Week 3 – Key Practitioner Lesson One – ‘In Countenance of Kings’ by Justin Peck

Countenance of Kings is choreographed by Justin Peck from San Fransisco Ballet. Initially I felt a sense of confusion, freedom and disorientation. The feeling of freedom developed from the woman at the beginning taking her hair down and also the transition of setting from a more confined space to a large hall. This feeling was then enhanced by many more dancers joining her as soon as she's in the hall. However, the use of patterns and movement of the large cast created the piece to be quite disorientating and confusing, especially with the different camera angles as you didn't know where you were in the hall or what you should be focusing on.

After focusing on the movement of the dancers, I realised that there was quite a contrast between the classical moves but the foot wear of the dancers and the transitions of the movements also. All the movements in the piece were classical, however when ever the dancers went to change position they'd run to their destination. This also links to the dancers wearing trainers, It's as if Peck wants to challenge the "classical" ballet style and also portray a sense of liberty and that ballet is like a race to become the best at their profession. In addition to this there was a constant change of direction in the dancers movements, which I interpreted as the uncertainty of the dancing profession and that you never know where you will end up.

Justin Peck in this piece used many different choreographic devices to make the movements more interesting for the audience and more exciting. One choreographic device used was inversion between the first two dancers. This then links back to the woman at the beginning looking at herself in the mirror as the use of inversion is almost like dancing with a reflection. By using this technique, it could be interpreted that whilst in the dancing profession people tend to compare themselves a lot with fellow dancers and so instead of focusing on yourself you focus on other people.

Over all, the narrative I interpreted the choreography to have is that she is unsure of the path her career is taking and that she wants to explore different opportunities. However, during her fantasy all the dancers are helping each other and leaning on each other to create the movements. In addition to this they collectively create the shapes, for example the many circles would be broken and it would be incomplete. Therefore, her real life self realised this may not be the reality.