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Geoffrey Tyler on Love 'n Life
Insights on the development of this year's "Love 'n Life"
Stars on Ice tour
With all the reports and reviews coming in about the Lake Placid
Stars on Ice show, I got very curious about the opening number, since
I saw that it was attributed to Geoffrey Tyler, and was wondering if
it was an original piece. To satisfy my curiosity, I asked Geoffrey to
tell me more about it and what role he played in the show
choreography. I got back some interesting insights into the creative
process behind the development of the opening number and this year's
Stars on Ice show as a whole, thematically. Here's what he had to
say:
"The opening number... I wrote the music, and Kurt and I wrote the
script for it. No singing, just the skaters' voices.
Because we had so little rehearsal time this year, we wanted to
maximize impact and minimize the time it would take to teach people
steps. It was already going to be difficult. We couldn't skimp on act
1 closing, or the finale. We already had a great idea for act 2
opener, so we decided to see if we could do the opening differently,
yet still be satisfying. We came up with the idea of an "Intro" as an
opening as opposed to a big production number. There would be plenty
of production value in the form of skating throughout the rest of the
show. So we set about to come up with something that would start the
show off succinctly, yet set the mood, introduce the theme; give the
audience something unexpected, yet interesting.
Kurt's original idea was to have an opening number something like a
musical; all the characters get introduced, there's a bit of
choreography, maybe some singing (by me) something that sets up the
show theatrically like a real musical would, but there's no musical
opening number out there that would fit easily with a skating show. We
toyed momentarily with writing something, but that would have been
very time consuming and we wanted the opposite of that. So it morphed
into this idea of the skaters talking about their ideas on what Love
and Life means to them, and what they think is important; all of this
over some instrumental music to carry the idea. We could achieve all
the things we wanted this way, and it could be simple, yet
effective.
So we wrote some stuff down, and we liked it. Now the script idea
worked to our liking, but the music was hard to pin down. We needed it
to follow the dialogue in a certain way, dictated by us and the
dialogue, and it was very difficult to find existing music that would
do that. Now, going back to a much earlier idea that we'd put aside
sometime ago, I had written a little incidental music for something we
were thinking of that we eventually shelved, so Kurt asked if I could
develop that idea more for this new opening idea, which I did (with
trepidation at first, only because I'd never composed for something as
mainstream as Stars and I didn't want to disappoint anyone). So, with
a script that we were mostly happy with (we would tweak dialogue to
suit the skaters as necessary later), I set about putting music to it,
we made a few changes here and there, played with the arrangement a
couple of times but, in the end, it all seemed to come together.
Now we had this opening number that set the mood for the show,
incorporated the theme, introduced all the skaters while telling the
audience a little about themselves, and hopefully the audience could
relate to it. Unexpected, different, and interesting. We'd spent a
great deal of time making the rest of the show (skaters individual
choices, other group numbers) fit into our theme so that no one would
feel cheated when they saw the whole show and how the opening fit into
it all. I think we achieved that. I hope so anyway lol.
I helped with choreography a bit throughout, some steps here and
there, ideas. I choreographed the boys' comedy transition numbers, but
it's Kurt's footwork for the majority. Jeffrey Buttle along with Kurt
contributed lots to the finale, and Linda Garneau choreographed the
boys' number in act 2. Because I'm not a skater, I can do a few
things, but it's limiting. I'm good at structure, I'm good at figuring
out how a good idea will work better, and I'm good at fleshing ideas
out so they become complete. That's the director in me I suppose, one
has to be able to step back from the canvas and see how it's all going
together, and if anything, me NOT being so deeply involved with steps
helps me do that.
We have a question: Love, and Life, what is it? And we spend the next
couple of hours exploring it. Mildly perhaps, but it is a figure
skating show after all, no one's coming to see Shakespeare, but at
least people leave with a sense they just saw something that was
"about something" and not just a random assortment of unconnected
things."
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