Unit 59 - Music in the community

Music project application

Project overview

The project will involve music workshops, which will be led over a 6 week period to blind and partially sighted children and young people. The workshops/project will be in collaboration with LOOK UK which is a charity that supports visually impaired young people and their families. The project aims to build many transferable skills for the young people and also provide an enjoyable experience.

Benefits of the music workshop project

There are many different benefits to a music workshop and project such as building confidence, communication and listening skills. These skills are transferable which means that the young people will be able to use them in other situations. For example, the workshops may build the confidence of the young people which will enable them to speak out if they are having problems in school, college, etc. For some of the young people, there may be a chance to lead part of a workshop which could help improve their confidence massively but for others it may just be a case of actively participating in all of the exercises in the workshop.  The workshop also will benefit the young people as it will provide them with an enjoyable experience which they can look forward to when they finish school. It is evident that music workshops have been a great benefit to people in the past as they have provided many opportunities to people of all abilities which include boosting skills and creating performances. This is also what this music project aims to do. 

About Reaction Music

Reaction Music is a community interest company (CIC) which was set up by Kevin Bowman. They offer music workshops to people of all ages and abilities across Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Their clients include the NHS, mental health patients, youth groups and care homes. These music workshops can provide therapy to the patients and act as a social prescriber to help to improve the conditions of the participants. 

How can the workshop work with LOOK?

Music workshops are a proven way of helping people to build confidence and can bring together people who are from different areas of the community. It is very common that visually impaired children are isolated within a mainstream school and can suffer from a lack of confidence and poor social skills. Through the music workshop project, the children will be able meet people who are in a similar situation to themselves and share experiences. This can then lead the young people to forming friendships with their peers in the group.  The group will also be able to develop their confidence throughout the workshops, working on tasks over the course of the 6 sessions designed to develop problem solving, team working and social interaction. 

Project plan

Workshops will run for six weeks starting from July 9^th. All workshops will start at 4:30pm and will finish at 5:15pm (each workshop lasts 45 minutes). Schedule is as follows:

Monday 9^thJuly

Monday 16^thJuly

Monday 23^rdJuly

Monday 30^thJuly

Monday 6^thAugust

Monday 13^thJuly

All workshops will be held in the Performance Studio at The Chapel Arts Centre, The Royal National College for the Blind, Venns Lane, Hereford, HR1 1DT. The room is quite large and is a perfect place for the workshops to be held.

The overall budget for the project is £1000 which will be separated and spent on different things.

£100 x6 – for each workshop to cover venue hire, transport, etc.

£20 x6 – admin costs for each workshop

£280 – equipment and other resources if required

Unit 59 - Music in the community

Overview of the music project

Upon starting this unit, I didn’t have much knowledge about community music and didn’t know much about what sort of things happen in s music workshop. This is because I have never really been involved in music making before apart from a few occasional lessons in primary school and the completing the singing unit as part of this course. 

At the start of this unit, I carried out some research into what music in the community is, its benefits and some community music organisations in the local area. I learnt a lot from this research and presented my findings in a PowerPoint presentation. 

During some of my performing arts sessions, I was able to think of and practice some potential exercises for the music workshop. I was then able to lead my peers through a series of exercises as a pilot workshop. The feedback that I received from the pilot workshop was to stay calm and relaxed when leading the session. This is because if I seem relaxed, it will make it easier for the participants to relax too. This is something that I will keep in mind when I am leading the workshop. 

Alongside these sessions, I worked with Kev, who works for Reaction Music, to gather a better understanding of what goes on in a music workshop and what we were going to be doing in the workshop. He was also able to give me direct feedback on what works and what doesn’t work within workshops. I was able to have a session with Kev where we sat down and went through all of the activities that we wanted to put in the workshop. We worked on a piece to teach the group for the second half of the session. I found these sessions really helpful and they made me feel more confident about leasing the workshop alongside Kev.

On May 14^th we facilated the workshop for young people with a visual impairment in partnership with the charity LOOK UK. Before the workshop began, I was quite nervous because this is something that is way out of my comfort zone but once the workshop started to get going, I became more relaxed and the nerves started to ease. I remembered that this was one of the feedback points that I was given after the pilot workshop. I noticed that as the workshop went on, the group started to become more relaxed and got more involved with the workshop. 

