Erin Taylor choreography

  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...

 In our fith lesson we were each tasked with making gestures, taking inspiration from our groups stimulus. I chose to make my gesture about PTSD, and the after affects war has on a person. A gesture is a movement of part of the body to express an emotion or meaning. My gesture was a simple hand movement that passes from one side of the body to the other, with the eyes following the hand at all times.  We came back together as a group and we watched everyone’s gestures. We chose our favourite three that we thought best reflected our stimulus and were then tasked with making each gesture bigger.  With my gesture: 1.The simple hand across the body with eyes following  We made this bigger by adding a shake to the hand, to help symbolise the heightened sense of emotion after war. 2. The hand shaking and moving across the body with the eyes following To make this even bigger still we decided to grab the hand that passes the body with the other, to show confusion and lack o...

 In our fourth session we talked about how important the beginning and the end of choreography and our pieces are. We read pg158 of Choreography by Kate Flatt and this takes about the influences the start and finishing motifs and positions have on the audience.  In the beginning of our choreography we should ‘present a sense of what is to come’ and ask ourselves the questions: 1. How bold or gentle do we want the first movement to be?  2. Which dancers or characters do you want to be introduced first?  By asking ourselves these questions we can get a sense of how we want the audience to feel and what we want them to think at the being of the piece. As a group we decided we wanted to start our choreography with the marching motif we created in the previous lesson. Here is a link to the video ( https://youtu.be/W31MLA5chwE  ). We wanted to start with this as we believe it is an easily recognisable motif that relates to our stimulus 'War' and gives the audience a s...

For our choreography assessment we were split into 3 groups of 6. We were told to find a stimulus that we all thought we could portray in movement. My group discussed a lot of ideas but ended up choosing ‘War’. We thought this was a good stimulus as we could portray emotion and feeling easily to an audience, we could play with characters and storyline, therefore creating a piece that would be powerful and emotional.  In our forth choreography lesson in our groups we brainstormed together and wrote down words that came to mind when thinking about war. Some of the worlds we came up with were, radio, silence, trenches, power, combat, struggle, soldiers, conflict, alliance and warfare.  To begin choreographing we split into twos and using these words as inspiration each pair created a motif. A motif is a phrase of movement in a dance that can be repeated and developed thought the choreography.  Myself and my partner, Lucy created a motif taking inspiration from the world ‘tog...

In our third lesson we were learning how to use the Translation technique to come up with movement phrases. We were put into groups of 3 and told to stand in a straight line. The first person facing front and the others facing the back. Our teacher then gave the first person a word. The first person would then create an eight count phrase taking inspiration from the given word. Some examples of the words were: sticky, heavy, loud, flow, alone, tick, crunchy, soft and gather.  Once the first person had come up with a phrase the second person would turn around and watch the first persons phrase all the way through twice. The second person would then be given a minuet to think through the phrase. The first Person would then turn back around too the front and the third person would turn around to face the second. The second person would then perform person ones phrase once as best they can from what they remember watching. Person three would only get to watch the phrase once. The secon...

In today’s lesson we tried using the Chance method to create new phrases of movement in groups. We were split into five groups and were each told to bring in an object from home that we could use as a stimulus. My group chose a watch as we thought we could generate intricate, sharp and angular choreography as well as soft and circular movements. We then went around everyone’s object and wrote different thoughts and feelings that we felt when looking at the stimulus.  The first object we looked at was a picture of a Banksy painting called ‘No Future.’ Some of the words we wrote down were, lost, pain, innocence and hopelessness as the girl in the painting looked hurt and upset. The second object we looked at was a plant. We wrote down, growth, intertwined, earth and cascades as it reminded us of a waterfall with the leaves dangling over the side of the plant pot. The third stimulus we looked at was a drawing of a hand.  The words we used to describe it were never ending, identit...

 In today’s lesson we were put into five groups and were given a (stimuli) picture each. All the pictures we’re completely different but all related to the theme ‘Using art is a political tool.’ We had five minuets at each picture to write down any thoughts or feelings that they provoked. We wrote down questions or phrases that came to mind when looking at them. As we got to the latter pictures it became harder to think of new ideas that the other groups hadn't already stated, but we were able to answer some of the questions they had and ask new ones.  Once we had finished this task as a group we were asked to pick one of the five pictures to take as our own stimuli and start creating a phrase of movement, taking inspiration from the picture and the thoughts and feelings written around it. The picture my group chose was an image of a woman in a museum covered in oil. (See attached photo) Some of the words that were written around the image were, trapped, hiding away, climate c...