Single-Movement in Performance

Prior to this unit, I had only ever covered movement in class however this was in combination with other forms of performing arts such as scripted pieces, physical theatre etc, so I would say that I do have basic understanding of elements that make up movement/dance. I’ve also taken part in a school show which had a large amount of dance in it, so this was really useful as I hope to bring some of the skills I have learnt from it to this unit. Also just creating movement in class before this unit has allowed me to further develop my skills. In contrast, this unit will solely focus on movement in performance so I will need to make sure I am constantly deepening my knowledge of these familiar skills. One major skill that I wish to enhance is my musicality; I would say I’m more comfortable performing on my own when it comes to movement as the being one beat behind is less noticeable compared to when you are in a group, you are easily distinguishable. I do find that there are many causes as...

This lesson we wanted bock the torch-ography, we have spent a lot of time on this part of our masterpiece. So much so that other parts of our masterpiece are incomplete which is why we desired to complete it this lesson, this will give us time to go over everything in a running order and polish other parts for our final performance. Before this lesson began our producer noted that this piece is very physical theatre-ish and suggested that we include more contemporary/lyrical dance in it. Lyrical dance is when a movement as a meaning to it and it is impactful for the audience, much more 'dramatic' in some sense where as movement in Physical theatre is usually used to portray something rather than carrying a message behind it.  We also had to take into account that we needed to incorporate more R.A.D.S into our pieces, so we decided to add some more Dynamic movements. At 0.52 you can see our inclusion of light weighted  movements, flicking and sustained movements also. All o...

This lesson we decided to focus on my part of our piece. As a group we had decided that we wanted to each represent a some sort of character that as a type of body dysmorphia, I wanted to focus on the issues that surround transgender people, focusing on the the way they feel- they're born in the wrong body. Alice was going to take part in my piece so we was given ownership over this part of our masterpiece. Alice suggested that we use a number from the hit musical 'Kinky Boots', called 'I'm Not My Father's Son'. Although this song is about being a drag queen, we believed that the lyrics still transmit the same notion as it would to a transgender person in some way. We did try and devise some movement to the original soundtrack however we soon discovered that it was too fast for us so we considered looking for another version, luckily we came across an acoustic version which we decided to go with- the acoustic version also gave us the right tempo for our move...

This lesson we focused on completing Alice's part of our masterpiece, focusing and incorporating R.A.D.S this is our end product of the lesson, it is still incomplete however we will develop this in the future. 0.00-0.20- Here you can see that we used the canon aspect of R.A.D.S to symbolize that we are waking up in unison and getting ready to do a 'morning routine'. 0.28-0.32- We had previously discussed what we do when we get up in the morning, everyone said they look at their mobile phones, we thought picking our phones up symbolizes this. 0.34-0.39- This movement incorporates the word 'flow' from dynamics. The movement is very free in terms of moving our arms and represents us stretching/waking up. 0.56-1.00- This movement again is a another form of a free movement (dynamics) as well as it being in unison, however this time we incorporate the whole use of our upper torso. I feel this movement represents how girls are moulded in...

This lesson we decided to come up with a new idea. We are becoming stripped for time and we need to make sure we have a piece for each of us, so making progress is our objective. So far we have one for Chloe (Experimenting with Mirrors) and our group torch-ology. We thought it'd be efficient if we move onto Alice's idea. We have each created a representation of body dysmorphia that we are each going to represent. They are: Alice - Representing the idea that girls HAVE to be beautiful and conform to societies version of 'beautiful' and what defines it. Will - Is taking on the same idea as Alice, however focusing on the expectations from the male gender's perspective i.e. what it takes to be a real man in society e.g. masculinity, being muscly. Chloe - is exploring the idea how social media sometime forces us to become self-obsessed and how we value our appearance the most over other qualities like personality etc. Cameron - is goin...

This lesson we decided we would take a step back and re-evaluate our progression. We realised that we have come up with some great ideas and created movement pieces to them however we need to make sure we are blocking them as we progress. We only have 3 weeks left until our final performance (28th) and at the moment everything is unfinished so it is imperative that we start wrapping the pieces up. Today we re-visited our torch-ology piece. However, this time we wasn't creating any movement, It was previously discussed that we wanted to have some sort of voices over the music, of people saying their insecurities. Cameron brought his recording equipment from home to help us with this. Using his MacBook, Logic editing software and a microphone he was able to record voices over the piece of music (Bastille-Oblivion) . At first we wanted the people in sixth form to record their own insecurity so we had a range of voices on the track, which would in turn make it more...

This lesson we wanted to try and develop another idea from our list, this way we would have more than one piece of movement that we would be able place our attention on our idea of using torches, so this lesson we solely focused on this. Alice came up with the idea was inspired by the musical 'In the heights', specifically the number 'Blackout'. Although the video below is an amateur dramatic production (Spirit Young Performers Company) of the number, you can still see how they use the torches/lighters of the cast to create this really nice chaotic effect and how the idea that the characters are searching for each other . We thought we could implement this idea into our masterpiece, however in a much softer way (not chaotic) where our characters do not want to be in the light as they are insecure about themselves so it's a much more emotive interpretation of the use of torches. . Here is our piece that we developed this lesson: We used the instru...

It has now been decided by our group that we are going to go with the idea of body dysmorphia and how it affects, people with  the mental disorder, see themselves. Personally, I think mental health is still seen as a taboo in modern society, however in recent years it has become a more talked about topic however I would still consider this a controversial topic.  We decided that we should start by experimenting with movement, this way we would at least have something to start with. Our director also stated that we did not have to start at the beginning of our movement piece, we could come up with movement that might fit nicer somewhere else in our piece. With this advice in mind we just started to come up with ideas that could be used. Alice suggested that we use something to do with mirrors, since the disorder is based on body image and how people see themselves. I immediately had a  flashback to when I was completing the blog on space and analysing the video below. A...

After careful consideration, It has been decided by our group that we are to change our idea. It was proving too complicated for us to try and create movement that has a story and meaning to every move. So we backtracked our steps and had a second look over our stimulus, we also had an in depth conversation with our director about issues within society, such as the gun crime poster: As you can see in the picture above, the statistics are very interesting. Even though Switzerland is a 'neutral' country, It still has a high gun crime rate considering it has no national army as well. Also comparing the United States to Canada, the relativity in size yet Canada's gun crime is significantly lower than the USA. Perhaps this is telling us something about gun laws etc. We also then went on to debate about the justice system and if types of capital punishments are justifiable or not i.e death penalty, hanging etc.This is where we drew one of our new ideas, we take the politic...

This lesson we began work on our masterpiece. We was split up into two groups: Team 1 Owen Will Cameron Alice Chloe Team 2 Henri Taylor Tyler Warren Joe We was also given a stimulus pack which held a range of pictures from landscapes to posters to facts etc, Here they are: Here are some of the ideas we have started to draw from these stimuli: We have decided to go with a story line to our movement piece, it is set in a dystopian future where reproduction has been abolished by a virus created by the government and Alice is immune to this virus. (We was heavily influenced by the film 'Divergent' ). Me and Alice are twins so people think she is going to have twins, kind of like a maidens tale etc. Chloe is infertile- she wants Alice's baby and Will and Cameron are the crazy scientists who created this virus.However to top it all we are all friends. We started to create the very first scene in the movement to t...