Unit 25 - Dance improvisation

Wednesday 11^th January

For the next few lessons we are going to be taught by one of Laura’s dance teachers, Charlotte. Charlotte trained in a variety of styles and now teaches these styles. Throughout the next few weeks she will be teaching us a duet which we will then perform in the showcase towards the end of the year.

We started the lesson with a physical warmup. This included some jogging, gallops and stretches. We then carried out a breathing exercise. Charlotte explained to us that breathing is very important in contemporary dance. If the breathing fits to the piece then it brings a lot more definition and meaning to it. To start with we led on the floor and breathed in time with the music. Then we thought about moving a limb when we breathed in and moving it back when breathing out. Lastly, we repeated this but instead of moving the limb back to the original position, we moved another limb and we did this to standing. I found this exercise quite difficult as I was focusing on the movement more than the breathing. Also I have never done this before and although I could breathe in time with the music, I found it hard to breathe in time and move at the same time.

For the next part of the lesson we worked on technique. We travelled one by one down the room carrying out different travelling exercises. Firstly we started with something easy – walking in time with the music. We then looked at small leaps, and then increased these to split leaps. The last travelling exercise that we carried out was triplet runs. I found these travelling exercise quite straight forward as I had carried out most of these before in my previous dance training.

For the rest of the lesson we were working on learning the first part of the routine. The song that the piece is choreographed to is ‘Shape of you’ by Ed Sheeran. We had a discussion with Charlotte before we started learning the routine about our own input into the routine. If we had any ideas for any moves that we wanted to put into the routine then we are able to do so. Here is a picture of me and Angel learning the beginning of the routine.