By Holly Shaw

How many times have you set out to make a new piece and instead found yourself staring blankly at your own concerned face in the empty studio mirror, throwing out a few limp turns in an attempt to drum up some inspiration?  

This has been me so so many times. When my son was very small and I was setting aside blocks of studio hours every week, this would really frustrate me. Not only was I taking time away from my son, but I was paying for the studio and I had work to get done in there! The silver lining of the situation was that I simply had to figure out how to get in the mood to make work. . .

And so I started researching when I was in the studio and also reading everything I could get my hands on about composition, creativity, performance. Through all of this, I stumbled on a discovery that for any creative act there are three necessary ingredients, or frames of mind, that must come together to make great work. If I took care of these parts, everything worked out: I’d get inspired, the ideas would flow and I’d walk out of the studio with completed phrases I was super excited to share with my dancers.  If I didn’t, then I’d have an experience so maddening that I’d begin to doubt whether I even wanted to make dance again.

The difference was startling! And through an investigation of that, I began to really define what I now call the Creative Formula, a three part process for creating. Eventually, I began sharing these three ingredients with my other choreographer friends. The work also integrated itself into my teaching, and I found I could order a day’s workshop with the three ingredients and create a powerful and satisfying creative arc every single time.

Five years later, after coaching hundreds of performing artists, I’ve finally gotten around to writing a book about it, The Creative Formula: Compose, Choreograph, and Capture Your Masterpiece, and total surprise to me – it’s now become the number one bestselling dance book on Amazon!

I’m a theatre and performance nerd, a creativity researcher, and a total transformation junkie. This stuff is endlessly fascinating to me! And now I’ve spent years reading books on composition, choreography, acting, directing, philosophy, performance psychology, and art therapy in an attempt to discern the real jewels in the art of making magic onstage. Most of those books aren’t bestsellers, and they can be hard to get through because they’re written by real academics. You may have to read a paragraph a few times to understand what it’s even saying, let alone how to turn theory into action. I didn’t want my book to be like that.

Having escaped the grad school experience, I also escaped the responsibility of writing like that. The Creative Formula is designed to be accessible, but also full of real artistic nuts and bolts. It’s playful, but deadly serious.

To order the paperback version of The Creative Formula: https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Formula-Compose-Choreograph-Masterpiece/dp/1536800058/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473611717&sr=8-1&keywords=holly+shaw

To get the audiobook for free: http://www.performersandcreatorslab.com/thecreativeformulafreeaudiobook

—————-