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/