November 2017: Adapting the Horse Part for Seated Dancers

The next step in the restaging process was to adapt the horse part from the original RepEtude to a version that could be performed in chairs by the DAPpers.  Stephen Ursprung, Dancing Legacy dancer, and Rachel Balaban, co-founder of Artists and Scientists as Partners (ASaP) and teacher of the DAPpers class, collaborated to create this.  They are pictured below working out the details of this new version of the horse part. ​

It was ultimately determined that the DAPpers would perform this adapted version of the horse role in stools that could spin so that they could change directions during the piece to portray the sense of movement from the original piece.  The directional changes combined with the movement of the spirits and women around the chairs conveys the sense of traversing the stage that was so essential to the original RepEtude. 

One important difference between this version of the horse part and the original version is that the horse does the spirit's choreography at the very end of the piece in this version.  Because the horse ends the original dance moving throughout the stage and the spirit ends the original dance stationary, it was determined that it would be best to swap those two parts just at the end.  However, this changes the trajectory of the dance for the horse at the end because the horse role is so based in shame, but in doing the spirit choreography at the end of the piece the horse goes on a journey that isn't present in the original trio.