Dance Performance final 26th September 2014

My Final Dance

For our first dance assessment we devised and performed our own interpretation of DV8 Enter Achilles. This style of dance is contemporary, using physical theatre to give the piece a non-naturalistic theme. Our piece is about 'Lads' getting ready to go out to a bar and then their mannerisms whilst they are drunk. We performed this in the dance studio in front of the class.

 The start of our piece focused more on the characters meeting up and greeting each other. To show this as I entered I waved my hand up in the air to say hello to other characters. To still show my characterisation of a drunken man I really flopped my arm around whilst having my knees bent to keep my core closer to the ground. As it went on when we had all entered we went into the main dance this features a sequence of moves, such as we started off by swaying side to side and raising our glass. We repeated this move a few times at the start of the piece. To show our characterisation had my knees bent and swayed a lot, sometimes not to the rhythm of the music. Another move that featured was when we all dropped down onto one knee in unison. we then all jumped up onto our feet using our right hands as pivots. This move is what brought a non-naturalistic theme to our piece as this is not what you would expect to see with these types of characters.

One of my strengths of my performance was that I had good focus and good extension of my limbs. I did this by by keeping my arms as straight as possible, like when I raised my glass up I pushed my arms as far as they would go and then kept my focus onto the cup by pointing my eye contact towards them, as this is the focus of the piece. I belive that this is one of my strength as during the performance I could feel that I was pushing my extension as far as I could. Another one of my strengths would be my timing, I felt confident with when I should be doing things in the piece. When going into the main dance from the entrance sequence I knew the timings well and didn't rely on the rest of the group when to go into the next moves. One of my strengths when it comes to my interpretive skills I felt confident about my characterisation of the scene. I kept in character throughout, by keeping my knees bent and stumbling around as if I was drunk. I feel that my characterisation really helped the audience understand what was happening within the piece.

However one of my weaker points within my performance was my flexibility in my physical skills, When performing I felt that my basic dance skills, like when getting up from being down on one knee could of been done a lot smoother. I felt this could be done with a lot more confidence and fluency. With my interpretive skills I think that I could have improved on my facial expressions, during my performance my facial expression did not fit my character very well, it was very clear through my face that I was concentrating to much on the moves and what I would be doing next, if I was to do this again I would pay more attention on what my face is doing, by thinking about eye contact with other characters.

Overall, in order to improve my performance I will think about my confidence in the moves that I am doing and believing that I know what I am doing, I could already see a improvement in this from my first performance. For the next performance that I do I will pay a lot more attention in what I am doing and focus on my characterisation rather than the moves. Another target for my self is to be more adventurous with the moves that I choose to do. For this last performance I kept my moves very simple and not really stretching myself with what I did. To improve further I think that I need to challenge myself more by being rehearsing more to get my performance to a higher level, I will use my spare time to make my performance level higher, I will hopefully see an improvement in this soon.

Dance with Kat and Emily - 19th September 2014

As a warm up to the lesson we did an exercise were we had to sort out some elements of dance into two categories. These to categories were:

Physical Skills,

• Posture - the position of our limbs or how we carry the body as a whole.
• Aliment - 
• Flexibility -  How manipulative our body can be.
• Co-ordination - Knowing what all of your body parts are doing.
• Strength - How well you hold you body, with a strong intensity.
• Extension - Carrying your movements through your whole body.
• Facial Expression - Reflection the emotion through your face and body.
• Balance - Maintaining your moves without shaking.
• Stamina - Pacing your energy throughout your performance.

Interpretative Skills,

• Musicality - How your respond to the music you perform too.
• Focus - The intensity in your performance, and how well you take to a character.
• Projection - How you present the story/emotion to an audience.

We then got back into ours dance groups to work on our pieces inspired by DV8. We looked very closely as thinking out Characterisation, Extension and Posture. Once we worked on this we then went on to add more depth to our pieces. We did this by adding repetition, a creative way to enter into the dance and canon. Canon is adding different people doing the same thing yet at different paces and timings, this makes it a lot more exciting for an audience to watch.

My target that I have set for my self is to use my characterisation in the dance to add some more depth and interesting techniques to the dance moves. I feel confident with the dance moves but feel that I have not yet added depth into them and make them unique to my characters style. I think that this will be achievable, as I can use my characterisation from the dance to add something different to each move from everyone else. I want be have added something different to each move and section by the time that we perform this dance to the class.

Dance with Kat and Emily - 12th September 2014

In today's lesson we learnt about physical theatre with in dance and performance. At the start of the lesson to help us understand what physical theatre is we had to write down what we thought it was, we came up with ideas like; using your body to make other objects and set, using our body to represent a type of character and using our body to become something else in a creative way.