We would like to develop this workshop into a full project and would take many aspects into account when doing so. One of the main things that we would take into consideration is the feedback that we got from the participants. According to the evaluation forms, some participants felt the same at the end of the workshop as they did at the beginning. When designing the project, this is something that we need to take into consideration and think about when designing the activities. Having said that, none of the participants decreased in mood from the beginning to the end of the workshop which means that the workshop must have met its aims of being fun and making sure that everyone gets involved. 
I believe that the aims of the workshop were met during the session. The aims were to develop many different skills such as communication and listening skills. However, to develop these skills even further, I think that the group would certainly benefit from taking part in a full music workshop over a 6 week period. I saw a difference in how the participants were from the start of the workshop compared to the end and I think that carrying out workshops over a 6 week time period would have a massive positive impact on the lives of the young people. 
In conclusion, this project has enabled the young people to begin to build their confidence, communication and listening skills. It has also given them a chance to meet new people who they may have never met before. By expanding the project, it will allow for a continuation of all of these things to occur and will make a long lasting positive impact on their lives because they will be able to apply these skills to many situations such as school or college where they may be going through a tough time. The skills that they have learnt from the workshop will enable them to speak up and make changes if they require it. 

Unit 26 - Choreographing dance

Saturday 5th May
Junior contemporary performance at Hereford River Carnival:

Unit 59 - Music in the community

Presentation notes for expanding the project

·     Delivered a music workshop on 14^thMay which included ice breakers and the main activity of learning a song

·     Aims to improve many skills within the young people – confidence, listening, communication, etc

·     Project will last 6 weeks with a workshop every week – each session will be different

·     Many things to consider when planning the workshops such as:

-     The length of the workshop

-     Additional information about the clients

-     Advertising the workshop

-     Capping the numbers

-     The age range

·     Budget of £1000 - £720 on workshops and admin fees and the rest on equipment

·     Applying for funding through several organisations such as Children In Need, The National Lottery and Arts Council England

Unit 59 - Music in the community

Here are some of the feedback forms from the music workshop:

Unit 26 - Choreographing dance

Different types of choreographic methodology

When choreographing for the dance performance, we used a range of different choreographic techniques. Each of these techniques have both strengths and weaknesses. 

The first choreographing methodology that I used this year was choreographing a dance to a song and then keeping the same choreography but changing the song. I did this at the start of the year when I choreographed a routine to the song ‘Like I can’ by Sam Smith and then when it came to choreographing ‘A thousand years’, we just changed the song and kept the choreography the same. This is a good method of choreographing because if you really like the material that you have choreographed but the song doesn’t fit your theme anymore, you can just change the song. On the other hand, the choreography may not fit the timing of the new song and you may have to change the timing of the new routine which may confuse your students. 

Another good way of choreographing is to carry out some research into the style that you are choreographing for. Dance styles are always changing and it is good to keep up to date on the latest performance of these styles of dance. Watching videos of people performing these styles is a great way to pick up new ideas for choreography. It is always good to watch what everyone else is doing but don’t copy everything because this could cause it to become boring. I carried out this method quite a lot when I was choreographing the hiplet routine because I had never done this style of dance before and so I took some of the moves from the routines which I had seen online. 

Splitting the routine up into different sections is another way to choreograph a routine. Most songs have a pattern in them which means that the same part of the song is sung more than once or the same tune occurs more than once. To make it easier to choreograph, you can split it into sections, then sections can be repeated several times throughout the routine. It also makes it easier to choreograph a section at a time rather than choreographing to a random point. Just be sure not to repeat the same choreography too much because the audience could get bored. 

Another choreographic methodology is mapping out a journey. For Aurora in Faeriland, we marked out where we wanted the piece to travel to when we were choreographing it. The idea is to do this with chalk if possible but you can always do it in your head if you don’t have anything to mark the floor with. Making a journey on the floor will allow the piece to tell more of a story and will focus on movement before the choreography. However, this method of choreography is not always applicable and probably wouldn’t be applicable if you were choreographing a tap routine for example. 

