Lesson 6 choreography

In this lesson we began to develop our choreography piece. We started off by reviewing the material we created last lesson which lead us on to continue with the process of producing different formations. When thinking of ideas for new formations I personally find it helpful to draw little diagrams in my notebook, jotting down dots for the individual dancers and then creating different patterns such as diagonals, lines and triangles etc. Once we had thought of formations for the next two phrases, we then began to link the material together by creating transitions to make everything flow. When creating these transitions, we tried to make sure that every movement had a clear relationship towards our stimulus of mental asylums and the characteristics of people inside. We created one section in which we are kneeling on the floor in a triangle formation facing stage right where we sway back and forth with our head facing front and our eyes fixed on the audience almost as if we are in a trance. We complete this section 3 times. I feel this really portrays our stimulus as it is quite creepy and almost as if we are in no control of our bodies which we could relate to perhaps some of the characteristics of a person inside a mental institute, The fixed eyeline also helps to present this idea. As well as creating choreography we also looked at some music ideas where we came across a few pieces in which we were drawn to in particular such as “Through the roof of your mouth” by Ben frost, “The end of the world” by Skeeter Davis and “Tip Toe through the tulips with me” by Tiny Tim. When listening to these pieces of music we thought the first piece created quite a scary atmosphere with the repetitive monotonal sounds and minor tune. And then pieces three and four contrast from the first song as they have vocals within them singing in quite an old-fashioned way. We thought it would be effective mixed these songs together. At the end of the lesson we performed our material to the rest of the class and received feedback. For example, Nathan mentioned that we need to maintain the fixed facial expression throughout the whole dance and keep up the dynamic energy. Another bit of feedback was that you could clearly see a link between our movement and stimulus. Here is a video of the choreography we performed. https://youtu.be/FqEJ5-fCJ-g