Unit 1 - Skills development in performing arts

Wednesday 7th September 2016

To start off the lesson, our Performing Arts teacher, Cara gave us an overview of what the course included and what was ahead of us within the first year. There are both written and pracitical work within the course. The practical includes dance, drama and singing aspects and we will focus and improve upon these areas throughout the next year. The written work includes writing and keeping up to date with the blog. This blog is where we will record all of our progress throughout the next year. Cara also ran through the few expectations that she has such as good punctuality, attendance and engagement in lessons. 

Once Cara had finished the overview of the course we started some warm up activities. To start with, we did a physical warm up. The physical warm up helps the blood flow quicker around the body which makes the body warmer and enables our muscles to move quicker. This then means that the body is prepared for voice production. The first part of our warm up consisted of carefully balancing on one foot whilst the other foot was in front of us in the air; not far from the ground. We then started to move our feet in small circles. After a few seconds, we started to work up the leg to the knee, circling the lower part of the leg. After a few more seconds we worked our way up to the hip. At this point we were moving our leg in circular motions from the hip downwards. After a few seconds we changed legs and did exactly the same with the other leg working from the ankle, to the knee and then up to the hip. Once we had completed this exercise with both legs, we started to warm up the upper parts of our bodies by moving the hips in circular motions. Then we moved onto the arms where we rolled our shoulders forward and backwards slowly moving to the elbows and then the arms. Lastly we moved up to the head. We dropped our chin to our chest and rolled our head to the right and then to the left as if we were drawing a semi-circle. This exercise is useful because it loosens up the neck. This whole warmup prepared us for the lesson ahead as we now had loosened up our body ready to move around.

Moving on from the warmup to breathing exercises. The breathing exercises which we carried out consisted of breathing in through the mouth for 4 seconds, holding the breath for 6 seconds and breathing out for 8 seconds. This type of exercise is called an intercostal diaphragmatic breathing exercise. This is because this type of exercise involves both your intercostal muscles and your diaphragm. I found this exercise quite difficult as it is forcing the body to breathe in a different way to usual; however this type of exercise, if done regularly, helps to build lung capacity.