Unit 26 - Choreographing dance

Friday 13^th October

Today I went into the primary school with my dance lecturer Laura for my first teaching session. The purpose of going into the primary school today was to teach a group of children a piece of choreography that I have been working on over the past couple of weeks. From working with the children and watching how they dance, I will then liaise with my dance teacher and she will help me pick one of the girls to continue to work with me throughout this academic year on a piece for the end of year showcase.

The primary school that I will be teaching at is St Paul’s C of E Primary School in Hereford. The school is a lovely size and I think I will work well with the children of the school.

When we arrived at the school we were given the final list of the children who would be taking part in the session. We already had a draft list of names of the children who had signed up to the workshop before today but we some of the children couldn’t participate because they hadn’t brought their form back into school. We were told on Wednesday that we would be teaching the children in 3 small groups for 20 minutes. However, we were now just teaching 2 groups but still for 20 minutes. The first group of children would be from the older year groups and the second group was made up of children from the younger year groups.

The first group consisted of 2 girls – Emily and Eve. To start with, there was a confusion with the room which we were meant to be using so we had to make do with the music room which was quite small but just about had enough room for the 3 of us. However, we did move a few of the things around in the room to make sure that we were utilising as much of the space as we could. I started by taking the girls through a short warmup. The warmup didn’t need to be too long as I didn’t have much time to teach the girls the choreography and I wanted to make sure that I was able to teach the group a reasonable amount of choreography. Just after I started teaching the girls the choreography, we were told that we were able to move to the main hall which meant that we would have a lot more space. I noticed a massive difference in the way the girls moved from the smaller room to the bigger room. Fortunately, the girls picked up the choreography very quickly and I was able to teach them half of my choreographed material. As I was going through the choreography I kept making sure that the moves were clear and that they understood. There was one time when Eve asked a question about one of the moves and I answered the question by demonstrating the move and explaining it at the same time. As it was coming to the end of the 20 minutes, I lead a cool down just to stretch out the muscles before the girls went back to their lessons. Here are a few pictures which my dance teacher took whilst I was teaching the first group:

Looking back and reflecting on this teaching session, I felt like this first group went ok. I was very nervous before and at the start because this is something which I have never done before and although the dance material is in my comfort zone, the teaching element is definitely outside of my comfort zone. I think that being in the smaller room also knocked my confidence slightly as I was weary of my surroundings and was worrying to what extent I could perform the moves but once we had moved rooms, I felt like I became more at ease. I think the girls did really well and that they picked up the choreography really quickly. Both of the girls moved really well to the music and had really good timing.

Moving on to teaching the second group of children. This group was made up of slightly more children but generally of younger ages. I started this session by giving the children a brief as to what we were going to be doing in the session and then asking for all of the children to take off their shoes and socks. I then took the group through the same warmup as I did with the first group. The warmup was pre-choreographed so I didn’t need to worry about this too much. After the short warmup due to the time limit, I moved onto taking the children through the same choreography as I taught the first group. Because the group were able to pick up the dance so quickly, I was also able to teach them half of the choreography. There was one move in particular which the group weren’t quite getting correct so we spent some time working on this. Once it was coming to the end of the session, I took the group through a short cool down. Here is a video and some pictures of me teaching the second group:

I think that I handled the second group a lot better and easier than the first group. I think this is because I was in the swing of teaching and I was becoming more confident with what I was doing. I think also being in the bigger room helped a lot and the fact that I had a bigger group of children so the room wasn’t as silent as the first group. Also, something that I did in the second session and didn’t do in the first was give the group a brief of what I was going to be doing in the session. I think this made both me and the group more relaxed and maybe this is something that I should have done with the first group. The children worked really hard during this session and I didn’t think that they were going to pick up the choreography as quickly as the first group because they were much younger but they picked it up really well.

The whole purpose of the session today was to teach the children the choreography and then select a girl who I was going to be able to dance with. From watching both of the groups whilst they were learning the choreography, I selected 2 girls, one from each group, who I thought picked up the choreography well and moved really well. However, it was quite hard to select the girls because I was facing away from the children for most of the session because I was teaching them the choreography. But from what I did see and after speaking to Laura, we decided on the 2 girls.

Once we had left the primary school, I had a discussion with my dance teacher, Laura and she gave me some feedback on how she thought the session went. Overall, the feedback was positive and Laura said that I did well considering it was my first time teaching a group of children in a primary school setting. Here are some points that she made of what she thought went well:

·     You showed good spatial awareness during the warmup (especially to start off with when we were in the smaller room)

·     You encouraged the children.

·     You made sure the children understood and gave them opportunities to ask questions.

·     You gave the children chances to do the choreography without you.

·     The mirroring helped aid them before doing it without your input.

·     You gave a clear answer accompanied with a clear demonstration such as when Eve asked about the turn.

·     You then followed this up to make sure that she could do it confidently and independently.

On the other hand, I did feel like there are lots of things which I could have improved on. Laura gave me some points of which she thought I could work and improve on. These are:

·     Allow the music to continue playing and count the children back in to start the choreography from the beginning to allow them a more continuous run-through with the music.

·     Be conscious of where the children are standing in relation to where they are going to be moving to so they don’t end up getting crushed up at one side.

·     Be a bit more relaxed when teaching as this will make you feel and come across as more confident when teaching the children.

I completely agree with all the feedback that Laura has given me and I will take all of this into consideration when I come back into the primary school to teach the child who I will be dancing with in the end of year showcase.

The 2 girls that I have selected today are called Eve and Maisie. Because I was unable to decide which girl was going to be able to perform in the show the best and didn’t know which one had the most potential, I left it down for the school to decide who was going to be given the part. After a few days we heard back that the school have selected Eve to be the girl who will dance with me in the show.

