Unit 37 - Dance performance

Wednesday 10^th January

Today we spent the lesson planning ahead for the dance performance which will be in May. We need to start planning now so that we have enough time to get everything done.

The show will be performed in the performance studio at college on Friday 18^th May at around 7pm. The week of the show will be spent rehearsing and making any last minute changes if needed. We discussed the weeks that we have till the show which are as follows:

Weeks commencing…

·     15^th January

·     22^nd January

·     29^th January

·     5^th February

·     12^th February

·     26^th February

·     5^th March

·     12^th March

·     19^th March

·     26^th March

·     16^th April

·     23^rd April

·     30^th April

·     7^th May

·     14^th May

We will need to plan accordingly to make sure everything will fit into this schedule. I am aware that I will be doing lots of work outside of these session times such as learning routines, rehearsing over dances and recording voiceovers.

For the next part of the lesson we talked about the storyline of the show and what is going to happen. The show is going to be based off the story of Maleficent which is a film made by Disney. The main points in the storyline which we picked out were:

·     Maleficent grows up

·     Stephan kisses Maleficent but then steals her wings as he wants to become powerful

·     The Christening of the son of King Stephan

·     Post Christening torment

·     King Stephan sends his daughter, Aurora away to the woods where she is looked after by 3 fairies

·     Aurora pricks her finger but Maleficent wants to cure Aurora

·     Maleficent goes into battle to get her wings back

·     Maleficent gets her wings back and crowns Aurora as Queen of the Moors

This is the storyline which Laura and I worked together to try and remember. However, my homework is to watch the film again and make some notes of the storyline. Our rendition of the story doesn’t have to be exactly the same as the film but it would be good to have an idea of the film storyline and then we can change what we want.

We made a list of potential dances which we think would be good for the show. These are as follows:

1.  Maleficent growing up – A Thousand Years

2.  Maleficent and her best friend Robyn – tap duet

3.  Maleficent loses her wings

4.  March to the Christening

5.  Post Christening torment – Beautiful Trauma

6.  Interacting with Aurora as she is growing up

7.  Aurora pricking her finger

8.  Battle for the wings

9.  Getting the wings back and crowing Aurora – This is me

These are the ideas and some of the songs that we would like to use in the performance. It is not definite that we will be using these songs as they are just ideas at the moment apart from the song ‘A Thousand Years’. We then moved on to talk about the different dance styles that we wanted to include in this performance. These include contemporary, tap, lyrical, musical theatre, street, ballet, fusion and movement pieces.

To finish off the session we discussed a few other bits which we think need to be explored further. These include costume, hair, makeup, music, tech, props and set. We have a few different ideas for these but they need to be explored further. Therefore, I need to do some research to find things which would fit our performance.