Unit 38 Dance Review

The rehearsal process:

Talking about my rehearsal process my self-discipline was good during the lessons, I wasn’t wasting time during rehearsal, but sometimes I found it difficult to be more creative and think out of the box. I was always on time and haven’t missed any lessons. In the beginning of learning this piece my weakness was not getting into the character, I needed couple lessons to make it happen also research the piece more, watch it more than once. When I felt the character I was more concentrated on choreography, my moves were not strong enough and I needed to put more energy, although my movement memory was better than during the previous pieces we have learnt. I and my group were good in merging our choreographies, we made it look good. Also we had a really good time management and we were always sharing our ideas that shows that my group’s relationship was very good. The best rehearsal process was probably on the last day before the performance as my group didn’t waste any time and we were working hard and thinking how we could improve our piece, everyone seems very motivated and I was very motivated as well. Anyways my weakness while learning this dance was that I wasn’t really working on it outside college, if I were I would probably fix my other weaknesses quicker. So my target to improve was to be more self-managed outside college.

Choreographic process:

We were asked to create more our own movements this time.  I did have an idea of my character and also I had some warrior movements which shows fighting or getting back the energy or connecting to other dancers. But my weakness was that I didn’t have a big variety of movements. To improve this I needed to watch some “Youtube” videos which shows more capoeira movements. Also we had a lot of duet works which included trusting each other, lifting each other and supporting each other. Thinking about what we could do and trying it was interesting, also it was fun. Every time we thought of any move we tried to develop it so it could look much better and eye-catching. I and my partner had really nice lifting movements like rotating horizontally for 360 degrees, or rotating vertically for 180 degrees. I had certain movements which showed that I am fighting – keeping my arms in front of my face and being very determined and concentrated, also when I was getting my powers back my choreography was slow and I had a moments of suspension when all my attention was on my arm which just got its power back. Our experimenting gave us some really nice ideas of what we can do but my target was still to have some more ideas, be more creative.

My performance:

In the beginning my performance was very good, I was really concentrated on my character and on the choreography. I wasn’t nervous and I was feeling confident. My timing was good, same as a posture and coordination. My balance was good although I did lose my balance a little bit once in the first team’s merged choreography, it wasn’t really visible though. In my opinion I could be more flexible and then my Meia lua de frente kick in the first section would look better and stronger. My timing was quite good, musicality was good.  Stamina has improved during the rehearsals process, but I was out of breath after the first section as I did a lot of running and quick movements. In the bit when lights were switching off and on it was a bit difficult to notice everyone around be but I didn’t bump into anyone so I think my awareness of other dancers was good. My and my partners connecting movement went well, we did them on time and in a right way.  Also I did many different dynamics and it made my performance more eye-catching. My focus, energy and timing were good during the whole performance except the ending. After I and my partner did our last support exercise I started to feel a bit uncomfortable because of my appearance and it was distracting me for the couple next movements, this moment for me looked the worse out of the whole piece. The last thing I want to talk is my facial expression during the performance. My face did look determined when I was fighting and it did look tired when I was getting my powers back, also you could see a little bit of astonishment on my face when I felt the power in my hand, but I still think that my facial expressions could be better – change more often. Target for next time is to not get distracted during the performance no matter what.

Weekly blog for 'Certificate In Dance' course

Week 1
8-14 December

We were watching the piece, trying to understand the subject matter, describing what it means for us to be a spiritual warriors.

Week 2
15-21 December

Learning first section. I liked this piece from the beginning because many different dance styles are mixed and also I learned more about for example Marshall arts techniques.

My weakness in the beginning was to get into the character, I was concentrating more on the choreography, learning the movements

Week 3 
5-11 January

We learn more and more of the choreography, develop our characters more and more. I need to add more strenghts and energy to my movements, so the piece will look stronger, also I need to be more confident.

