Blog 5 - practitioner study

For this week's blog, we decided to analyze a piece of work created by our practitioner Crystal Pite. I specifically chose to focus on "The Statement," a 19-minute piece that I briefly mentioned in Blog 3. I found this piece to be relevant and relatable to our own choreography. Pite has choreographed the piece to take place around what appears to be a conference table, where the characters engage in a heated discussion or argument. (The Statement 2023) Throughout the piece, there is a continuous tension which is reflected in sharp and explosive movements as the argument develops. (The Statement 2023) The movements are simple and include arm gestures commonly used in arguments. (The Statement 2023) The dancers have created a mood of frustration and annoyance towards each other's characters which again, is typical in an argument. (The Statement 2023) As the piece goes on and the argument among the characters continues, the pace increases as shown through the speed in the movements, which become larger and travel across the space more. 

I believe Pite and her dancers effectively conveyed the intended emotions and message through their movements, effectively connecting with the audience.  

(The Statement 2023)

In contrast to most of Pite's work, 'The Statement' uses an audio recording of an argument instead of an instrumental piece of music. This distinctive feature caught my attention and made me realize how Pite managed to create choreography that conveyed the story based on the words spoken in the recording. We took inspiration from this as we include an audio recording (attached below) from Soloman Asch’s ‘Conformity Line Experiment’ which explores the extent to which social pressure from a majority could affect a person to ‘conform’ which supports our message in our piece. (McLeod, Saul. et al., 2023)  Soloman Asch's conformity experiment

Bibliography

Mcleod, S. (2023) Solomon Asch Conformity Line Experiment Study, Simply Psychology. Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html (Accessed: 03 December 2023). 

(2023). YouTube. 5 October. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVwRPmNiZmM (Accessed: 05 November 2023). 

Word count: 276 words