Lastly, improvisation is another style of choreography. This is a great method to use if you are unsure of what moves to do for the routine. The best way to do improvisation is to improvise with the music on but also film what you are doing so that if you create a nice sequence of moves whilst you are improvising, you will be able to look back on what you did and not have to try and think back to what you did. On the other hand, some people may struggle to improvise if they haven’t had a lot of dance training and therefore this type of choreography may not be for everyone. 

Unit 26 - Choreographing dance

Friday 18^th May

Today was the day of the dance performance, ‘Maleficent’. Here is a link to a video of the full performance:

https://vimeo.com/272117833

As you can see from the video, there were lots of different styles of dance performed throughout the show.

The show started with the song ‘A thousand years’ which was a contemporary dance piece. This routine involved 6 dancers – Anna, Aidan, Eve, Toby, Luke and I. The reason why we picked this dance to be contemporary is because the song is quite slow and not many other dance styles would have fitted with this type of music. We could have used ballet but I think that I was the only one in the cast who has had ballet training and it would be extremely difficult to teach the whole of the cast ballet as well as the routine in time for the show. This would require a lot more time which is not something we had. Although the routine was contemporary, it did have some ballet elements in it such as the pas de chat in mine and Luke’s duet. Contemporary is such a great style of dance because it has a really big range and covers a lot of different moves and also combines other dance styles. I choreographed most of this routine myself and then went into the primary school to teach Eve, Toby, Anna and Aidan their parts. 

The next routine in the show was ‘Happy’. We said from the beginning that we wanted to put some tap into the show somewhere but we weren’t quite sure where. When we were deciding what the storyline was going to be and what the message behind each song was going to be, we thought that using tap to show how happy Maleficent was, was perfect. During rehearsals, I really struggled to make this routine look happy because I was so focused on making sure that I remembered all of the steps and didn’t miss any beats. However during the show, I managed to stay looking happy all the way through the routine. The reason why we thought tap would be good for this song is because it has a really good rhythm to it which made it quite easy to choreograph to. 

Molly’s solo was the next dance in the show. This dance was more of a movement piece than a specific dance style. This is because it was more of a piece to act out part of the story rather than a specific dance style. I helped Molly to choreograph this piece. I found it quite hard to do this because Molly is completely blind which meant that I had to explain every movement to her instead of her just copying me although it did allow me to improve my teaching techniques and become more aware of the movements that I was doing. 

The next dance in the show was ‘Beautiful trauma’ and this was the first dance that we choreographed for the show. This dance was contemporary but was mixed slightly with a bit of street/modern. The reason why we chose this style of dance is because this part of the story is quite fierce and needed some anger so we got this by mixing the 2 styles together. It also went with the style of the music because part of it was slow but then other parts of the song sped up.

Aurora in Faeriland came next. This was another movement piece which showed Aurora playing in the woods. This was quite similar to Molly’s movement piece in regards to telling a part of the story. The aim of the piece was to show the audience how playful Aurora was. The movement piece carried on into ‘The curse won’t reverse’, also a movement piece where Aurora pricks her finger.

The next song ‘Rise’ was in the style of hiplet. Hiplet is a fusion of ballet and hip hop. It took us quite a bit of time to choreograph this routine because there was so much to consider. The moves for this type of dance have to be contrasting but at the same time, they have to work together. I did a lot of research into this style of dance to make sure that I had got the hang of the style before we started to choreograph anything. This dance style was completely new to me at the start of this year and I didn’t think that I would be able to choreograph in the style when I first saw it but I did. 

The last song in the show was ‘This is me’ and was a street/jazz routine. Most of the routine was street based although, there were a few jazz elements to the routine such as a leap and the moved at the very beginning of the song. The reason why we chose for this routine to be street/jazz is because some of the moves in the routine had been taken from the film ‘The Greatest Showman’ which the song is from. The song is very upbeat and well suited to the street/jazz style. However, when the song slows down, this is where the jazz elements come in. 

