Wednesday 8th November
Today we were focusing on
starting to create our dance pieces.
At the start of the lesson,
our dance teacher, Laura had a chat with us because she wasn’t able to stay for
the lesson. However, we were given work to get on with whilst she was away. She
told us to go through a warmup together and then we needed to get started on
our dance pieces. The dance pieces are going to be based off the memory boards
which we created over the half term break. Once Laura had given us a brief
about what we had to do whilst she was gone, we got started with the lesson.
I took Molly and I through a
full body warmup. In the warmup I included some exercises which we have been
doing every week and that Molly was familiar with, but also some new exercises.
These included a cat stretch, American split exercises and quad stretches. Once
we were warm, we moved on to the main task.
The task that we had been
given was to start to create a piece which relates back to the memory board
which we created in half term. The dance can either be based around one
specific memory or can be based around a timeframe of which smaller memories
occurred. I decided to pick the time of September 2015 up until September 2016
because lots of different memories happened within this time for me and I think
that this would be good to show in a dance routine. To start the routine, we
were told to use the 4 spot improvisation exercise. However, instead of using 4
points, we were asked to expand this to 8. Each of the points has to be in a
different place in the space and has to symbolise a different memory or
emotion. Before I started deciding where my points where going to be and what motif
I was going to create at each of these points, I decided to write all of the
memories down which fitted into the time frame of which I had chosen. Here is a
list of the memories and emotions that I thought of:
From September 2015 to September 2016
· Dancing in
London
-
Excitement
- Achievement
-
Nervousness
· Starting year
11
- Fear
- Anxiety
-
Excitement
· During year
11
-
Sadness
-
Anxiety
-
Loneliness
- Betrayal
-
Stressed
-
Unconfident
· End of year
11
- Achievement
- Exhaustion
-
Unconfident
-
Happy
· Starting RNC
-
Nervousness
-
Excitement
- Shy
-
Unconfident
- Happy
When showing these emotions
through the dance, they do not have to be in chronological order.
Once I had decided the
memories and emotions which I wanted to use (shown in highlight in the list
above), I was able to start choreographing. It took me a long time to start the
improvisation exercise because I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know what
order I wanted to put the memories in and therefore struggled with starting the
piece. At first, I started with my first memory (dancing in London) with the
emotion of achievement and then worked down the list. However, when I started
practicing this with the music and improvising around these emotions, I
realised that this didn’t fit with the song that I had chosen and I therefore
needed to change the order of my memories. I then thought that it might be a
good idea if I went through the memories backwards as this is interesting
because it wouldn’t normally be expected. I then thought of the position which
I wanted to start in. I thought about how I would be able to start the piece by
showing the memory of starting college in September 2016. I finally came to the
decision that I am going to start sitting on the floor at the back of the stage
with my back to the audience. From there I then starting improvising – the 8
points and the transitions between them but also keeping in mind the memories
and the emotions. Here is a video of me dancing through my first attempt of my
piece:
I think that this session was
productive and I managed to choreograph a decent amount of material. Next week
I will be able to show Laura this choreography and she will be able to help me
to improve on this. Also, I will add some more moves on within the next few
weeks as the piece is quite short at the moment.
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