Fireside Chat Artist Statement

        I decided to do an interpretive dance as the “more-or-less scripted story” and my graphic design piece in the accompanying visual with the story. I first  searched music or speeches to inspire me, but nothing really seemed to match what I wanted to say. Therefore, I decided to just say what I wanted simply through dance. I began my process of choreographing by first writing out the story which I wanted to tell. This is different for me because when I normally choreograph, I approach the story in the dance as string of emotions rather than specific events and I rely heavily on music. However, this time I drew upon more details of a story and I choose not to rely on external music. I see dance as the visual of the music. When dance is in its most perfect form, dance is the music, not just a representation. So my piece is an interpretive piece which means it isn’t necessarily inspired or based on music. My piece is the story I wrote out. I choreographed movement which I felt was the story. The rhythm of the dance is the rhythm is which I say the story to myself in my head. The movement is purely the direct translation of my story is written English to movement. 

The visual I created includes many images of places, ideas, and external influences blended together. The images being blended together is representative of how these ideas and places all help shape what I believe. They are all blended together within me. Also, I blended the text of my story into the piece as well. I wanted the text to be very faint so that its not the main focus and because I didn’t want the audience to have the script of the story before I could tell it. Overall, the visual is a visual blend of the influencing factors to the dance. 

Some outside media that influenced me would be Emmy Rossum’s song Slow Me Down. It was I song I was listening to a lot during the time in my life in which the story occurred. In the visual accompanying piece, an image of Emmy from the music video of this song is included. Another media source which influenced this piece was President Monson’s talk “The Only Constant is Change.” The title of this talk is actually the theme of my story and the mention of the talk is the pivotal moment is the story. From the reading I found the Pinkhassov photos influential because they re-emphasized that you don’t need words/text to tell a story. 

I think this class has been a lot about learning different ways to tell narratives and different ways to communicate ideas. We have explored several mediums and several approaches to different mediums through out this class. I feel like my fireside chat was a “sort of culmination of the course” because I explored different ways and mediums to tell a narrative. I didn’t take the traditional wrote of speaking with words or text but I told my story through the language of dance with the aid of a visual.