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Choreographic Process

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-Unconventional way of working for that time

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Staging Safe Spaces--> Affectations of Blue Light 

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Staging Safe Spaces--> Affectations of Blue Light 

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In moonlight, “black boys look blue” portrays how the blue radiates off the individuals. Blue represents tranquility, peace and especially in this film, finding your true self from within rather than from what others say.

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Hype Williams use of blue light in Belly 

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Hype Williams use of blue light in Belly 

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Buns and Sincere enter into the club the scene shifts from neutral to this black light effect. All figures appear blue. This made me think about the negatives after film is developed.

The Underground--- The BELLY of the beast---The Underground is not a bad place but bad things happen

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Mysticism—> Alluring—>Prismatic
Duration- how long shapes are held
The shift in mystery, to elusive, to enchanting, it’s as if the music consumes you but not in a dangerous way but like a “bitch be careful” -->

I Need Love by LL Cool J--> The composition is a deconstruction or a decomposed version of the song

"the kind of that thing of turn in on themselves and create a kind of infinity." --> alternate universe

Like a Trip
Iterations of “Buked” “Episodes” and “Members but less sentimental

The dispersal, drive, and persistence of “Vespers”

“Subtle conjuring” or “nuanced conjuring”

The shifts from agile to abandoned —> there’s a submission to the music, then there’s this abrupt refusal—> the music shifts (around 21:00ish) before the series of duets

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CHOREOGRAPHER

Donald Byrd

MUSIC

Mio Morales

COSTUMES

Gabriel Berry

LIGHTING

Blu

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Back in 1988, Donald Byrd originally created Shards for the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble (now called Ailey II). But the Ensemble's director, Sylvia Waters, gave Mr. Ailey a peek at Byrd's work, and Ailey decided to premiere it with his main company instead.

To create this abstract work, Byrd looked at both classic ballets like Sleeping Beauty and influential modern dance by major African-American choreographers of the time - Mr. Ailey, Talley Beatty, and Donald McKayle - and deconstructed the language these choreographers used and recombined it with his own sensibility as a rising young artist.

As Donald Byrd explained in a 2007 interview: "If you think of shards in a kind of genetic way, the inside of each gene - a shard perhaps of the body - has the capacity to reproduce the whole organism again. You clone from the cell. And so there's the idea that with one shard of a shattered mirror, what's imprinted in the shard is the last thing the mirror saw. The mirror can see all kinds of things, but in this case it's the 'Rose Adagio' from the ballet Sleeping Beauty or the clump of dancers in 'I Been 'Buked' [in Revelations]. It's an Escher-like way of thinking about it, that things kind of turn in on themselves and create a kind of infinity."
PRESS COVERAGE:
"Shards certainly kept one watching with interest... a moody dance that literally looked blue. Gabriel Berry designed blue shirts and slacks for the men, and the women wore dark blue skirts with bright trimmings in other colors. Blue was also the predominant hue of the lighting devised by the designer who calls himself Blu. However, near the conclusion, the stage started to glow in a change of lighting that matched the choreography's growing intensity. The cast was first seen moving slowly in a wedge formation, from which individuals stepped out and to which they returned. Elegant pas de deux sequences occurred throughout the piece, as well as adagios in which one woman was partnered by several men, who took turns supporting her. Such serene passages were contrasted with strenuous and occasionally almost frantic running and leaping. All these contrasts were effectively reflected in the taped score by Mio Morales. It was possible to enjoy Shards simply as a study in shifting levels of energy. But what added to its fascination ... was the fact that although no one danced en pointe, the elegant sequences looked balletic. Some even brought to mind works by George Balanchine. Shards was filled with balletic fragments ... one could view the work as a kinetic allegory in which the balletic passages symbolized a state of order threatened by forces of disorder. Other interpretations are also possible. Shards indicates [Byrd] can invent movements that are worth watching."
-Jack Anderson, The New York Times, December 17, 1988

" A showpiece that's always easy to watch but also gets at intriguing creative issues. It fractures and reassembles the components of Ailey-style in rigorous neo-minimalist terms, with an emphasis on startling contrasts in dynamics. A dancer's arm abruptly shoots forward and then is slowly, softly pulled back to graze the face. Formal, balletic turns-in-extension dissolve in wiggly colloquial motion. Gestural statements that resemble streamlined postmodernizations of Ailey's powerful, recurrent 'Buked and Scorned' motif from Revelations alternate with sleek passages of dance-as-pure-design. Such sharp push/pull oppositions become a major rhythm in Shards, underpinning the moody wash of sound provided by Mio Morales. But it is classical ballet that increasingly becomes Byrd's preoccupation (just as it has sometimes been Ailey's): All the playoffs with other movement forms only heighten the centrality of the ballet vocabulary, repertory and even hierarchy. It's as if he's trying to define his own place in the continuity of dance tradition by investigating links to Ailey, to Balanchine and to the street. Byrd is best known as a dance rebel, outrageous and fearless. But Shards explores his influences and inspirations while transforming them for dancers of his own generation."
-Lewis Segal, The Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1989

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Shards | Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

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Back in 1988, Donald Byrd originally created Shards for the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble (now called Ailey II). But the Ensemble's director, Sylvia Waters, gave Mr. Ailey a peek at Byrd's work, and Ailey decided to premiere it with his main company instead.