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>> [Chiming sound] Angel arm soften up a little bit.
Let it float.
Practice in front of the mirror.
A good thing that a mirror does is it lets you see
what's happening...
>> Investigating Grace was really inspired
by a trauma in my own life.
My son who was in his early 20's, had a brain tumor,
and I went through a whole process of whether
or not I should continue choreographing.
It made life feel very meaningless.
And it came clear to me after a short amount of time
that that was exactly what I needed to do was keep creating.
[Studio sounds] So I decided to make this piece about love
and loss, and it was inspired really
by the different parts of his young life.
>> So I get to see that body and the spirit lifting
out of the body on the floor.
>> Investigating Grace is really investigating human grace.
How do we cope with the extreme, well, pleasures as well
as traumas in our life?
[ Music ]
>> Those are the parts that I feel are
like the most emotional for me.
And like the parts with a lot of detail, just because like
as we've been doing them more and more, we've been trying
to create more and more interactions,
where the audience can like get an example of our relationship.
>> As we relearn the piece, and then teach it
to the SF State students,
we start to learn what all these fine details are,
and what certain sections mean beyond the movement,
like what other connections to real life can you make
to those physical movements.
So I think that's the hardest thing to try
to translate all those things because the piece is so detailed
and so long and full of those ideas.
>> I mean the whole idea of when I made this was -
what was I doing?
Where are my glasses?
This is not mine.
>> I looked around for a piece of music
that I thought would work with this idea of different parts
of a person, and I came across the Goldberg Variations,
which of course is a very famous piece.
And I kept coming back to it because the idea of an aria
with all of those variations seemed
to me emblematic of a life.
You have a person, and then they go into different places
and they have different experiences.
[ Piano music ]
>> The format of the aria,
with all the variations was the suggestion to me
of how to form the piece.
So the aria in my idea was my son.
[ Music ]
>> And then we did variations, so I made up a phrase
that you see at the beginning of the piece.
It's a two minute little dance, and the rest of the variations,
they're unique variations.
They really all spring from that one bit of material.
>> I've been trying to tell Katie and Josh
that the most important thing is to relax, to feel one another,
and don't force anything, and that's it.
And just know and trust that you can do it.
>> We go through this journey where it's very caring
and sweet, and then it becomes troubled, and then,
and even angry at some points.
And during the whole journey,
it's still about finding the grace to get
through this problem as a group,
and how does my character work this
out still believing in the grace of life.
[ Music ]
>> The audience should let a feeling take a hold of them.
And I know as a dancer, it's really difficult for me
to watch a dance piece because I'm looking at technique,
and are the legs strong, and all of this,
but you really should be looking for a feeling.
[ Music and audience sounds ]
>> The process of working with the students
in this particular group has been probably the best I
could've hoped for.
There's as much passion in this process as in the dance.
[ Audience sounds and tapping ]