As you can see, I have used lots of different dance styles throughout the performance ranging from contemporary/ballet to street/jazz. I think that all of the routines and their styles contributed perfectly to helping us tell the story of Maleficent. Also, using these different styles of dance helped me to show my different emotions throughout the whole show. For example, to show anger, using hiplet was perfect because the choreography involves a lot of sharp and edgy movements. This is in contrast to when we used contemporary/ballet at the very start of the show because the emotion here was happiness and playfulness which we were able to reflect in the choreography. If we were to keep the style of choreography the same the whole way through the show, it would be extremely difficult to show the emotions that the characters were feeling - especially Maleficent because she goes through a lot of different emotions throughout the story. 
The variation of styles would help to draw the audience in. It is very important to keep the audience drawn in to the whole performance and by showing them a variety of styles, this enabled them to see a variation. 
Using all of these different styles in the show has enabled me to revisit some dance styled which I haven't done for a while but also discover new style of dance. Before this unit I had never heard of hiplet but now I have performed this style of dance in the show. Learning and choreographing in this style of dance has enabled me to develop my skills as a dancer and add to the list of styles that I know. 

Unit 37 - Dance performance

Friday 18^th May

The performance

Today was the day of the final performance. The name of the performance is ‘Maleficent – hero or villain?’ The show tells the tale of the villain in Sleeping Beauty, although as the story is told, the audience finds out why Maleficent is evil but she is in fact a hero at the same time. We have edited the story to tell the tale of Maleficent through dance. The order of the show is as follows:

1. Welcome to the Moors (narration introduction)
2. A thousand years (Maleficent and Steffan growing up)
3. Happy (Maleficent is happy with her current life)
4. True loves kiss (Steffan steals Maleficent’s wings)
5. The Christening (falling through the trees)
6. Fairyland (the fairies look after Aurora)
7. Beautiful Trauma (Maleficent at the Christening)
8. Aurora in Faerieland (Aurora’s solo)
9. The curse won’t reverse (Aurora pricks finger)
10. Rise (battle for the wings)
11. Phillip’s kiss (Aurora wakes up)
12. This is me (Maleficent turns into nice)
13. The queen of Faerieland (final narration and bows)

As you can see from this list, we have used a combination of both pop songs and songs from the Maleficent soundtrack. 

Here is a link to a video of the full performance:
https://vimeo.com/272117833

I was extremely happy with how the show worked out in the end. It showed that all the hard work and stress had paid off. At the end of the performance, I was able to speak to audience about what they thought about the show. The audience for this show was very mixed - we had people from the college (staff and students), family and friends of the performers and also students from Laura’s dance school. From all of the people that I spoke to, they all loved the performance! This was such a great thing to hear because Laura and I have put in a lot of time and effort into this show. It was such a good audience because they gave such a great response to each routine and you could really feel the vibe from the audience when you were performing. 

The show started off with a narration introduction which then led into the dance ‘A thousand years’. The routine shows the effect of Maleficent and Steffan growing up over the years. The routine started with Aidan and Anna on stage. Originally, Anna was going to be the only one on stage but it made more sense to bring Aidan on from the beginning because this was explained in the narration before the routine started. This then led into Eve and Toby’s duet. I think that all of the children danced really well as they managed to remember all of the choreography and showed the effect of the characters growing up. Aidan did especially well considering we asked him to perform the start of the routine with Anna on the day of the show. They were able to apply all of the corrections that Laura and I gave to them to improve their performance. In my duet with Luke, Luke was slightly late for his cue and to begin with, I thought that he may miss his cue completely. However, I did manage to cover up my concern by improvising which is something that I wouldn’t have been able to do at the start of this course. The duet went really well despite having limited rehearsal time together with Laura. 

The next dance, ‘Happy’, went really well. This was a tap dance and possibly the hardest routine in the show in regards to stamina. One thing that I have been struggling with in rehearsals is to look happy during this routine. This is because I have been so focused on getting the steps right that I have forgotten to look happy. However, I managed to take on board my teacher’s comments and I smiled all the way through the routine. I also showed my feeling of happiness through my body language as there was never a moment during the song where I was stood doing nothing. Watching the video of the final performance back, I have realised how much this routine has improved since I first learnt it. 

