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 having the idea of coming together and playfulness when preparing for war. We used repetition by repeating a phrase from earlier on in the section where we bang our hands on the floor, but this time we bang the sticks. This shows the audience a development in our training, we are getting stronger, closer to the start of the war. We wanted the stick work to be interesting and intricate, without being dangerous so this made it harder to think of choreography so my group decided to only use the sticks for the coming together section and countdown.  

When we finished choreographing section two we went on to the start of section three. (The countdown) We used some words to influence our movement and to help with the choreographic intent. The words we chose for this section where adrenaline, power and panic. Each person in our group came up with a movement/ gesture influenced my one of the words. We then showed the rest of the group our movement and we tried to incorporate it into the choreography. This was successful as it made the process collaborative and meant that all the moves had a different intention. We wanted countdown to build in intensity, starting with slow and controlled movements such as back bends and ending with dynamic and staccato ones such as sharp head movements. We wanted the movement to be unpredictable. 

As a group we then started work on section four. This was the war and caos section. We wanted this section to be uncontrollable and powerful. To start of the section we included some slow motion. We thought this would be effective as if gives a contrast to the countdown section before and the fast and intricate accumulation that we added on after. The slow motion was impactful as it creates a build up of suspense and will encourage the audience to play close attention as they don’t know what will happen next. When using accumulation in our choreography, one dancer starts off dancing a phrase as a solo and gradually more dancers join in. We thought this would be powerful from an audience’s perspective as it shows the group coming together as one ready for war. The sharp and dynamic movement all performed at the same creates a scary almost robotic feeling. 

At the end of the lesson we had a chance to perform these sections to the rest of our classmates. This was useful as they gave feedback both positive and negative that we as dancers may not have noticed. It also gives us a chance to find out if the intentions of our piece were clear, find areas to improve and even help to create more ideas. 

Please see attached links for evidence of choreography:

End of Section 2 (coming together) : https://youtu.be/gOXjja-W-ZQ

Section 3 (countdown) :

The beginning:  https://youtu.be/qCy7plzJKwA

The end: https://youtu.be/w958_s08p8k

Section 4 (war/caos) : https://youtu.be/WG97Io8AAMs