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Pre-Professional Year: Working with Company Dancer Davide Di Giovanni and Guest Choreographer Martin del Amo

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23 June 2017

BY JESSICA JOHNS, PPY17

We recently had the pleasure of working with Sydney Dance Company Dancer Davide Di Giovanni and Sydney Independent choreographer Martin del Amo. It’s very interesting how two completely different artists with different ideas can be so complementary to one another without even meaning to be or even know of each other. It was like the week was meant to be.

Davide Di Giovanni opened our eyes (literally). By the end of the week we had studied every single crevasse of the walls, pipes, window panel, jerseys lying on the floor, drink bottles, marks on the tarkett and rolled up yoga mats in studio two. He made it clear to us that in order to be authentic and have a great improvisation exploration, it had to come from something. There was no room for articulating every bone in your body if you didn’t know why you were doing it.

There we all were, with paint brushes on every limb, trying to draw every part of the space with our bodies whilst flipping the room upside down, using levels, syncopation, pauses, spiraling. The options were infinite.

Martin del Amo started his classes off by making us focus on our own bodies, sending energy to the parts that needed it and keeping our weight (pelvis) grounded. Everyday we would go through a primal warmup up and down the studio, connecting walking patterns, finding little things we found interesting and that we wished to explore.

We have 5 panels. (head, torso, pelvis, knees and feet.) We broke up each panel and explored them separately, together, two at a time and more. It’s amazing how many options you have just by moving your head. Again this opened my eyes to every crease in Studio 2, it’s quite a lovely studio!

Martin reminded us to think about cameras on each panel. I thought perhaps if I couldn’t see, how would I use my body if it had eyes? This brought on a whole other level of improvisation to me personally and I was very excited to explore more!

There is such a thin line between different choreographers craft and I love how we can blend meanings to enhance each new idea. Each technique helped us add layers on the other and opened our eyes to the beautiful world of improvisation.

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Jessica Johns is a 2017 Pre-Professional Year dancer. PPY is proudly supported by Lexus Australia. Find out more about our Pre-Professional Year course here.

Register your interest for our 2018 Auditions here.

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