The stealing of the wings scene came next and I had only taught Luke this bit on the day so I was hoping that he was going to remember it. I wasn’t able to see what he was doing during the performance but from watching the video back, I have seen that he did a really good job at stealing the wings. He acted the part out perfectly. The falling through the trees part which followed this also worked really well although I did have to improvise a little because the effect started before it was due to. This wasn’t a big problem though and still gave a really good effect. I also managed to apply one of Laura’s comments that she gave me in the rehearsal and this was to have more tension when I was falling to make the effect more realistic. 

The next part of the show that I was in was the dance ‘Beautiful trauma’. This dance went really well because I put a lot of emotion into it. This is the point in the story where Maleficent has turned into evil because she wasn’t invited to Aurora’s Christening. This was the first dance that we choreographed in preparation for this show so this routine has had the most practice. I think that this is the best time that I had ever danced it and after speaking to audience members, a lot of them said that this was their favourite routine. 

The next part of the show was Aurora’s solo leading into the pricking of the finger. Sienna danced her solo beautifully. She was a bit behind on the timing but this didn’t really matter because the end of the dance only overlapped the narration a little bit. The pricking of the finger section was very powerful. I caught Sienna when she fell back and carried her off stage ready to start the dance ‘Rise’.

This dance was a very powerful one and is a major part of the storyline. What made this dance really special was the special effects that we had on the projector. We had a special effect of glass smashing whilst I was getting my wings back on. When I was putting my wings back on, I didn’t think that I was going to get them on in time but thankfully I did manage to get them on. The ending of the dance was also really powerful because when I stood on the blocks and lifted my wings up, this created a shadow on the back wall which really added to the routine. The shadows during the song were also really affective. 

Aurora waking up was the next part in the show. Sienna remembered everything that I told her in the rehearsal before the show.

The final song of the show was ‘This is me’. There were a lot of corrections and comments that I was given by Laura just before the show so there was a lot to consider for this dance. There was a part in the dance which I did have to improvise slightly because the time that was originally there for getting up onto the block was now free which meant that I had a bit of spare time. Although I improvised, I don’t think anyone noticed as it looked like it was part of the choreography. 

The show finished with some narration ending on the word ‘Maleficent’ which is when I took my bow. I then called the rest of the cast onto the stage to take their bow. 

There were so many positives from the show. I was feeling really cautious and nervous before the show because of the dress/tech rehearsal not going great. However, everyone seemed to step up their game for the final performance. During the rehearsal process, we have had a few problems along the way. 

One of the hardest things about putting this performance on has been relying on other people to commit their time to rehearsals. There were many things that we couldn’t do until the day of the show because we hadn’t had people in rehearsals to teach them their parts. Equally, we couldn’t really choreograph these parts until the week of the show because we weren’t sure on the exact order and placing of each narration part and song. We then had to ensure that all of the narration made sense so that the audience could follow the story. A main struggle during the rehearsal and preparation process has been trying to get Luke in for rehearsals. When we first proposed the idea of doing a duet within this show, he was all up for it and very keen. Dance teacher Emily then choreographed the duet piece for us. We were then able to practice on a Thursday evening every week however, Laura teaches at this time so wasn’t able to come and watch us rehearse. Luke then entered his exam period at school and couldn’t attend any extra rehearsals on the weekend or after school. Consequently this meant that the only time that we were able to practice the duet and show Laura for the first time was a couple of hours before the show was due to start. The original plan was for us to start a rehearsal with him at 5:30pm but he didn’t turn up until 6:15pm. This then meant that we couldn’t have a lift in the routine and just had to go with the choreography that we already had. I had to improvise a little towards the end of the duet part because there wasn’t really any time to choreography anything. Another consequence of him not being able to attend any of the rehearsals was that he did not know his cues. We taught him the part where he had to come and take my wings on the day of the show. This then caused major stress on the whole of the cast as I was beginning to get worried that he would not remember what he needed to do because he had very recently learnt it. Something that I would do differently if we were to do the show again would be to start this rehearsal process earlier so that we could have the part learnt and then we could just perfect it every week. I think I dealt with the situation as well as I could and did all I could to make sure everything was going to be fine but I know that I could only do so much to enable this to work out. 

