Just got word of the launch of Chicago choreographer Brock Clawson’s new website (brockclawson.com, designed by Akio Satoh) and it’s really worth checking out. It’s a really entertaining trip through the world of a new, but already well-respected independent choreographer. This is a remarkable profession; the work of a choreographer begins with a commission from a dance company, which leads to a process that combines the extremes of completely free-form creativity with an astonishing amount of disciplined hard work.

The really free-form part comes at the start of the process. When I’ve worked with Brock, it always begins with a call from a company that wants him to set a work for them (that’s dance language for “choreograph a new work”). Most recently these have been from ThodosDanceChicago (www.thodosdancechicago.org), for “Nine”, from the Houston Metropolitan Dance Company (http://www.houstonmetdance.com) for “The Yawning”, and from Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago (http://www.giordanodance.org/company) for “Give and Take”, all of which were uncompromised successes.

Soon after such a call, I get a call to talk about what sort of piece Brock has in mind, and what sort of music he’ll use. His search for music is absolutely exhaustive. For example, when we were talking about the Giordano piece, I showed Brock the really cool DJ site www.beatport.com. Most of the tracks at beatport are club tracks, but I knew that in the Chill section there would be a lot of really imaginative electronic tracks, and that something there might be part of the solution. (Brock’s pieces usually involve weaving together three or more separate pieces of music, often of very different styles, each serving a different mood and a different aspect of the work.) When I checked back with Brock a day or two later, he had found a couple of really cool tracks, but only after listening to over a thousand track samples. This is the first stage where the free-form creative process meets the incredible discipline of the professional work.

The next step I can’t describe for you, because I don’t really understand it. It has to do with the way a choreographer imagines movement, inspired by the style and history of the company they’re working with, the scope of the project, from solo to large ensemble, and whatever other inspiration allows personal vision to be expressed as formalized movement.

Watching the video reel at http://www.brockclawson.com/reel will give you some idea, especially as Brock talks at the beginning about what it is that he tries to do in creating these works. But whatever the initial creative process may be, it’s followed by the most astonishing adventure of scheduling, rehearsal, phone calls with the company, more music editing, more rehearsal, adjustments, revisions, finalizing, and then --- costumes, lighting, technical rehearsal, dress rehearsal, often a disaster or two, and then, the show.