Unit 26 - Choreographing dance

Friday 3^rd November

Today we went back into the primary school to work with Eve and Toby who will be participating in the end of year dance showcase here at college. It was my first time working with the children together because the last time I went to the school, I was teaching a group and had to select one from the group. I selected Eve from the first group that I worked with and Toby was suggested to us by the school when we said that we required a boy to dance alongside Eve.

Before we went to the school, I spent some time with my dance lecturer, Laura choreographing some moves which we will be able to teach to the children today once I have gone over Eve’s solo with her. I have also worked in my own time to change some of the moves in the routine to make sure that they fit with the music.

When we got to the school, Laura and I spoke to Eve and Toby about what the aim of the routine was and what they will be doing in the show. I then took them through a warmup which included head and shoulder rolls, hip movements and stretches. Carrying out all of these then meant that the whole body was warmed up and ready for the session.

After the warmup, I ran through the choreography with Eve for her solo part. We are using the same choreography which I taught her a few weeks ago in the group session but we are now using a different song. It was quite easy to teach the choreography to Eve because she had remembered a lot form the last time which then enabled us to spend more time working on the duet part.

I then moved on to teaching the duet choreography. Firstly, Toby runs onto stage and they both look happy to see each other. Then they both do 2 steps forward and do a turn to the right whilst pushing the arms down. They then step back in a V shape for 3 counts so they end up side by side which then leads them into a small trust exercise. This involves Toby bending over so he is in a table top position which then means that Eve can lean back onto him. This trust exercise will then show that the friendship and trust is growing through the choreography as it builds through the years which is then represented by the different members of cast playing different ages of the same character. After the small trust exercise, they kneel down on their right knee and push their arms out to the side. As they come to stand up, they pull the right leg in, extend it out backwards and then turn towards to face the back. This is all that we had choreographed for today so we then just spent some time going through the whole of what was taught in the session and making sure that all the moves looked fluid. Some time was specifically spent working on the trust exercise because at first, Eve and Toby found this exercise quite awkward and they didn’t really want to do it but once they got used to it and practiced a few times, they started to become more confident with it.

I think that this session went really well. I was able to teach the children quite a lot of choreography and we then had time to work on perfecting some of the moves. Both Eve and Toby worked really hard and asked questions that they had throughout the session which I was then able to answer. Next week, we will be working on some more choreography to finish off the last section of this duet part. I need to choreograph this for next week. Here are some pictures from the session today: