Unit 25 - Dance improvisation

Wednesday 26^th April

Today we were focusing on learning some more of the duet that I have been learning with Callum.

To start the lecture we carried out a warmup to make sure that we did not hurt ourselves whilst dancing. The warmup included stretches and small jumps to loosen up the body.

For the rest of the lesson we spent the time learning some more of the choreography. Although Laura had choreographed some of the routine, she left most of it for us to improvise and come up with. Therefore, we worked together to come up with some ideas of what moves to put into the dance. On most occasions when we came to a gap in the choreography, I would improvise a move and if it didn't work then we would disquard it but if it did work we would fit it in. However, to start with, we ran through the dance a couple of times so we could refresh the dance in our heads because we haven’t had dance lessons for 2 weeks due to the Easter break. In this lesson we managed to learn a lot of choreography as we were focused and we are both able to pick up choreography fairly quickly. Some of the moves that we have improvised and then added into the routine include a backwards roll, backwards drags and the quickstep. Over the next couple of weeks before the show, I need to keep practicing these moves separately as well as the routine. Moves such as the backwards roll and the quickstep need special attention because I am not used to carrying out these moves and at the moment they are a bit rusty and need perfecting. I will practice these moves and the routine in my own time outside of lectures. This duet is a contemporary piece and therefore improvisation can be quite easdy. As long as a story is told and there are certain moves that have been choreographed, other moves can be interpreted in different ways and don't always have to be performed in the same way every time that the routine is rehearsed or performed. 

I think this lesson was very productive because we got a lot done and managed to learn a large portion of the dance. In my spare time I need to keep on practicing the moves and the routine. I also feel like I managed to learn the quickstep quickly although I will keep practicing.