Etudes
When I made my first attempt at a dance, I needed somewhere to show it. So I organized an afternoon showcase with 4-5 other fledgling choreographers in a downtown Manhattan loft with many stairs and a wooden floor.
In the coffee/wine klatch post-showing, I asked Jim May what he thought of my piece.
“You really need to learn to choreograph.”
Calling Bessie
I believe it was Jane Kozminski who gave me Bessie Schönberg’s number. (If it wasn’t Jane, my apologies to her. Meanwhile, anyone who reads this gets the option of watching a lovely film Jane made at Juilliard about the Alexander Technique and dance.)
Call #1:
Me: “Hello! This is Lise Brenner. Jane Kozminski gave me your number. She said you said it would be alright if I called you about organizing a beginning choreography class at the Corvino’s studio.”
Bessie: “Well you know dear, I’m going on a cruise and I don’t know exactly when I will be back.”
Call #2:
Me: “Hello! This is Lise Brenner again. I hope you had a nice cruise?”
Bessie: “What? I would never go on a cruise.”
Class with Bessie
Bessie allowed me to organize a 6 week basic choreography workshop. And, that summer I took a month unpaid leave from my day job and went to her Jacob’s Pillow intensive.
At the beginning of both workshops, Bessie said the same things: we would be working on ‘etudes’, not pieces, and that she didn’t teach choreography, she taught how to see and how to talk about what you see.
The first etude, both times, was:
Make a journey from A to B
I use it, too. Also for teaching writing about dance. I’ve found that most of Bessie’s etudes work fabulously as writing exercises.
Wonderful talk Bessie gave a few years before she died about looking at dance.