Notes From a Recent Planning Session

Three weeks ago we sat down in the studio with a whiteboard, a stack of rehearsal notes, and a list of questions that had been building since the start of the season. The session was meant to last two hours. It ran for four, and most of that time was spent not on answers but on getting the questions right.

The first thing we had to settle was the structure of the upcoming open studio showing. We had been assuming a conventional format — a warm-up on stage, three works in a row, a short talk after. But the dancers kept circling back to something else: what happens when the audience arrives during the middle of a rehearsal rather than at a polished run? That single question shifted the entire plan. Instead of a curated sequence, we started mapping the afternoon as a series of overlapping sessions where visitors could move between groups working on different material.

The second issue was documentation. We have been filming fragments of every rehearsal since January, but the footage sits in folders that no one opens. During the planning session we agreed on a simple rule: each week, one dancer selects a single phrase from the archive and brings it back into the studio as a starting point for improvisation. This is not about preserving the work as it was. It is about letting older material resurface in a new context, which is closer to how the company actually develops movement.

We also spent time on the question of who the showing is for. The obvious answer is the public, but the more useful answer turned out to be the dancers themselves. The open studio is a chance to test material in front of people without the pressure of a finished piece. That means the framing matters more than the content. We decided to keep introductions short, avoid program notes, and let the work speak through its own unfinished edges.

By the end of the session we had a rough timeline, a list of responsibilities, and one unresolved question that will shape the next meeting: how much structure is enough without killing the spontaneity that makes the work interesting? That tension is not something we can solve in a single planning session. It is something we will have to negotiate every time we step into the studio.