Music in Motions
For more information on my research and creation process click below:
For my capstone project, I created and composed three pieces of music, choreography, and film. Each piece has a specific emotion tied to it such as anxiety, loss, and love. My goal was to express these emotions in the most authentic way possible. What I personally believe these emotions sound and physically look like is displayed below in my final product. I decided to film in my own home to indicate where dance can exist in ordinary, everyday settings. I also assigned an emotion to each room based on my own experiences and perception.
Anxiety:
For this piece, I decided to film on my stairs because it seems easy to go up and down them, but there's always a chance of falling. Personally, I can relate that back to anxiety and how it can feel normal, but occasionally, it can cause me to slip and fall into a dark place that is difficult to emerge from. Also, in this work, I decided to descend the staircase to display an anxious downward spiral, which almost swallows me whole. However, I figure out how to calm down and pull myself back up. Each layer of sound you hear, which keeps adding one by one, has a specific movement associated with it that is based on my own nervous tendencies such as shaking, bouncing my leg, picking at my nails, pivoting, swaying, and heavy breathing.
Loss:
I chose this small and confined part of my room to reflect the sense of being trapped by your own feelings of grief and sadness. It’s a pain that one cannot easily escape. There seems to be a force always pushing you down as well. However, somewhere in the process there’s a light of hopes that lifts you up, but that feeling fluctuates. While journaling and reflecting on my own perspective of loss, words or quality of movements that came to mind were writhing, heaviness, rocking, grasping, flailing, and numbness. At some point, all of those concepts are expressed through my movements.
Love:
I decided on my bedroom for this emotion because some of my most fond memories with my loved ones have occurred in this room. Even when I'm alone, I often find myself reminiscing, or replaying, old memories that cause me to laugh or smile, which is essentially what this piece is all about as well as exploring the physical embodiment of my own perception of love. I focused on my hands for a large portion of this work because I have been told by those close to me that I have a very loving touch and that my "hands are magic". My hands are also my favorite part of my body. I have found that the hands can communicate more than we may be aware of with a multitude of gestures and shapes. Other qualities of movement I associate with love are intertwining, embracing, swirling, bouncing, and openness.
About Me...
Kaitlyn Day is a senior here at Ball State University as a BA/BS Dance Major with a Minor in Psychology of Human Development. Although she feels most passionate about dance, her other interests include playing piano, creating unique soundscores, photography, hiking, and traveling. Her post-graduation plans are to join the Meraki Dance Company that is based in Indianapolis. After her time with the company, she hopes to move out West and find new performance or creation opportunities that may involve movement research, dance films, or new choreographic work. She is still curious about the wide variety of career paths that exist within the realms of music and dance.
