Unit 26 - Choreographing dance

Saturday 28^th April

Today I was teaching a junior contemporary dance class. A few months ago, I was asked to take the class for the first 2 sessions but because I liked teaching the class so much, I have been teaching it since.

Because we are now in a new term, I have begun to choreograph and teach a new dance. This dance is to the song ‘A million dreams’. I started choreographing the dance last week and will carry on with the choreography this week. Last night, I went into the studio to choreograph some more for the class. I needed to make sure that I got to a certain point in the music because the class will be performing next week at Hereford River Carnival. This means that they will be performing 2 dances – ‘I lived’ which they learnt before Easter and ‘A million dreams’ which they are learning now. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to finish the routines because there hasn’t been enough time but I should be able to finish these in time for the main show at The Courtyard at the end of June.

To start the class, I had a talk with the group about what was going to be happening at the carnival next week. Unfortunately I am unable to make it to the event so I will video the dance later on in the class and send them to Laura so that she can lead the dances next week.

We then carried out a full warmup starting with a pulse raiser which led into some all body stretches including side stretches, lunges and straddle. We then moved on to going over the routine which the class had started to learn last week.

Before teaching the class new choreography, I went over what I had taught them last week. They remembered all of the choreography that I taught them and therefore I was able to start teaching them new choreography. I had choreographed up to 1:05 and this what they will be performing at the carnival next week. I will carry on to work on this routine before they perform at The Courtyard so when it comes to the big show, they will be able to perform the whole of the routine. Once I had finished teaching them the new choreography for this dance, we went through the dance a few times with the music and I filmed it so I could send it to my dance teacher, Laura.

We then moved on to the other song, ‘I lived’. I started teaching this routine to the class before Easter so it had been quite a while since we had gone over it. However, the class remembered most of the choreography. We then went over this dance a few times and then I filmed it.

To finish off the lesson, I took the class through a quick cool down to make sure that all of their muscles were relaxed because they had worked really hard today.

After the junior contemporary class, I stayed behind so I could teach Anna and Aidan some choreography for the dance show in a few weeks time. Anna and Aidan will be playing the young versions of Maleficent and Stefan.

At the start of their section, Anna will start on stage and will carry out the same moves which both Eve and I will be doing at the start of our solos. Once Anna has finished doing her little solo, Aidan will enter and they will carry out some playful dance moves around the stage together. I didn’t have a chance to choreograph all of the section that I needed to but I got the majority of it done.