The Shape Remains: Jodi Melnick

Abstract

The creative process on the solo Business of the Bloom (BB) with Jodi Melnick is outlined in this chapter. In this solo, I enter the space at the upstage right corner to a crackling soundscape and a yellow wash of light. I am wearing yellow trousers and a light patterned top. Feet in parallel position, my arms rise forward up to sternum height before breaking apart into a jointed series of arm and leg gestures that come to rest through my pointed finger scanning from left to right, taking the audience into my gaze as I go. The piece is a collage of carefully constructed sections that see multiple impulses expanding into movement possibilities. My right hand travels forward passing through the horizontal crook of my left elbow. It opens like a flower before contracting and retreating — this is/was ‘the bloom’ from the title. I embody a muscular, exaggerated macho walk downstage to confront the audience to the soundtrack of the 1966 Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. This character falls away as I return to movement that scans from left to right across the space. There is a sense of restraint throughout, a lifted quality in my movement. A strain of guitar music accompanies a series of quick and detailed impulses that I trace but do not fully extend into. The crackling sounds return as I stand on one leg, a heron in repose, waiting until this picture dissolves into the next.

We have been working on movement and the material is familiar. I’m overwhelmed — whether it’s a combination of the intensity of the summer and the city or just relevant to this process, I don’t know — feel shaken. I feel static and blocked today. She was in the throes of a lot of movement when I came into the studio. It all came at me in a clump.

Rehearsals with Melnick, August 2005, New York