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Lesson ten: creative development, final changes to our piece and reflection on assessment

This was the last lesson before our assessment week. Our piece has developed in many ways from when we first started. To the audience my group wanted to portray a journey though war, following a group of soldiers and how the brutality of war has affected them. We wanted the audience to feel a connection to the characters. I feel that we managed to achieve this as throughout our piece with the use of facial expressions to portray our characters thoughts and feelings. The audience gets to know the characters and can therefore feel sympathy for them.  During the choreography process the main challenge that we came across was working with our props. The sticks are long and we found it difficult at first to think of movements that weren’t basic or looked awkward. After a few rehearsals with the sticks we were able to come up with dynamic and precise choreography that kept the audience assertive. I think that choreographing the marching section was the easiest as it was quite an obvious ...
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Lesson Nine: Inspiration

In this blog I will be discussing some choreographic influences that have inspired my work. I will be talking about the choreographic intent, the impact on the audience, and I will also be comparing how they have influenced our ways of moving. The two pieces I am going to look at are ‘Young Men’ by BalletBoyz and ‘Sutra’ by Sidi larbi.  ‘ Young men’ by BalletBoyz is a piece devised by Ivan Perez to show a group of men brought together by how brutal and hard war was. They all struggle to maintain their humanity in a never ending cycle of war and death. Through the production they are pushed to their limits. The power and agility of their movements while expression emotions such as fear is something we were really inspired by and wanted to incorporate into our piece. You can really see intention behind each of their movements and we really tried to implement this when choreographing. We made sure we discussed the intentions behind our movements, why are we throwing the arm? Why are w...
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Responding to feedback

  Each group received a considerable amount of feedback from our teacher about our 10 minuets of choreography to help us improve.   The feedback my group received was: Making the transition smoother when we do our accumulation step, making it look more natural and not like you are waiting to join in To improve on this we will make sure everyone is clear on counts in the music so they can focus on what count to join in on, not looking at the others.    We will keep rehearsing this section till everyone understands and we can make the transition seem less.  Make more of our characters in the PTSD section, thinking about facial expressions and how we will show emotion in our body’s  To improve on this I will make sure I complete every movement to the end, not cut it short and move onto the next. I will use my whole body to execute the movement even if I’m just moving my hand or arm. I will also try and project my facial expressions to the back of the audience ...
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Lesson Nine: Finishing our choreography

 In lesson nine we worked on finishing and cleaning our choreography. We started by working on the end of section 4. (war/ caos) We wanted this section to be high in energy and chaotic to show how fast paced war can be. Soldiers on the front line didn’t have time to think they just had to act. We wanted this to come across in our piece so we made sure our choreography was uncontrollable, sharp and dynamic. We added intricate arm and head movements to help create the unpredictability of war. The audience will not know what’s going to happen next or what direction we will move in creating a sense of tension. We hope that this section will keep the audience on the edge of there seats and engaged in our movements. At the end of this section we decided to repeat a step from our marching motif in section one, to show how the soldiers have changed. In section one we do the step sharply with angular arm and leg work and straight backs but decided in the war/ caos section to do the movement...
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Lesson eight: choreographing section two, three and four

  In lesson eight we continued to work on our 10 minute piece. Following on from the previous lesson we wanted to work in chronological order, so decided to finish where we left of with section two. After a long discussion my group decided that incorporating a prop might help make our ideas clearer to the audience. We decided to incorporate sticks that were one meter tall. I thought these would be effective as we could use them in many different ways and as many different objects for example, guns, fencing, barbed wire and the opportunity to do partner work without actually having to touch, as the COVID-19 rules state that we weren’t allowed to do contact work.  To get inspiration for our stick work we watched 'Sutra' by Sidilarbi as a starting point. The way they handled the sticks helped us gather ideas of ways to manipulate the sticks in abstract and interesting ways. We wanted to use the sticks in section two so we began thinking of ways to incorporate the sticks, still ha...
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Lesson seven : choreographing section two

In lesson seven we continued to work on our 10 minuet choreography group pieces.My group decided it would be easier to keep track of choreography if we structured our piece into sections. This means that we could pick a section each lesson to work on instead of random phrases of movement. By structuring our piece we can clearly see the storyline and how the piece will develop throughout the 10 minuets. It also made it easier to pick music as we could have a different phrase of music for each section. We structured our piece into six sections and talked about how we wanted the audience to feel when watching each of the sections. We wanted the piece to show the impact war has on a person and how it effects everyone in a different way. We want to show individuality and the pain and suffering caused by war.  After deciding the storyline of our piece we decided to pick music for each section.  There are seven sections and here is the music we picked for our piece: (The music we cho...
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Lesson six: choreographing the opening of the piece

  In lesson six we were asked to work on our 10 minute group piece, working on whatever section we felt needed work. My group decided to start from the beginning and enhance and develop our beginning marching motif. We wanted the choreography to be powerful and show order and routine as we move as a unit to give a impact to the beginning of our piece.   To start we decided to add on some choreography to the marching motif. We brainstormed and experimented with different ideas such as marching all in one direction, in straight lines and diagonal to see which was more effective in brining our vision of unity and precision to life. Through experimenting with different possibilities we were able to come up with a phrase of movement that we felt reflected the theme and linked with the previously choreographed motif. We wanted this section to be emotionless with our faces but almost scary in atmosphere so we made sure everyone knew the counts and choreography, to ensure we stay...
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