Following on from our last dance lesson, we started with the same warm up we learnt last week, seeing whether we had made the improvements we needed to make the warm up more technically correct. Last weeks target for me to have improved this week was to ensure I know which leg to head with on the roll to the floor at the end of the phrase. This week I had indeed made this improvement, remembering each time I danced the warm up which leg to lead with. This is a positive, showing within a week I have progressed and now the warm up for me is stronger and more accurate.
Last week we all split off in to pairs and solos to create some movement material around a quote or an article taken from the media. I had some ideas from movement however I wasn’t fully satisfied that my quotes would allow me to create enough movement to put together a full length solo piece. In conclusion I ended up pairing up with Amber, learning what she had created last week and going on to developing this with her as a duet piece. We took inspiration from Sia’s music video Big Girls Cry, which includes manipulation and controlling on a girl shown through physical contact to her face. The girl’s hands take control of the facial expressions she pulls and the way her head moves. This we figured would be a good starting point for us as the media is centred around controlling the consumers. The duet we created had two parts to it; one standing section which started off the piece, creating large movements with our bodies to represent the consumers being individuals, totally un influenced by the media. We performed moves such as round kicks showing an open mind and leg pushes showing strength, mentally and physically. The second part of the dance was floor based, we created manipulative movements, using our hands to control our facial movements, as if it wasn’t our hands on our faces. This shows the media over taking the minds of the public in a negative light.
https://youtu.be/4NhKWZpkw1Q - inspiration
Kat liked the look of our duet and how we had interpreted the idea of the media and fitted it to a piece of dance. However she had the idea to split up the duet in to two sections- the standing section which Amber took as a solo and the floored section which I took as a solo. All of the dance pieces everyone had created over the past two lessons have been with the main aim to be fitted together into one ensemble dance piece based around the media which will be the final piece for this unit. We will also be performing it at the Winter Dance Show in the middle of December this year. My solo (section 2) now starts off the show, I am curled up in the centre of the stage, in a fetas position, engulfing myself in my body facing stage left. Everyone else in the class at this point has formed a semi circled, facing different directions standing in neutral around the room. This conveys the idea that everyone who has access to the media has a different opinion and interpretation about what is currently being talked about. I perform a distorted crawl forward, followed by me ending up on my knees, bringing my arm and hand across, I front of my body, as if following an invisible story in the press, showing its natural progression.
Instead of using pre recorded music through out the dance piece, Kat had the idea to have people on stage saying the odd sentence about the media, to set an informative yet chilling atmosphere for our audience. We tried this out and it worked really well, especially as I was able to perform my solo in complete silences which allowed me to take time with the movements as a musical backing track at this point could have restricted my ability to make it free and prolonged.
Following on from this we created some gestural movements as a class, which we performed as an ensemble. For example we fitted some specific words to moves, almost visually representing what was being said through a gesture. For example when Amber spoke the word ‘power’ everyone lifted their head. This is a very simplistic movement however has powerful because seeing everyone do it in sync, gives the impact that the whole stage is included and part of the movement.
In conclusion I feel as though we have made good progress as a whole class today with regards to getting the final dance piece up and running. We had created a solid minutes worth of material and we plan to eventually incorporate parts of everyone’s material into the dance at different points. Our target for next week is to continue developing this piece and to carry on thinking about how the media allows us to believe different stories about current affairs and events. A personal target for myself is to think about why am I performing the moves that I do in my solo, allowing me to explore the movement in more detail with passionate and emotion expression and presence.
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