Week 4
12-18 January

Week 5 
19-25 January

Target to improve was to have a better idea of the character

Week 6 
26 January - 1 February
Working more on the first section. In the beginning of this week the end of first section was really weak, I needed to improve it much more, add more energy, have better movement memory and improve my accuracy. By the end of this week I did improve, but needed improve more.
Here is the video of our Monday's lesson:

Week 7 
2-8 February

Week 8 
9-15 February

Week 9 
23 February - 1 March

This week we were working on trusting each other. We begun with exercises when we fall backwards towards a partner. I found this exercise a bit scary in the beginning, thinking that the partner can drop me or don't manage to catch me on time, but after couple tries I was feeling comfortable and confident with falling as we did improve our trusts. Target after this lesson was to think about more moves which require trusting each other, don't be scared and fully use the imagination.

Week 10 
2-8 March

This week we did many exercises about feeling each other, and using each other's bodies. Tried many support and balance exercises. First I thought that it is very difficult for a smaller girl to keep much bigger weight on herself, but then I realized that it is not that hard, as it depends on the posture mostly. If the person feels comfortable let's say when he stands on his fourths, then he will manage to keep much heavier weight on himself. During this week we were playing with different moves, exploring them. It was easier to create something new as we all had our partners so we were just trying everything what came to our minds and managed to create some really nice sequences

Week 11 
9-15 March

This week we tried many different lifting exercises, for example 180* rotation of the body vertically, or 360* rotation horizontally. I found them more difficult than previous ones, because they need more physical strength, but it didn't go too bad.

Week 12 
16-22 March

This week we did a harder level - lifting without one hand. Those movements were more limited comparing to lifting with both hands

Week 13 
23-29 March

Were thinking what we've done in previous weeks' lessons so we could add some new sequences. Experimenting with moves, making sequences. I found it challenging and at the same time joyful. My weakness was that I didn't have many contacts with other warriors which was needed so my target was to add more contacts

Week 14 
20-26 April

Worked really hard on team's work, where thinking and sharing ideas of how we could merge our choreography or motifs more so it could show that we all are warriors and that we are connected. Also We were adding some obvious contacts, the piece looked much more better. Target to improve was to have more different dynamics in the piece

Week 15 27.4- 3.5 

This is the last full week before the performance. This week I worked more on improving the choreography, thinking more about facial expressions, trying to connect myself more to the piece, getting warriors energy as much as I could as choreography was learn by hard by that time. Facial experience has improved, more dynamics have been added.

Performance day, 6th of May

On the performance day we had a really good time management and group management. We managed to find a space to rehearse and improve our choreography. We were free to share our ideas and our final piece appeared to be one of the strongest pieces 

Who Shall Go To The Ball and Dance Tek Warriors

Both dances are very similar, and both use a lot of contact work, connection is very strong. Both dances are very dynamic, powerful, moving, fast and audience's eye should be very fast as many things are happening at the same time. In my opinion Dance Tek Warriors dance is almost the same, but sometimes it has slower moments and it is not always very quick and sudden, movements are more spiritual, it changes dynamics more often and they have more whole groupe's sequences. Most of Tek Warriors movements are copied from Tekken game, when others are just created experimenting with contact work. First dance has more straight movements as very straight arms or very straight legs, or very straight full body - from feet to the head.

Not to mention, Who Shall Go To The Ball dance has disabled dancers which makes this dance even more incredible.

                      

Dance Tek Warriors

This dance is based on a Play Station's game Tekken

In this dance we can see different dance styles as hip hop, contemporary, martial arts and voguing. The dancers pretend to be spiritual warriors. What does spiritual mean? For me it means to relax, to feel what I want, to let all the bad energy go, get a contact with another world. It means reformation, recovery. Being with myself, feeling a peace, also being very focussed and careful.

Tek warriors dance has 7 different sections. Some of the show how spiritual warriors get power, spread  the energy. In the last section warriors lose their powers, they are exhausted.

