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.