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 in slow motion with soft arm lines and we added a contraction in the back. We hope the development of this phrase shows how the soldiers are broken and don’t have energy to continue on.

We then continued on and choreographed the next section which was PTSD. In this section we wanted to show the different effects PTSD has on people and how damaged our characters are having been through such a traumatic event. We did this by using emotions such anxiety, fear and anger. To come up with our choreography for this section we started off by filming some improvisation to the piece of music we wanted to use, keeping in mind the thoughts and feelings of PTSD. This was useful as it gave us ideas of movement we wouldn’t normally have put in this section as we had to think on our feet. It helped us come up with unique phrases of movement that we could then adapt to suit the feeling of this section. We included lots of random sharp movements to help show our feelings of anxiety and fear to the audience. 

After finishing this section we worked on the final section. This was the minuet silence. We wanted this to be simple but powerful. To do this we used obvious hand gestures to show pleading (two arms to the sky, with the upper back slightly arched), unity (moving as one) and compassion and empathy, thanking the soldiers for what they have done (hand on heart) 

At the end of the lesson we reviewed all the sections and began to clean them by going over counts and spacing to ensure the audience wouldn’t be destructed by odd formations and they could focus on our facial expressions and body movements. We also went over head and arm positions to make sure we were all the same when in unison. 

Below are the links too each section of choreography:

Section 4: WAR https://youtu.be/_bo-tTyIOa8

Section 5: PTSD https://youtu.be/4C19wVPzobU

Section 6: Minuet silence https://youtu.be/k6hwkfqbkc8


Comments

  1. Devanshi GanatraNovember 17, 2020 at 3:47 PM

    Well done! It seems that you had a very productive lesson and created some interesting movement. What are the next steps in the development of your piece?

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    Replies
    1. Erin TaylorNovember 18, 2020 at 1:39 PM

      Thank you for your comment devanshi! To continue developing our piece we hope to keep cleaning and working on timing, to ensure the choreography is neat and precise. We also hope to work on facial expressions and connecting with the audience to help portray our message and theme. To do this we will discuss different expressions and feelings we would like to portray in each section and then practice with this in place to get used to projecting to an audience.

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  2. Storm IdeNovember 24, 2020 at 1:16 PM

    This is a brilliantly detailed blog, including an in-depth scrutiny of the progress you made throughout this lesson. I also greatly enjoyed reading about the choreographic process you used this week of using improvisation to create movement. How did you manage to personify anxiety, fear and trauma through your performance abilities? Do you think that the use of performance enhanced your improvisation as you were thinking more about the emotions rather than the steps?

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    Replies
    1. Erin TaylorNovember 26, 2020 at 1:31 AM

      Thank you for your comment storm! I think the use of performance definitely enhanced our improvisation as I was focusing on portraying emotion instead of thinking about what to do next or what the steps I was doing looked like. To personify the emotions I made sure to use my whole body as when you are scared it’s not just your face that shows it. This made my intentions clearer for the audience.

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  3. Lucy Athorns choreographyNovember 25, 2020 at 12:34 AM

    I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog posts Erin as you go into a lot of detail, so as the reader, I always aware into what tasks you have been allocated. I like how you used the word 'unpredictability' in this blog as when watching your piece, I could really see how this word influenced your movements and was oblivious to what was going to happen next. When doing your improvisation, did you listen to your piece of music to help get inspiration for these idiosyncratic movements or did you do it in silence. Did you capture anyone doing a certain movement that you thought would encapsulate your stimulus well, if so did you make sure to keep it in?

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    Replies
    1. Erin TaylorNovember 26, 2020 at 1:39 AM

      Thank you for your comment lucy! When doing our improvisation we listened to our piece of music. We wanted to do this to see if the music gave us any inspiration for the dynamics of the movement. Filming the improvisation was very useful as we were able to watch it back and see what was effective at bringing our stimulus to life and what wasn’t. Something we thought was really effective was the use of stillness. This contrasted the previous sections and made these sections look more powerful and energetic. The use of stillness also helps to show a moment of reflection and allows the audience to process what they have just watched. We made sure to add some stillness into this section.

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