CREATING DANCE

CREATING DANCE... Creating DANCE RUSH

Dance.  Just this one word opens up Pandora’s box. Most of us humans have dance incorporated in our lives and systems without us even knowing of its existence let alone importance. Many of those living on planet Earth use dance whenever the necessity or the feeling or the eventuality or the spontaneity of it calls. The big majority of us do not even know that many a times we are dancing without that same knowledge of us actually dancing. In fact everybody's life is one continuous choreography danced to nature, to the sounds around us, to the silence and the space between sound, to our rhythmical breathing, heartbeat, mechanical noise, everyday routines, conversation… most of our dances are individual, personal but many times due to occasion or circumstance or the natural process of life, this dance becomes synchronized, becomes one and most of time, this is when the spectacle commences.

This is what inspired me to create DANCE RUSH. This amazing thing called life. Life transpired in dance. In individuality, dance becomes a series of choreographies that become intrinsic, a part of our lives. When we wake up in the morning, we all have our own choreographic way of waking up... Some open their eyes and wait a few minutes staring at the windows or lampshade. Some get out of bed immediately and put on their fluffy slippers waiting anxiously by our bed. Some go straight to the toilet, do what one must do, wash their teeth, gargle with mint mouthwash and spend hours looking vaguely at the coloured wardrobe. Others cuddle for a few minutes and wrestle for half hour lovingly before getting up that is if sleeping next to undying loved ones. Then like a whining child call out for the lie-in-bed coffee. Later shower,  put on the prepared-from-the-night -before suit and wash their teeth or mechnically shave in their cars on the way to the office. And this choreography is only a part of our first few minutes out of bed! We are dancing to our rhythm and we do not know we are dancing. What fascinates me is that some film directors put this choreography to music and it certainly works. It has also been choreographed brilliantly through moving pictures in many parts of the same movie “August Rush”. I have simply transformed it to grasp the theatrical space.

Our gait, the way we walk is all so "dancey"... Some of us walk slow, some leisurely slow. Some trip every few minutes as continuously absent-minded. Some fast, hurrying here and there and nothing escapes their attention. For a few minutes sit back at a coffee shop and watch other people watch others simply walk. They are watching theatre. The theatre of life.  It is so spectacular watching the hundreds of people walking down main streets, coming in and out of elevators and trains, waiting in queues, playing sport, using their hands to talk ( say that to an Italian ) , making love, arguing... And many a times this dance becomes one. In football matches, in church rituals, in funeral processions, in wedding celebrations, in stock exchanges, in hot auctions, in security searches at airports... everywhere, dance is around us and we do not even know, we are not aware, we do not study.. but  we know now. We are all dancers created by mother nature,  by a loving supreme being, by God.  

 Dancers by nature, dancers because we are humans, dancers because we are.

And yet we always associate dance to music. The movie 'August Rush ' is entirely based on the importance of music in the estranged life of three people and I based my new dance creation on this astonishingly positive movie.  Music brings these three people together, making them whole again, making them one, one family. Music plays a tremendous part in all our lives.  That’s true without any doubt. But my music goes further. It's the music of bees, the music of cars,  the music of machinery...  

Music that touches our hearts, music that reminds us of important events in our lives, music that recalls names and people and periods in our lives. I have given a lot of importance to music in my life as music has given me more dance in my existence... As I mentioned beforehand, in all of my life not just in a studio but also in my bedroom, in my church, in my relationships,  in my heart and soul, music is intertwined in my haemoglobin. And music is so varied. These simple seven notes, just seven notes, when mixed, perturbed, joined, bounced, alternated produce classical, opera, swing, blues, rock, ethnic, commercial .. Seven styles I have incorporated in DANCE RUSH. I wish I could added more styles but I am sure these two hours of dance, of music, of life will make us all aware of the importance of music in our lives, the dancer that lives or sleeps within us, the beauty of dance and music that bring one family together ... Family being the most essential oxygen of love within our lives.

It has been a hard ride creating dance during the long hot Maltese summers when our temperatures were sometimes hotter than those in Dubai. And I know, my dancers know in our knowledge that this process called choreography, the creation of dance will make those experiencing DANCE RUSH stamp their little toes, rest their heads on their partner's chest and feel their heartbeat, clap to the sound of the best, get up and dance with us or simply .. want to dance, dance the dance of life.

Felix Busuttil

Creator of DANCE RUSH

Founder of The YADA Dance Company 

CREATING DANCE... Creating DANCE RUSH