Another problem that I had during the rehearsal process was that when I was learning the tap duet with Emily, she told me that she wouldn’t be able to perform in the show. The original plan was that Emily was going to play the part of Diaval who is Maleficent’s best friend. Because she couldn’t do the show, we had to change the narration to make sure that the story made sense without her being there. 
There were a few scenes during the performance which could have done with a bit more development if we had more time. Scenes such as Aurora waking up and the end of ‘A thousand years’. However, we didn’t have any more time to develop these scenes but if we were to do the show again, these scenes would be at the top of the priority list to look at and improve to make the show even better. 
Despite the problems that we have faced, the performance turned out to be a massive success in the end. Here are a few photos from the performance:

An ongoing target for me is to improve on my flexibility. I feel like I could have worked on my flexibility a bit more during the rehearsal process to make the lean in ‘A thousand years’ straighter. Flexibility is something that I am always working on but I feel like I could have put more effort into this during the rehearsal process. 

On reflection in terms of my technique, I think that I have improved since the beginning of the rehearsal process especially in the areas which I was not very confident with. When I first learnt ‘This is me’ I really struggled with the choreography and the style of the dance. However, I used any time that I had to practice over the different sequences in this routine and I managed to grasp the choreography and then had time to add emotion to it. The dance performance involved a lot of different dance styles including contemporary, commercial, tap, hiplet and ballet. This meant that I had to change from the different disciplines every time that I went on stage. I managed to do this by thinking about Maleficent was feeling and applying this to my dancing. Maleficent’s mood changed throughout the show significantly and I was able to add the emotion that she would be feeling to my dancing. This is something that I would have really struggled with at the start of the year but now it comes much more naturally because I have had a lot more practice. 

Unit 37 - Dance performance

Friday 18^th May

Today was the day of the dance show. I was in rehearsals from 10am to ensure that I was ready for the show tonight.

To start with, we had a full run-through of the show. We didn’t have time for this yesterday so this was the first thorough run-through that we have done. The aim of today is to have as many run-throughs as we can to make sure that we are ready for tonight. The more run-throughs we can do, the more practice that the tech team can get and the better the sound and lighting will be. 

After the run-through, I was given some notes form my dance lecturer, Laura. The main note that she gave me was that we needed to look at the last song ‘This is me’. This is the first time that I had practiced the full routine with the wings on. At the moment, the routine isn’t quite looking finished. Laura walked through the routine with me to change some of the moves slightly so that the routine worked better with the wings. We only got the wings on Wednesday so this is the first time that I have practiced this routine with the wings. When I learnt the routine, a lot of the moves included punches however we soon found that when I did this with the wings, it didn’t really work that well and that we needed to make some slight adjustments to the choreography. We did this by making the punching movements more fluent. For example, in one of the moves I originally snapped my arms in and out with my leg. But instead I am now flapping my arms in and out. This looks really affective with the wings and I will practice this a few times from now until the show tonight. Another point in the dance which needed changing slightly was the leap off the block. At the moment, I get up onto the block and then leap off it to travel diagonally downstage to the corner. However, when Laura gave me some feedback, this bit of the routine didn’t really work and she wondered what else we could put in its place. I tried out a few moves and I am now going to do a chasse into a leap. This should look better and will fit with the rest of the choreography. 

The other notes included some lighting/technical pieces and possible choreography for the duet with Luke.

After a lunch break, we carried out some admin tasks. This included making a list of all of the people that had reserved tickets. We have reserved 76 tickets which means there will only be 4 seats left for people who may turn up and haven’t recovered a ticket. We also printed off the tickets and made sure that these were all cut up and ready to be handed out tonight. The programmes were also printed. Here is a copy of the programme:

After carrying out all of these admin tasks, I went back into the performance studio to go over the running order of the show with Graham – the lighting/sound technician. He said to me that the more we can go through the order of the show, the better the technical elements of the show will be because he will know the cues better making the show flow better. This run through was very quick and just involved me walking through the show with Graham telling him which routine went where and what each cue was. This really helped both Graham and I because it was allowing me to rehearse over the order of the show and also it allowed Graham to become more familiar with the order and the lighting and sound elements. After this technical run-through, there was going to be a full tech/dress rehearsal with all of the cast at 6pm. This will allow us all to practice all of cues, costume changes and scene changes. 

