Unit 37 - Dance performance

Wednesday 11^th October

We started the lesson today with a warmup. This included exercises such as head rolls, leg stretches and arm stretches. A particular stretch that we focused on was sitting on the floor with the soles of our feet together with the knees pointing to the left and the right. The aim of this stretch is to get your feet as close to your body as you can and your knees touching the ground. Because I have had many years of practice of this exercise, I am able to do this. Therefore, Laura gave me another exercise to work on. This exercise starts by sitting in second (the legs in straddle) and pulling through split to end lying on your stomach with your legs behind you. The first time that I did this I ended up falling on my elbows. I then found that pushing up and over is the best way to carry out this exercise and eventually, over time I will be able to push straight through.

After the warmup we worked on some rhythm work. For this we just had to do a simple step tap movement to the beat of the music. This is so when we come to devising and learning pieces of choreography later on in the year, we will be able to keep in time with the music. Once we were all moving in time with the music, we were then able to move more freely and add several different movements in.

For the rest of the session we were talking about what can affect a dance piece. After some discussion we came up with a list of the things that we thought influence a dance piece. These are:

·     The environment – this could include the country, room, etc.

·     Sight – if you are in a room with good lighting choreographing a dance, it will be a lot different to a room which is in darkness.

·     Sound – if a room is quiet then there could be a lot more concentration but equally some people can concentrate well in a loud room.

·     Touch – mostly relating to when there is contact within movement such as contact improvisation as this provides a stimulus for how we move. Also, the clothing that we wear whilst dancing is important and this can influence the way that we move especially if we are wearing tight clothing that is hard to move in.

·     Emotion – depending on how you feel on the day when you dance can have a massive impact as to what you move like.