Solo choreography on the poem 'You're' by Sylvia Plath

by Molly

I'm struggling with ideas for movement for this poem. It is about pregnancy but also has a lot of context. Sylvia suffered from mental illness and depression and committed suicide.

Comments for Solo choreography on the poem 'You're' by Sylvia Plath

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Jan 20, 2015

Maria's reply
by: Maria

Dear Molly,

If you want to use Sylvia’s personality as part of the inspiration, it looks to me like you could try improvising moves like if you were acting. Mental illness and sadness are defined states of mood under which you could create your own choreography.

Yet, you can also be more abstract and create freely, with the poem in mind, but working over spacing, timing or bodily issues. For ideas about this, you could read our page about dance composition:

Dance composition

Another option is to watch dancing scenes where similar topics are represented. There’s the famous scene of the dying Giselle, where you will see the characterization of mental illness, for example.

Pregnancy is another wide topic from which you could create a lot of choreography. But, more than sticking to the first idea that comes to your mind, I’d recommend you to improvise with the poem in mind, with its words or phrases, and allow the movements that come out to be the choreography.
Then, just repeat and repeat, and fix, change, improve or tweak whatever you have. You’ll see.

Warm regards,

Maria

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