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.