In between the technical run and the children arriving, I began to get ready for the dress/tech run because I figured that I wouldn’t really have much time later on. 

The children started arriving at 5:45pm. Sienna was the first to arrive so I spent some time with her, going over her solo part just to make sure that she was confident with it. I then worked with Molly and Sienna to go over the first part of this dance where Molly comes on and waves goodbye to Sienna. When we practiced this yesterday, there was a lot of time in between the small acting bit and the dance. I had a discussion with Laura and we decided to move the acting bit to further on in the track so now this will start about 30 seconds after it was originally meant to. When I had told Sienna and Molly the new timing and they adapted their part, it looked so much better as there was now no long pause in the middle of the track. After running the solo twice and with Molly’s part at the beginning, I moved on to teaching Sienna the other small bit that she will be in after the song ‘Rise’. This is the part where Aurora wakes up from her death-like sleep. Sienna will enter stage in blackout and lie on the blocks as if she is asleep. As the narration says, Aurora wakes up as Maleficent kisses her on the forehead. The 2 characters hug and then walk off stage in blackout. Sienna picked this bit up really well. 

Once I had finished teaching Sienna the extra bit, we were then able to teach Luke his extra bit. This involves him coming onto stage during the part of the narration which tells us how Steffan wanted to become king and comes to Maleficent to steal her wings. We didn’t have much time to practice this at all as we had to start the dress/tech rehearsal as soon as possible. 

In my opinion, I don’t think the tech/dress rehearsal went very well. A lot of things during the run-through went wrong which concerned me a little in the lead up to the final performance tonight. 

One of the major concerns during this rehearsal was that people did not know their cues. This made it difficult because it meant that it affected everyone else who was in that routine/section. The reason why people are missing their cues is because they haven’t been able to attend rehearsals. 

I am hoping that this rehearsal has made everyone think about their parts so that they can get it right for the performance tonight. 

Unit 37 - Dance performance

Thursday 17^th May

Today was the day of our tech/dress rehearsal. Starting at 1pm, we were working through to 5pm. During this time, different people were going to be arriving at different times to practice their parts for the show tomorrow. This is because there has not been a time where everyone has been free and able to attend the same rehearsal. This has made it difficult to rehearse routines such as duets because the children attend different schools, have exams and have other commitments. We are working around the times that everyone else is available to make sure that we can practice the routines when we can. 

At the beginning of this rehearsal, we helped Paul and Graham set the lights for the performance. We needed many different lights for several focus points throughout the show. We also needed the projector so we had to make sure that there weren’t any lights in front of that. We had 2 LED lights at the side of the seating – one was green and the other was green but with a slight red tint. When both of these lights were on and I was stood in front of them, they produced some really good shadows which is exactly what we wanted. 

Once the lights had been set up, we did a full run of the show. During this rehearsal, I got to practice my costume changes for the first time and we were also able to practice with the narration. This was our first full run-through of the show so I was still getting to grips with the order of the show. During this run-through, we also sorted out the cues for the music and narration. As we worked through some of the cues, we realised that some of the timings will not work because they do not leave enough time for me to get changed or for the blocks to be moved which meant that Paul had to cut some of the sound up. 

There was a lot of stopping and starting during this run through because we needed to adjust quite a few lights because they didn’t match up correctly with how the blocks were positioned. We also had to get a light for the spinning wheel which was stage right and up on the platform. We needed a light on this because it is a significant part of the story. We also had to test out the special effects as the timing had to be right. There are 2 special effects – falling through the trees and breaking glass. We spent a little while making sure these were in the right place and were timed right because they are both played when there is movement and music going on. 

Once we had completed this full run-through, the children started to arrive to practice their parts. Some of the children could only stay for a short amount of time so we had to prioritise what needed to be done first. To start with we practiced through Sienna’s solo. Molly and Sienna were also able to practice their part together at the very start of this dance. They practiced this and then it led into Sienna’s solo. This part is something that we need to look at tomorrow because the timing isn’t right at the moment and so we need to work on that tomorrow during the rehearsals. Sienna performed the solo really well. She was slightly ahead of the timing but it didn’t really matter too much as the track fades into narration. This then led into the pricking of the finger. For this part, Aurora walks over towards the spinning wheel and Maleficent is walking behind her trying to stop her. However, the curse is too much and when Aurora pricks her finger, she falls back into Maleficent’s arms into a death-like sleep. We practiced with Sienna falling back into my arms and this was perfect. We have worked out a signal that when I tap Sienna on the shoulder, she knows it’s ok for her to fall backwards. Before the show, this is something that I haven’t done before but with a few practises, it is starting to look much more natural. 

