Unit 1 - Skills development in performing arts

Wednesday 9^th November

To start off today’s lesson we carried out a short physical warmup to get the blood flowing to the muscles a bit faster. Firstly we did some side stretches to feel the muscles in our core working. Then we did a forward stretch to warm up the back and leg muscles and then also a backward stretch. Lastly we did some gentle head roles to warm up the neck muscles. 

We then moved on to carrying out the intercostal diaphragmatic breathing exercise. For this exercise we breathed in for 4 counts, held for 6 and breathed out for 12. We then did the extension to this which is called the abdominal press. I found the extension quite difficult because when breathing out you have to pull the stomach in for any remaining air in the lungs. We then carried out our ‘pah, tah, kah’ exercise. At the end of the exercise, my lecturer said to me that there is evidence of independent learning as I am now able to say the exercise faster. Lastly we went over some of the tongue twisters. The tongue twister ‘give me the gift’ uses a lot of sounds which come from the back of the mouth. On the other hand, ‘The moan of doves’ contains a lot of nasal consonants such as m and n which come from the front of the mouth.

For the rest of the lesson we were focusing on looking at our poems. In this lesson I had achieved my learning target which was to learn my poem and the first section of the ‘pah, tah, kah’ exercise. My lecturer informed me that I am achieving my targets organically and I am on target. 

Now that I know my poem off by heart I am able to concentrate on the pace and the internation. I started to think about slowing the poem down because when I was learning the poem I tried to get through it fast so I was able to remember it. However, now that I know the poem, I am able to concentrate on making the poem sound more interesting. Another element that we looked at during this lesson was my eye line. Instead of looking down, I need to look slightly above eye line and right to the back of the performance studio. 

My target for the next lecture on Monday 14^th November is to consolidate what we have covered today and to look further on in the poem for some ideas for the next section.