Unit 37 - Dance performance

Wednesday 27^th September

Today we started the session with a warmup. Last week my dance teacher Laura asked me to prepare a contemporary style warm up for my class for this week. Prior to the lesson I had planned the warmup in preparation for today’s lesson. I ran through a thorough warmup which included lots of different exercises. We started by doing a plie and lifting the arms up at either side of the body which gave the body an overall stretch before we started stretching out specific muscles. We then carried out some stretches on the floor which included sitting with the legs straight in front of us and reaching for the toes, a cat stretch and threading the arm through to create a stretch in between the shoulder blades. We then did some leg stretches where we sat with one leg out to the side and drew the knee up and back down again. We also led on the floor and lifted our straight leg up to the ceiling to see how close we could get it to our chest. Lastly we carried out some back stretches by lying on our stomachs and pushing up through the arms. Here are some pictures of me taking the warmup:

I found leading this warmup quite a challenge as I hadn’t properly choreographed it and forgot to include some key stretches such as head and shoulders. I think that as the year progresses and the more opportunities I get to lead the warmup, the more confident I will become and will not forget about any stretches. I also found leading the warmup quite difficult as I had to make sure that I was describing all of the movements clearly for Molly who is totally blind. I found it hard describing all of the moves but when Molly didn't get a move quite right, I was able to move her into the correct position with her permission. 

For the rest of the session we were looking at the sequence that we learnt last week. The piece that we leant was a contemporary style piece to the song ‘I see fire’ by Ed Sheeran. To start with, we revisited the choreography to make sure that everyone could still remember it. Once everyone was confident with the material we started to incorporate the 4 spot improvisation activity into it. Once we had finished the sequence and any other choreography that we had added on last week, we moved into the 4 spot improvisation. This is when we have to find 4 different points in the room and create a motif at this point. There is then improvised movement between the spots. Once we had picked the 4 places and chosen our motifs, we put the whole thing together with some music. Here are some pictures of us running through the choreography:

One of the main focuses this week was to look at different styles of music and how this affect the way in which we move. The first track that we danced to was ‘Mirrorman’ by Ella Henderson. This song has a medium tempo and fitted quite well with the choreography. The second song that we danced to was ‘ABC’ by The Jackson 5. This song is very upbeat and was a complete contrast to the first song. The last song that danced to was ‘I see fire’ by Ed Sheeran. This was also a complete contrast to the song before because it had the slowest tempo out of the three songs. Here is a video of me running through the choreography and dancing to the song ‘Mirrorman’:

 I found it easiest to dance to ‘Mirrorman’ because it had a clear beat to it and the tempo wasn’t too fast or too slow. ‘I see fire’ was also quite easy to dance to as it had a slow tempo and fitted with the choreography well. I struggled when dancing to ‘ABC’. I think this was because the tempo of the song was quite fast and not something that I would normally dance to. I found it very hard to improvise during the 4 spot improvisation section. I also found it hard to change the choreography slightly to fit with the music. I think this is because I am used to having set choreography to follow rather than being given choreography which I can change now and again if I want to and to fit with the music.