evaluation - choreography lesson 10

In today’s blog I will discuss and evaluate our group choreography as a whole and the process of creating our choreography. The main message we wanted to portray within our dance is the different characteristics of the people living inside a mental asylum and how at times they feel trapped, struggling to find freedom desperately trying to escape negative hole they are buried in. We also wanted to show how these patients struggling with mental illness are humans and do have emotions, as you will see towards the end of our piece where the music becomes a lot softer and we portray a sad emotion. At the beginning of our process we wanted to use the picture of the deserted corridor as one of the starting points for our dance. To begin with we went a bit of track forgetting about our main starting point, however after some discussions and thinking we decided to go back to this picture, presenting it at the very beginning of the piece where we make our entrance into the mental asylum. We also all researched individual people who experienced life at The Pilgrim Psychiatric centre in order for us to fully understand life within a asylum however, we decided to focus on one character in particular as we felt this would be easier to present within our work. This was Beylah Jones who was a patient that claimed she heard voices as she gradually lost her memory. There are certain moments within our dance where we link back to Baylah for example when 4 of us are swaying on the floor whilst Lucy walks around singing the lyrics of the song as if she is hearing voices. We really wanted the audience to connect with our characters and follow along our journey feeling slightly uncomfortable due to our direct eyeline and dynamic sharp gestures however also emotional as they learn to see that we are human and are not always out of control. Throughout our dance we have also used choreographic processes and devices. For example, we used the chance method for our very beginning section when we walk in as well as the translation method towards the end of our dance during the beginning of the straitjacket section. We have also incorporated devices such as retrograde, canon, repetition and unison throughout our work. I feel within this process we have faced many challenges but also have worked well as our team to create a successful finished product. At times we found it hard to ensure that the movement we were creating clearly linked to our stimulus showing are theme. As well as this one of our dancers became injured which meant we had to adjust sections of our piece for everything to flow again. Overall, I am happy with how our piece turned out and I feel we all worked well together bringing in different ideas and processes.