Melanie Morrow, Dance
The final product was everything I had hoped it to be! The piece was 10 minutes in length with two sections and was performed March 31st andAprillst, 1994. It involved approximately 60 past or present members of the BYU’s Men’s Chorus using only live percussion and voices. There were eight dancers, including myself. The lighting and visual effects completed the image of what I envisioned for the piece, with slight deviations from the original proposal. All in all, it seemed to be an edifying experience for those involved.
RESEARCH
Research included mostly a study of the Yoruba, Nigerian culture. It involved the use of text primarily and eventually a documentary video on Yoruban ritual, which was most helpful. This research produced an awareness of religious beliefs, social interactions, and ritual happenings of the Yoruban culture. It provided an understanding of their customary dress standards and shed some light on artistic involvement of the society as well. Awareness of these features provided motivation and imagery for the choreography.
Research, unfortunately, did not produce much information about the particular piece of music used for this project. The background of the song has been, to a large degree, lost with the death of Wendell Whalum (the man who brought the piece to Men’s Chorus) 2 years ago. Although a translation of the words and two brief historical paragraphs were located, that was all to be found without intensive traveling and questioning. Information regarding the improvisatory nature of the song’s origin also was not found. Overall research did provide valuable information regarding their use of musical improvisation in general, however specific songs were never mentioned in associated research, and details regarding the song’s origin were not found.
CHOREOGRAPHIC FEATURES
Choreographically I was very pleased with the final product! Considering the amount of time available and the constraints of the physical body, things fell into place very well. There were seven handpicked dancers who spent 1-4 hours with me a week in rehearsal. Although the dancers were extremely talented and dedicated, I found it difficult to transfer the quality of movement I envisioned in my mind into their bodies. I learned a great deal about articulating one’s ideas and transferring those ideas into the vision-span of those involved.
The piece had two sections. The first section was a short solo, “Kumbayae,” performed by myself and sung by the BYU Men’s Chorus. Although it was not in the proposal, it added a nice roundness to the piece. The second section was “Awa Yio” and choreographed as purposed, with the exception of the slide special effect. After playing around with different ideas and viewing the intended section with the slides, I decided the movement was too strong to cover with projections. I enjoyed the movement much more when it could be clearly seen.
Involving the Men’s Chorus was an enormous project!!! I visited the Men’s Chorus class several times throughout the semester, with Mack Wilberg’s permission. He was extremely helpfuL He allowed me some of his precious class time and encouraged singers to be involved and follow through. After bribing the singers with doughnuts, I posted a sign up sheet and got a great response. From that point on I kept time commitments to a minimum, reminded them often of rehearsals, and called them individually.
After a few practice sessions it was decided to use live voices only, without doubling live and recorded voices together. This meant recruiting all the percussionists, and packing the instruments in and out of the Richard’s Building. Many singers who originally committed eventually dropped out. I ended up calling former members of the company who knew the song and asked them to join us.
Many were willing. In the end, there were approximately 60 singers. It proved to be well worth the effort, for the live sound was a powerful addition. It appeared to be slightly distracting for some, making it harder to watch the dance. While others felt the live bodies right there to the sides of the stage added an extraordinary energy and power. The live bodies and voices also gave the dancers a new excitement for the movement, but challenged them with the varying tempos and sounds (after rehearsing to the tape so many times.) All in all the work was definitely worth every effort put forth!
FUNDING
Some minor costs included advertisement and information flyers for Men’s Chorus, DOUGHNUTS for Men’s Chorus (I had to be true to my bribe.), costume material, slide materials, thank you gifts, and research data ordered and purchased by mail.
The majority of the scholarship funds went towards my Winter semester tuition. In order to commit the desired time to this project, as well as keep up with some other major commitments, I chose to enroll-at paFt-time-status,-This-disallewed-meto use my-dance department scholarship until_ Spring/Summer terms. Without the research funding I could not have paid my part-time tuition Winter semester. In order to preserve my dance scholarship, I would have chosen to maintain fulltime status, and probably would have fallen short of my hopes for this project.