I am very excited to start working with Eve and start choreographing a piece which will include interaction between the 2 of us and will weave into our end of year showcase. I will start working with Eve in a few weeks.

TIE schedule

Theatre in education schedule

PERFORMANCE DATE – JANUARY 25^TH 2018

Monday 11^th September – start to carry out research into how and where Theatre in Education originated. Consider target audience and make contact with them (Sarah Watkins).

Monday 18^th September – continuing on the research which was started last week.

Monday 25^th September – finish off the research and make sure that it is uploaded onto my blog. Create some notes which I will then be able to use when giving my presentation to the rest of the group.

Thursday 28^th September – give a presentation to the group about what research I have carried out into Theatre in Education.

Tuesday 3^rd October – propose ideas relating to the theme which has been chosen for the performance (group discussion and lyric brainstorming).

Thursday 5^th October - meet with Sarah at Lord Scudamore Primary, to discuss potential storylines or strands within the chosen theme (am). Commence devising and brainstorming with group (pm).

Thursday 12^th October – review material that was created last week and develop the piece further. Make creative decisions about scene structure. Evaluate potential of each strand or story. Commence writing up script. Consider name title for show.

Thursday 19^th October – work with draft script, add movement notes plus stage positions and stage furniture.

Monday 30^th October – refresher, review first scenario. No rehearsal on November 2nd due to EXTANT workshop.

Thursday 9^th November – working on the Sweetie Monster scene. Working on teachers scene (Danielle). Liaise with technical team re: production requirements

Thursday 16^th November – review whole production so far. Consider any other elements that need to be included.

Thursday 23^rd November – production meeting 1:00pm. Review script and add SFX and lighting cues. Prioritise any remaining devising. Work on the transitions between the scenes. 

Thursday 30^th November – script should be complete or very close to completion. Continue to work on any parts which may need amending slightly. 
Tuesday 5th December - Alys from UCAN production to come in and give the performance some feedback. This feedback will be taken into consideration and necessary adjustments will be made to the script. 

Thursday 7^th December – continue rehearsal of the script. Work on scenes in the script which may need further development. 

Thursday 11^th January – Sophie (director of Pentabus theatre company) is coming in to watch the performance and give feedback. 
Sunday 14th January - rehearsal with the tech team. Investigate the lighting and sound effects which will be used throughout the performance. 

Thursday 18^th January – work through the whole performance and make sure that the piece is ready to be performed to an audience. 
Wednesday 24th January - tech and dress rehearsal of the performance. This particular performance will be infront of peers at college who will then give us some feedback at the end of the performance which will enable us to do any necessary last minute changes. 

Thursday 25^th January – final performance starting at 1:45pm for the children of Lord Scudamore Academy. 

Unit 7 - Theatre in education

Thursday 12^th October

In todays session we were focusing on revisiting the material that we devised last week and developing new material from the ideas that we have already put forward.

To start off the session, we recapped over the material that we devised last week. After a few run-throughs of the scenes, we were more secure with what was going on in the scenes and what our lines were. After this, we had a discussion as to where we thought the Sweetie Day song should come in the script. We brainstormed the lyrics for this song last week but didn’t decide on where to put this in the script. We decided that this should come after Fiona the Fruit Fairy has spoken to Annie Apple about teeth brushing. At the moment there isn’t a specific choreographed routine for the Sweetie Day song but we are thinking about choreographing a dance to this song. We will probably do this a bit later on in the rehearsal process. After this, we refined the order of the scenes and made sure that everything within the performance made sense. Here is a video of us during the rehearsal. It shows us going through the start of the performance and making some amendments as we go along:

This video is great to look back on as we can see what we have done in this session and if we are unable to remember what we have said previously, we can look back at the video. Something else which we worked on during this rehearsal and is evident within this video is the part of the scene just before the Sweetie Monster enters. I thought that there may be a few children in the audience who may feel a bit uncomfortable and anxious when the Sweetie Monster comes on. Therefore, if they see the other characters putting the Sweetie Monster down, this may make them feel a bit more ease during these scenes where the Sweetie Monster is on stage. I think that this will need work during the rehearsals in the future but we are just starting to consider it at this stage in the rehearsal process.

For the next part of the lesson we started talking about creating a small fitness routine which the children could follow if they stood up out of their seats. At the meeting with Sarah Watkins at Lord Scudamore Primary School, she told me that the children love the playing ‘GoNoodle’. I did some research and this is a programme which the children follow during a PE lesson. A dance routine is projected onto the screen on the children have to copy the moves. Therefore we thought that the children may like it if we carry out an easy fitness routine which they can follow and they may even remember it and do it at home. This is an idea which we had and we tried some different moves but didn’t choreograph anything specifically. I think this will be something that we will work on in a future session once we have a rough idea of how long the show is going to be due to the amount of material we have.

To finish off the lesson we went back to looking at the masks which we looked at a few weeks ago. The idea of using these masks would be for each one to represent a vegetable. Depending on the colour of the mask would then depend on what vegetable it would be. We could then create another song which includes all different types of vegetables.

I think this session went really well as we got a lot done and we are making really good progress so far. I think that something we need to work on as a cast is making sure that everyone is inputting into what is going into the performance. At the moment I feel like I am the only one is inputting and In feel like Molly and Kellyann could start to contribute to sessions more. I also think that they need to start to developing their characters a bit more and be a bit adventurous with their dialogue because at the moment they are only saying the exact words that they have been given. Hopefully we will be able to work on this next week during rehearsals.