien like. This concept was very loose. I ended up on the idea of body paint to create a texture on the body while still looking stripped. At first I wanted to have red strips of paint on the body to look like muscles, but this didn't fit with the concept of being out of body, and rather seemed like being skinned of a body. I decided on something more abstract, and came up with a sort of bruised looking array of paints. This created texture but was still ambiguously like a dream. |
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The paint under the suit also tied in with the idea that I would paint myself back into the puppet body after I was unable to get back into the puppet through movement.
This textural and visceral part of the piece stemmed from my original research. This piece developed to have a place within the Freshworks '14 Dance Concert. For this show, the piece was developed as a episodic dance. It was during the rehearsal time for this performance that it was decided that Circadian Rhythm would perform as its own piece in the Cubiculo Black Box Theatre the next week.
In preparing for a full, uninterrupted performance I reached back to the movement I had been exploring during the semester in the Choreo class with Sarah Skaggs. Several sections of the piece had been cut fro the Freshworks performance, so I started by piecing together what had previously existed. Because the layer of paint applied during the piece wouldn't be dried, I decided the piece would end very shortly after the new layer had been applied. Only a few new sections were added to the final Cubiculo performance, and I believe the piece was able to be strung together nicely. |
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