We were then shown a piece of physical theatre by DV8 called Enter Achilles. This is about a group of men who are getting ready for a night out in the pubs. This piece also touches on subjects like homophobia and judging people that are different. After watching this video we went on to learn a piece of dance inspired by DV8. When put into groups to rehearse we had to work on the unison in our piece. Unison is where a group or couple have perfect timing in the work and make every move look seamless. I felt it easy to pick up on the routine and worked well with my group in making sure we worked on the unison and our positioning. However I feel that I could have put a lot more characterisation into the piece by really adopting the character of a drunk man and being a bit more confident in the moves that I was doing. I will look to work on this in the coming lessons.

I will improve my characterisation by exploring different character traits of my character in the dance. I will try out some of these possibility's on the other people in my group and we will compare them all and see which one works best for the dance. By the next rehearsal I wish to have a clear understanding of my character in the dance and be able to use this to bring the dance sequences to life.

Learners Log for BHM

Learners Log BHM Performance

For my groups black history month performance in the variety show I have chosen to perform the poem called 'I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Of Freedom' by Maya Angelou. To bring this poem to life we have added some physical theatre along side our performance.

Caged Bird

BY MAYA ANGELOU

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind   

and floats downstream   

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and   

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn

and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams   

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream   

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied   

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   

with a fearful trill   

of things unknown   

but longed for still   

and his tune is heard   

on the distant hill   

for the caged bird   

sings of freedom.

We chose to do this poem as it talks about the isolation and racism to the black race yet it does it in a metaphoric way. This piece of text delivers a very strong message about freedom and segregation, when the black people were seen as the lesser race by the white people.

This poem does not celebrate the positives of BHM yet rather gets down to the truth about all of the suffering that the people were put through. I have chosen to do a piece of dramatic text for my performance as I feel this is the best way to get a strong message across, by using my strongest skills as an actor. I feel that the way that my group has presented this text does the important message behind it justice in a respectful way.

This is our performance stage plan for in the Sealight theatre, we have decided to perform it within a spot light that fills the area, I feel that this gives the piece a trapped, caged feel by putting us performers within a restricted area, this also bring the focus onto us. Isabel and Holly start outside the light, leaving my (representing the bird) alone in the light, looking quite sad. Isabel and Holly enter as I start to speak the first stanza. By having them enter at the start shows the audience that the bird is trapped, by as soon as he speaks they come in to stop him. It is important that the audience are indulged in the story as we tell it, as it is not at first clear what we mean as it is done using different characters. At the start of the poem we all hum a repeated tune, we do this to represent the tunes that the slaves used to sing as the worked, during our devising we originally looked for some backing music or humming to have playing over the top of our poem. However we did not find anything that fit the message that we wanted, so we took inspiration from all of the pieces that we found and devised a repetitive tune ourselves. we then stop this humming when we begin to speak, to draw the focus on the story. We then repeat this tune at the end of our performance, we chose to do this as it gives the idea to the audience of the circle of life that the slaves were put through during this time. As the poem get closer to the end we chose to add in a red light at the back of the staging area, as this will give the fallacy to the audience of the tension that is about to happen.

We split the poem into stanzas, and divided the lines up between us and highlighted it so that we can recognise our own parts. By doing this it gives the audience lots of different delivery's of the story through three different actors. I think that this poem works best in a group as different members can portray the different character, I am portraying the bird and Isabel and Holly the white people trapping the bird down. As a group we want to present BHM as a serious side, and look to present this through the saddened tone in our voices.

Starting to look into Variety Performance

Variety Performance

Variety in the UK started mainly in theatres and music halls, and then went onto working men clubs. Most famous British performers started off performing in variety shows. The main events in variety performance were the Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium.

In the 19th century variety performance known as Music Hall, was held in local public houses, these shows were raucous and often rude. Then in the 20th century variety performance was moved to much more grand, large theatres which would seat more, this was to draw the connection of drinking from variety. Sir Oswald Stoll who ran many theatres up north opened his first London theatre in 1904 called the Hackney Empire. Then in 1912 he opened a massive Coliseum which was known to be his favourite. When this theatre opened it contained the usually mixture of Song, Dance, Drama and Acrobats. The first set list contained famous performers of the time like singer Eugene Stratton, followed by Tina Clemintina with her dogs, the three Pattinsons on the trampoline, and a full-scale recreation of Derby Day, Which had a moving revolve and real horses, this was very grand to the audiences of the time and was a step up from the public houses. Another variety performance house was owned by Edward Moss who owned the Empire Palace theatres at Finsbury Park. Moss's Palace theatre was the first venue to the Royal Command Performance where King George and Queen Mary sat through the performance. The 1950's saw a lot of variety theatres close due to lack of interest by audiences. Now days the most popular variety theatres are the London Palladium. This is now the current venue for the Royal Variety Performance.