During our classes we were doing many different exercises. We did duet work, linking with each other, trusting each other, also lifting movements. I think it is really important to develop a trust between two partners as some movements can be risky and both partners need to be sure that they can do it. Also we needed to do as many connections as possible because this dance is mainly about how connected can spiritual warriors be. Sometimes it was hard to keep physical contact all the time when we were exploring new cominations improvising but depending on each other. On the next lesson we were practising to do some supportive work but not using our hands. I found it very challenging. It was easier to keep the partner on my shoulder without using arms. Everyone had different personalities as everyone understands spiritual warriors differently. Spiritual warriors personality can be dominant, peacemaker, brave, timid and determined, focused which is mine. Also we use different dynamics, first it can be fast and then become slow, moves can also be heavy or light, sharp, sudden or fluid, this dance let's a dancer to do what they think is the best and mostly suitable.

As I can see, I really need to work on my face expressions, also my moves should be more sudden and stronger, I should remain really concentrated but make it less noticable. It would be better if I used more different movements in my improvisations, for that I need to check Tekken game to have a bigger range of movements in my head and be able to use them. Dance Tek Warriors requires perfect physicality, so I need to improve my strenghts, muscles.

On 2nd complicite lesson we all got folders with some papers inside and they were about different protests. We read one about Emily Pankhurst and women's right. After we read it we decided to do some freeze frames showing women's rights.

This freeze frame shows a woman on the floor and 3 men around are pulling her because she tried to stand out for her rights. She doesn't have a right to talk.

This freeze frame says that men are using strength to stop women. A man smiles with derision because he knows that he has much more power that the woman.

Here we can see 4 women who are protesting and are not scared of being hurt

Remembering all freeze frames there were some really strong ones and everyone really got into it.

Bob Fosse biography

Bob Fosse was an American dance, musical theatre choreographer and director, actor, screenwriter and film director. He was born in June 23, 1927 and died in September 23, 1987 at age of 60. Bob Fosse got heart attack and everyone was really saddened because of his death.

He had three wives:

             Mary Ann Niles,                      Joan McCracken                           Gwen Verdon

       who was his dance partner                    dancer                                    dancer/actress

                                               

Fosse's career begun at age of thirteen when he started "The Riff Brothers" collaboration with his friend dancer Charles Grass. They were touring many theaters and then Bob Fosse moved to New York. There he met his first wife and he appeared in "Call Me Mister" with her what brought him to the attention of  Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. He came to Hollywood when signed the MGM contract in 1953.
George Abbott hired him to choreograph "The Pajama Game" musical. This musical was a huge success and that's when he won his first Tony award.

Bob Fosse rehearsing with dancers

As an artist Bob Fosse was known for his modern dance style. He always used jazz hands, both hips and shoulder rolls appear frequently, turned-in knees, sideways shuffling and white gloved, single handed gestures. His dances were seaxual and physically demanding or even the most highly trained dancers.

Bob Fosse's choreography in "The Rich Man's Frug"

Ken Alan's tap dance performance inspired by Bob Fosse's show in "Redhead" (1959)

Links:

main - http://www.fosse.com/features/fosse_an_introduction2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Fosse#Personal_life

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/stars/bob-fosse/

Complicite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvM4hTmZvrc&index=1&list=PL739228189F349AD2

Take a look of how complicite looks, more information to be continued...

Today our dance lesson was really excited. This time it wasn't even a dance lesson, because we got a big black box from Complicite. We found many interesting and different things: a hat, an umbrella, money, a small suitcase, a video camera, a protesting paper. a speaker. All these props tell us that this is gonna be something about protests and I'm really looking forward to find out what exactly they are for, but for the first lesson we did a warm up to understand how complicite works.

WARM UP

For warm up we played games, ball games. They all where about being together and feeling each other and we needed to be very focused. For example:

In this game we were supposed to stop at the same time, then watch and after some time start to reach something in the same direction and then step back. It was really exciting when we actually did everything at the same time and at the same direction. Also we played 9 squares game and the grid. First one was more fun because we play with the ball but we still needed to stay focused otherwise you will lose, and while playing the grid you need to be really concentrated and feel if people at the same line start to move at the same time and if it is a right amount of people. These warm-up games really help to get the concentration and right focus for the lesson.