Once we had practiced Sienna’s solo and she was happy with it, we moved onto ‘A thousand years’. This song involves all the different ages of Maleficents and Steffans. Today we were able to practice with most of the children in this dance. The only person that wasn’t able to make this rehearsal was Luke. This didn’t affect anyone in the routine apart from myself so we will have to work before the show tomorrow on our duet piece. For now, we were focusing on the parts that we could do which involved Anna and Aidan’s duet and Eve and Toby’s duet. We walked through the dance without the music to begin with so that the children could get used to the space and their cues. We also went over the choreography for Anna’s part because she only learnt this last week and she couldn’t remember it very well. Once we had run through it, we ran the dance a few times with the music to check that everyone was happy with their parts and that the routine flowed well. The more we practiced this, the better it became and hopefully the children have now had enough practice before the rehearsal tomorrow where they will get a chance to rehearse it a few more times. 

I am very happy with how this routine is looking. The only bit that I do have a little concern about is the very start where Anna is on by herself. She is still struggling to remember the choreography. After a discussion with my dance teacher after the rehearsal, we have decided that Aidan will also join Anna on stage from the very start to help her with the choreography. Aidan knows the choreography and will give Anna a helping hand if she forgets a move. Making this change also fits the story better because the narration mentions Steffan before the routine starts. We will go over the choreography with Aidan tomorrow but he will be fine with it and will be able to perform it.

The rehearsal today went really quickly. We haven’t been able to do a full run-through without any stops. Hopefully we will be able to do as many run-throughs as possible tomorrow so that I can get used to the order and help all of the other performers so they know what they are doing. Before the show tomorrow, we will have all of the performers so that we can have a full dress/tech rehearsal. We will also have the chance to go over any other bits and pieces which we need to teach the other performers. So, to ensure that we get everything done in time, we will start rehearsal tomorrow at 10am and will work throughout the day up until the time of the show with breaks throughout the day. The children should start to arrive at 5:45pm to start a full rehearsal at 6/6:15pm. 

Unit 59 - Music in the community

Plan for expanding the music workshop project

By expanding the music workshop into a music project, workshops will be held once a week over a 6 week period. This will then enable the young people to gain from the project as every session will be different with the first session being mostly filled with ice breaker activities. This is so that the group can get to know each other and their facilitator. As the weeks continue, the sessions will involve activities which will improve several skills for the young people. At the end of the project, the young people will be given the opportunity to perform a short piece to their parents, family and friends. When planning and organising the individual workshops, I need to consider the following:

• The workshop needs to be longer. There wasn’t enough time to get through all of the activities. 45 minutes would be a good length of time for the workshop.
• Gather more information about the clients prior to the workshop. This way we can make sure that all of the activities are inclusive and also check any access arrangements so that everyone has an equal chance to participate. 
• Advertise the workshop more so that more young people can attend.
• Cap the number of participants at 8 – 10 so that we don’t have too many participants and the workshop is hard to control.
• Have a set age range for the participants of around 10 years to 16 years old. 
• Consider the time of the workshop so that all of the clients are able to make it i.e. taking into consideration the school run and traffic in the local area

My budget for the project would be £1000. Each workshop that I run will cost about £100 plus £20 admin fee per session. This then works out to £720 for the course of the 6 weeks. The remaining money can be then be spent on equipment for the group to use during these workshops. There are many different places where this funding could come from such as Children In Need, Arts Council England and The National Lottery. We could also apply for some funding through the local authority as well. 

fThe outcomes of the overall project is to improve the skills of the young people with a visual impairment. They will improve many skills over the 6 week period such as confidence, listening and communication skills. The young people can then apply these skills within other situations that they may come across in everyday life such as school. The workshop also gives the group a chance to meet with other visually impaired people where they can start to make new friends.