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.