Guernica Review

Guernica - By Pablo Picasso

Created by Pablo Picasso in June 1937, Guernica's stimulus is thought to be in relation with the bombing of Guernica, a village North of Spain, in which the Basque government reported that 1,654 people had been killed.

Further research into the painting saw that the picture is a representation of the havoc and death the bombing has brought for the men, women, children and livestock of Guernica.

The picture is a set of symbolic pieces telling the story of the bombings of Guernica, for example, the light blub at the top of the painting, in Spanish is 'bombilla' which has similarities to the word 'bomba', the Spanish word for bomb.

Before devising a sequence, we first had to think about emotional words to describe the happenings in the picture (Chaos, fear, pain) whilst also selecting what different dynamics we could use to portray these emotions (Heavy/light, repetitive, change of speed).

Creating a movement from the stimulus wasn't too difficult as the representations of the people suffering in the painting was exaggerated to a point that the still images could all be linked together. Creating 4 initial still frames as a class to base our piece on, we then separated to create solo performances before merging them with 3 other peoples into one unique sequence of movements.

The 4 initial still frames:

• Bent legs, reaching up to the sky with head upwards
• Leaning up from the floor, pushing with your hands
• Leaning forward whilst are arms are positioned wrapped up over our heads
• Positioned on the floor with our waist in the air with our arms angled like a 'V'

I found working on this task independently was a struggle, although the stills were set postures, it was the travelling to and from them as well as trying to incorporate dynamics into the piece to create a stronger meaning and a better sense of emotion. An area of improvement would be focused on my specific posture of the 4 still images as I felt my lack of dancing experience in comparison to others was clearly visible.

After forming a group, we used our movements alongside some choreographic devices to devise a more powerful performance. I felt like the group performance was much more successful as when we were each freezing in 1 of the 4 different postures it created the chaos and havoc feel, I felt the picture was trying to portray; whereas a solo performance wouldn't be able to capture the full extent of the emotion and 'voice' behind the painting.

A few ideas I contributed to the group was the use of canon at certain times with different movements to show that every one person had their own experience of the suffering, but I also suggested a sequence at the beginning were we could perform the movement all at the same time to represent the unity and strength of the village before the havoc drove them apart. Another suggestion which didn't make the final piece was the use of slower speeds at the start of the piece followed by speeding up to portray a sense of tension for the audience watching.
Feedback after the performance was mostly positive with criticism towards timing, something continuous practice would fix.