In today's lesson we split it up our time, spending an hour on one dance project and after, spending the last hour on the other project. Our first hour was spent choreographing the Seven Seas of Rhye dance for WWRY and the second hour was spent developing the media ensemble dance piece we creating.
Seven Seas of Rhye
Firstly we established the type of movement we were going to be creating for this number in the musical. The song is sung by commander Khashoggi, who has the power to send Bohemian’s to the Seven Seas of Rhye as a punishment for holding too much musical information. As rock music is forbidden in the world (300 years in the future), Khashoggi is ordered to capture Bohemian’s, such as Galileo, who hears words which are song lyrics, by the Killer Queen as they could give away secret information about where the hidden rock could be hiding. Therefore for this song, Khashoggi is singing about is land and how he has he power to banish characters there easily. The movement, we decided, is going to be very restrained and we will create movement which make us look like we are struggling, under Khashoggi’s capture. We came up with the idea to perform movements as if we were captured in a bubble however able to make slightly movements as an escape for freedom. Everyone had to pick four freeze frames to hold for four counts at the beginning of the dance. I chose reaching movements, one to the right, to the left, straight upwards and one in front of my body. I made these reaching movements with my arms stretched out, with splayed hands as if reaching for help and support to escape the bubble of capture. We mere all on different levels, to show the stage was busy and give the audience lots of visuals to feed off of. I was sat facing away from the audience at the back, others were dotted around, some sitting and some standing. This also was used to show a contrast in levels. The audience are able to see everyone clearly in this formation as well, making spacing clear.
The main motif, which we repeat in the dance, shows reaching for freedom from Khashoggi's power. Movements we show this through in the motif include reaching with splayed arms, contractions of the torso and moving around the space as a whole, utilising it well. Reaching with splayed hands and extended arms features multiple times in this number as it successfully conveys the idea of the need for freedom and the desire to escape. Also performing this move to audiences allows you as a performer to make eye contact with the front few rows of audiences, which makes them feel a part of the show. This reiterates to the audience, how much the characters want to escape, making them feel a part of the show as it is happening in front of their eyes. The contraction of the torso comes after the reaching movements, showing pain and the characters being pulled back into the state of being trapped and unable to escape. This following movement almost makes the audience feel sorry for the characters as they haven't been able to escape. The body contraction is followed by hunching over the body, to show being trapped and controlled by the Globalsoft corporation. Finally the idea of using the whole stage and having the performers spread out and scattered, makes the stage look busy, giving off the impression that the need for freedom is desired by everyone. The busier the stage, also shows just how many characters are controlled by Globalsoft. The more movement seen on stage, the more people is appears to hold. This is a great technique to ensure the stage looks full at all times, even if it isn't.
Media piece
We started off this hour by running through the material we had previously created to ensure it was fresh in our minds. The development we made today to this dance was inspired by Emily, Talia, Jaydee and Megan’s group work from an earlier lesson. This included them dancing as a four piece in a line. The line was staggered and look like a stair case, Megan being the top step, standing up and Emily being the bottom step, sitting on the floor. We were naturally split into groups of four, according to where we were placed on stage at the point in the dance where we are inserting this motif. The whole idea of this motif is to show passing a secret from person to person and the motif ends with the secret being back where is started however in a different form (a contrasting movement). This almost shows the idea of Chinese whispers, messages being passed from person to person, until they come out from the press, a totally different story to the original.
The movement started with the floor people, which I included me, reaching coward with our arms in front of us, and scooping up the secret. We then turned around and passed it the next person. This invisible secret was gradually passed up and then down the group of four dancers, showing the journey of the secret. We used turns of the head and body with sharp dynamic to convey how quickly and easily stories can be changed and manipulated. We had four groups of four mirroring each other and performing the same movement at the same time. This looked effective as it gave the piece more of an impact, showing the idea of stories being manipulated happens very often in the media.
I feel as though today has been a successful lesson as we have created almost a minutes worth of the Seven Seas of Rhye number which we started just today and developed and expanded on the movement for the media piece. My target for next lesson is to use my body more when performing the WWRY piece, this will allow me to further develop my characterisation of someone trapped and wanting freedom. The more I commit to the movement with my body, the easier this will become. Another target for myself to improve on by next lesson is to work on my timing of a certain step in the WWRY piece. Each time we rehearsed it in class today, I started the step forward a count too early. I did this as it was where I naturally thought the beat was in the music. I will have to run this part through a couple of times to ensure my timing is the same as the rest of the cast’s.
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