Unit 37 - Dance performance

Wednesday 20^th September

In today’s lesson we were mostly focusing on contemporary dance.

To start the lesson, we carried out a warmup to make sure that we did not injure ourselves. We started the warmup by sitting on the floor and stretching out the legs. We sat with one leg out to the side and drew our knee up towards the ceiling and back down again. We repeated this a few times on each leg. We then carried out some other stretches such as a cat stretch, then threading the arm through to create a stretch between the shoulder blades and then some twist turns. We then also carried out a small number of core exercises just to make sure that these muscles were warmed up as we were using them within the session. We then carried out some stretches standing up including arm, neck and shoulder rolls. We then did some small jumps just to get the blood flowing through the body quicker. This warmup was quite thorough as we were using lots of the muscles in today’s session and we did not want to injure ourselves.

For the rest of the lesson we were focusing on contemporary dance. We started by learning a small contemporary sequence which included some common moves that are used throughout contemporary dance. These included leg swings and lifting the pelvis off the floor. We then practiced this piece of choreography to different pieces of music to investigate how the material fitted with the music. We eventually found a song that everyone in the group liked and thought fitted well with the choreography. The song is called “I see fire” by Ed Sheeran. Here is a link to a video of me performing this small sequence:

Because I had some time spare at the end of the lesson whilst the others in the group were writing up some notes, I was able to add some of my own choreography onto the end of the sequence. I started my choreography off with a role to either side and finished it with a contemporary style jump. This sequence of moves could help us in the future when we come to decide what we are going to do for the end of year performance. We may be able to use some of these moves within dances. I found learning this sequence easy as I am used to learning choreography fast within other dance lessons. Also, the improvising at the end of the sequence was quite easy as I used the skills which I learnt from the dance improvisation unit from last year and applied them to this piece.

Another activity that we carried out in the session focused on the different joints in the body; where movement can come from. These body parts include the wrist, knuckles, elbow, knee, ankle, etc. In partners we worked together to make movements from these different body parts. One person sat on a chair whilst the other person walked around the person on the chair gently touching the joint in which they wanted them to move. I found this exercise quite difficult as sitting on a chair restricted my movement and I wasn’t able to make the movements fluid. However, we then tried this exercise standing up whilst our partner walked around us and gently touched the joints which they wanted you to move. I found this exercise easier as I was able to make the movements more fluid and was able to create different movements from the joints. Here are a few photos of us carrying out this exercise:

I found the session today very useful as I will be able to take some of the information learnt today and incorporate it into the end of year dance performance.