The main idea with which I connected in the Introduction of the book was the statement that "The composer must be fully aware of the nature of the elements so that he/she may be the best judge how to select, refine and combine them." I'm sure the reason this resonated with me was because my main critique from Ellie was that the individual elements of my piece needed more attention. As I reflected on my video, I realized this for myself. I saw many things that could have been altered even slightly so that they might have been better received by the audience. The intro also spoke about this in terms of music. "a composer cannot write notes ad hoc, they must have a relationship to each other to create melody." Next time I choreograph I will probably use a similar process as I did with this project, but after it is all over with, I will go back to each phrase and really think about the relationships between the movements.
The first chapter of the book talked a lot about how the audience receives gestures from the choreography which spoke to me as an audience member. There is a description of movements on page 18 and 19 that describe a dance that may be seen as a religious or moral struggle. I liked reading about how real gestures that we use in our pedestrian lives are put into choreography in an abstracted way. I feel that abstracting the gestures is important because constantly watching someone do a pantomime of how they feel would get stale and lose its artistic value. Part of what I love about dance as an art form is its freedom of interpretation.
