Unit 37 - Dance performance

Wednesday 29^th November

This week we were going to be performing our final pieces for assessment.

To start off the lesson, I led a warmup. This consisted of many different stretches including head rolls, spiral turns and side stretches. We then moved onto the main part of the lesson where we were working on our dance pieces.

Last week we worked independently to finish off our dance pieces. We have spent the last couple of weeks devising the pieces which illustrate a trip through a certain time period in our own lives. My piece represents the time between September 2015 to September 2016. I chose this time because I felt many different emotions due to the different memories that I have from that time period. This week we were receiving feedback from our teacher, Laura as to how we could improve our pieces. However, before we performed them to her, we had a chance to run through our pieces by ourselves to make sure that we could remember them. Once we had recapped over these, we were ready to perform these to Laura. The feedback that I was given was that the piece was really good and had really good emotion up until the point of which I had added some more material which I added last week. I think this was because I hadn’t worked on this section as much as the other parts.

At the moment, my piece finishes in the middle of a verse which is a bit of an awkward place. Therefore, I wanted to add some more choreography onto the end so that it would finish in a better place. Laura gave me an idea that I could repeat some of the choreography that I had added before – the contemporary sequence. I then added this to the end of the material which I had already created and then tried running this with the music. When I was running the dance through with the music, it felt like I was rushing a lot of the moves to make sure that I kept in time with the music. Also, it felt in places that my moves were a complete contrast to the dynamic of the music. Laura thought the same when she was giving me some feedback so we then worked on the piece to change this so that the dynamic of the moves fitted with the dynamic of the music. The part we knew had to be changed slightly was when I was led on the floor at the start of the contemporary sequence. We firstly tried taking one of the leg swings out so I was now doing 3 instead of 4 but when I tried this with the music, I was really ahead of the timing and it didn’t seem to fit with the music. We then tried taking the scissor move out instead of the leg swing. When I tried this with the music, it worked a lot better and now the move fit with the dynamic of the music really well. I then also applied this to the choreography later on in the piece because I repeat this part of choreography. I then ran the whole thing through again to see if this changed the piece and if it would work in both places. When I got to the part in the piece where I repeat the contemporary sequence, I was behind in the music even though I had taken out the scissor movement. I figured that I needed to take out another movement to make sure that I was in time with the music again. I decided to take one of the leg swings out and when I practiced this with the music, I was now back in time. I just have to remember that for the first time I do the contemporary sequence I do 4 leg swings but for the second time through, I only do 3.

I then had some time to practice through the whole routine a few times to make sure I could remember the corrections and comments I had been given. Laura and I then agreed that I would perform this piece later on to small audience. The audience will be Laura’s street jazz class of children aged from 4 to 7 years old. I therefore was using the time now to prepare for the performance later on. However, due to a fire alarm sounding twice, I didn’t have time to practice this for the last time. Nothing can be done about this and I felt like I was ready to perform the piece this afternoon.

When the class arrived, I was told that I would be performing to them at the start of their class. I was ready to perform to them after running the dance through in my head. Here is a video of me performing my dance piece:

In reflection, I think this performance went really well. Considering I had only been able to apply some corrections and add bits of choreography today, I was really pleased with myself to have remembered all of this. I was able to choreograph the whole of the routine with incorporation of some moves which we had covered in class. After a slow start when I struggled to decide on the order of my memories and then devising moves according to these memoires, I found it easier once I started and eventually got into the swing of it. I think I struggled with this because I’m normally used to being given choreography and if I do choreograph a piece, I normally just choreograph it to the words and not take into account emotion. This is something that I could continue to develop.

There are also a few things that I think I could have done better during the performance. I think that I could have shown the breathing in my dancing a bit more. I think that I added tension well and this is evident in the video but if I added more breath to the dance, this may have added more dynamic to my moves. This is something that I will continue to work on throughout the rest of the academic year. I have showed that I can work to deadlines and if necessary, work under pressure.