Choreographing Poems

Moving Metaphors: Poetry in Motion

Authors: P. K. Jayaraj & K. N. Sugadhan

The poet John Logan said, “Poetry is a ballet for the ear. It is the dance of language.” You can interpret and express the meaning and emotions of a poem through movement. The pace, rhythm and imagery of poetry will motivate the readers to leap, jump, spin or fly. Choreographing poems is one of the ways to learn language, appreciate the poetic language and the meaning of poetry.

Close your eyes and listen to a song or a poem. Certain images or visuals will come to your mind. Those images or visuals are surely connected to the song you are listening to. May be you are trying to remember some moments in your life when you heard the song for the first time. You may just remember the people who were around you then, their faces, talks and smiles. Or you may just sink into some memories. Anyway, some people /things/ perceptions like smell and taste, etc, rush into your mind, play some actions and vanish, giving way to fresh ones. These visuals differ from person to person. Your mind is visualizing the song; or in other words, your mind is choreographing the song.

Suppose you want to show this choreograph to others. What will you do? You will have to arrange the events, actions and movements in a logical sequence. You will have to think about the persons (characters) who will perform these actions/movements. The choreograph you experience within the theatre of your mind is strictly personal and it may not convey anything to anybody else as such. So you will have to think about some modification or detailing. You need to convey your perceptions within the time and space boundaries of performance. And it is obviously clear that you can only show a version of the choreograph you had in your mind.

Choreography is the composition and arrangement of dance movements and patterns usually intended to be accompanied by music. In the context of education, choreography means visualization of a song or a poem. Choreographers interpret the song in their own ways and tell their perceptions through actions in tune with the rhythm of the song. They really search for new interpretations of the song/poem. For this they have to analyze and understand the theme of the poem/song.

Let’s discuss the following children’s rhyme.

Row row row your boat

Gently down the stream

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream!

To a pre primary child, it is only a rhyme dealing with rowing of a boat, which is full of joy and happiness. But a philosopher may focus on the last line and read the poem in a different way. These two persons plan for entirely different events and actions in tune with their interpretation.

A choreographer needs a script for performance.  To write a script, he may have to go through the following steps:  

1. Identifying the theme and interpreting it
2. Formulating events to establish the theme and its interpretation
3. Sequencing the events and actions.
4. Fixing characters involved in the events
5. Fixing their actions and movements
6. Designing costumes and properties.
7. Visioning the settings and ambience.

Now let the curtain rise!

What do you see on the stage? What are the stage settings? What is the dominating colour? Does the colour relate to the theme you identified? When does the song begin? With the raising of the curtain? Or after the curtain has gone up? Or simultaneously?

Which character appears first? What are his / her costumes? From which part of the stage does he / she enter? What is her mood? What action does she perform? When will she exit from the stage? Or do you want to freeze her movements? Does any other character appear? Do these characters (1&2) together perform any action? Do you want to make use of the chorus in your performance? Which style of action do you want to follow? (Natyadharmi or Lokadharmi) Which form of dance do you want to follow? (Western / bharathanatya / kuchuppudi / kathak / folk style / mixed)

Do the singers appear on the stage? Are they present at the very beginning of the performance/will they appear after some time? If so when will they appear?  A stream of questions will surely haunt you. The choreographer has to find answers to all these questions. The answers to the above questions in brief constitute a script.

Hope you have watched some albums and live performances of great artists like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Padma Subrahmanyam…Can’t you find the presence of a powerful choreographer in their performance?  Many live shows use sophisticated equipments like Crain, fogging machines, etc on the stage. Some use video clippings too. They beautifully blend the live performance with recorded versions of the song and the viewer finds it difficult to distinguish between them. So the script of those choreographs will find slots for these also. They will include the screenplays for video clippings too.

Try writing a script of your favourite album. Watch it several times, modify your script to fine tune it with the original performance. It will be a nice experience which, I am sure, will benefit not only your artistic skills but your command over English language too.

We have uploaded the choreography of Sarojini Naidu’s poem Coromandel Fishers. Watch the choreography and please let us know your valuable feedback.