Just got word of the launch of Chicago choreographer Brock Clawson’s new website (brockclawson.com, designed by Akio Satoh) and it’s really worth checking out. It’s a really entertaining trip through the world of a new, but already well-respected independent choreographer. This is a remarkable profession; the work of a choreographer begins with a commission from a dance company, which leads to a process that combines the extremes of completely free-form creativity with an astonishing amount of disciplined hard work.
The really free-form part comes at the start of the process. When I’ve worked with Brock, it always begins with a call from a company that wants him to set a work for them (that’s dance language for “choreograph a new work”). Most recently these have been from ThodosDanceChicago (www.thodosdancechicago.org), for “Nine”, from the Houston Metropolitan Dance Company (http://www.houstonmetdance.com) for “The Yawning”, and from Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago (http://www.giordanodance.org/company) for “Give and Take”, all of which were uncompromised successes.
It was back in March that Mollie Mock told me that she and Jeremy Blair would be collaborating in the creation of a work set to the new 'ohana track "Hidden". Ironically, I had recently begun to really notice Mollie and Jeremy when they dance together; there is a particularly bright rapport between them that you can see clearly whenever you watch them moving together onstage. So I was really enthusiastic when I heard that they would be applying the unique way they can work together to setting their piece, entiltled "Reflect".
