Unit 25 - Dance improvisation

Wednesday 25^th January

In today’s dance lesson I started to learn the choreography for my solo which will be included within the dance performance at the end of this academic year.

To start the lesson we carried out a warmup. This consisted of some jogging, galloping and stretching. Once we had carried out an overall warmup, we did some extra leg and foot warmup exercises. This is because for the solo that I am learning I will be wearing pointe shoes and dancing en pointe. These muscles need to be especially warm otherwise they can become damaged very easily.

For the main part of the lesson I was learning the beginning of the routine. To start with, I learnt the routine whilst using my pointe shoes but after a while my feet started to hurt so I learnt it without them. I managed to learn up to 1:50 which is almost 2/3 of the piece. At the moment I am finding some parts of the routine difficult such as a priroette on my left foot. This is because my left foot isn’t very strong however over time and as I practice the move more and more, I will be able to do it in the end.

Towards the end of the lesson I decided to put my pointe shoes back on so we could run the dance a few times with the pointe shoes on. Here is a video of me and my dance teacher Charlotte, running through the routine in pointe shoes: 

For my solo I will be using a prop. This will be a suitcase as the dance is about me leaving the town as I am upset. We are unsure of how big the suitcase will be yet so I just have to improvise with either a bag or pretend that I have a suitcase. I need to allow for the weight, size and shape of the suitcase. The dance has been specifically choreographed around the suitcase and when I was asked to improvise for some parts of the dance, i had to keep in mind where the suitcase was at all times and what moves I could do whilst holding it. I found it quite difficult to improvise with a prop because I haven't done this before and it is always harder to dance with a prop because you have to choose the movements carefully. 

Next week we will carry on learning the rest of my solo and then, once I am confident with the moves all the way through the routine, I am able to perfect them by adding more emotion and definition.