Endless Nameless
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BRIAN GIBBS |
Hello Everyone.
This is cool……my first post on The Winger.
I just got back from The North Carolina School Of The Arts. I graduated from there in 2004. Now I am coming back to honor the Dean of the Dance department, for her 17 years of excellence. Ethan Stiefel will be taking over the school of dance in her place and perform with Gilian Murphy in the tribute.
It is such a big deal for me to come back and have my work shown alongside other artists that I had looked up to during school, or had always admired.
After I graduated, I had moved to San Francisco, which is more or less a separate country from the US. With that said, it is hard to know what is going on with the alumni due to the different time zones.
This particular trip for me was mos def the scariest thing that I have ever done. I was going back to the same place that had given me all of the tools for composition. There will not be a place where I would be judged so harshly, because the same people had trained me. Its like trying to impress your parents after college with you first job all over again.
The piece that I decided to take was “Cymbal Rush”. The last track from Thom Yorke’s “The Eraser”. I had originally choreographed the piece a year ago but in a complete different context… it was for a film. What I decided to do now was to extract the movement from the film and accommodate for the stage, with entrances and exits, new costumes, lights and all of that jazz. Garen Scribner and Quinn Wharton of San Francisco Ballet were the two people that the piece was created on(NCSA alumni). Due to a sidelining back injury Quinn was not able to perform so we had to scramble and find a new dancer to fill in. Benjamin Wardell, recently from Lines, was our savior. We got him into the studios and after watching the way he moves I was then able to come up with new movement for him and that just evolved the dance into a whole new beast.
Fast forward to us traveling to NCSA and me going home first to Charlotte… It was so great to get back to school and see all of my old friends and the school. Joseph Phillips had just moved out of our flat in San Francisco to move to Miami as a soloist in Miami City Ballet. Garen and I were stoked (Sorry I live in Cali now) to see him again. Also my best friend and favorite trina Kelley Potter of Boston Ballet was dancing, so it was really nice to chill with all of my buds and be alongside them for the tribute.
At the end of the day I was very pleased with all of the performances from all of the dancers. My piece was danced superbly by Garen and Ben. The two of them were on point! Best of all was we got great feedback from all of the staff and audience.
I could write on and on so I will spare you. Not too sure how cool it will be to loose readers on my first post. But I will say this,
After the performance and me getting over some anxieties. Looking forward to the up-coming performance we are doing in SF i know that the possibilities are “Endless Nameless”.
