Posts

Choreography Evaluation

  I think that the message/stimulus that we were trying to get across with our piece was very clear. First of all, I think that the formation at the very beginning of the dance that was supposed to represent the brain was a success as we were all in this kind of rounded ‘clump’, moving at the same time, thus giving sense of togetherness. Furthermore, the fact that we returned to these exact positions at the end of the dance, really portrayed the idea that everything had gone back to ‘normal’. (whatever normal is). However, 4 people arrived to their positions in the ‘clump’ later than the others, confused, reluctant and flinching. This made clear the fact that although everything seemed to be ‘normal’ on the surface, what we had been fighting throughout the whole piece was still in fact there in the background and it will never fully go away. It will just be suppressed. Something else that was made very clear was the use of split focus. The two groups mirroring each others exact mov...
Post a Comment
Read more

Analysing a peice of choreography from Justin Peck

Justin Peck's 'Rotunda' (excerpt)   (Sadler's Wells, 2020) I have chosen to look at a neo-classical piece choreographed by Justin Peck. Justin Peck is an American ballet dancer and became resident choreographer of the New York City Ballet in 2014 (M. Hanson, 2016). This particular piece I have chosen is 25 minutes long, but the snippet I have been looking at is a small duet. The composer for this piece is Nico Muhly, a neo-minimalist composer who's music is often very busy with “Complex rhythms that bubble along”  (Harss, 2020). This music suits the movement very well because I also found it to be quite busy with no real sense of direction. It almost came across to me as though each dancer is relying on one another, and that without one person nothing would work. This could be linked back to our choreography piece as some of the formations would not fully come across and therefore show the message is as little as one person was missing. This also gives a sense of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Breaking down a peice form Hofesh Shechter

Hofesh Shechter - Clowns   I have chosen this piece by Shechter because there are some similarities between it and my section of the choreography piece. The first similarity is the formation at the beginning. The dancers are placed in such a way that it gives a sense of unity. This is because they are all in a group quite close together. At the beginning of our choreography piece, we also start in a group similar to this that is supposed to represent the brain.    I think this piece of choreography is supposed to represent the fact that all can be well on the outside, but we cannot hide out true selves for long and eventually they show. This relates to the part where the dancers are all moving forward in a civilised way but quickly fall into ‘crooked-backed, gnarly gallops’(Winship, 2020).    The music used for this piece was written by Shechter himself and is a ‘bounding drumbeat on unflagging loop’ (Winship, 2020). This is accompanied by the repetitive gallops...
Post a Comment
Read more

Problems and solutions within the choreographic process

  One of the problems we have faced so far in our choreographic process is pathways and collisions.  From 1 minute on during the bad memory section, there is a point where we have 3 counts to get from a diagonal line into lines of three, four and two. However, the places in the diagonal line which were in height order did not compliment the the places of the next formation. We couldn't change the diagonal line as there was only one true line of height but we did change the places of the next formation by swapping myself and Olivia around. This meant we could travel to our places with ease and no collisions     Another problem we faced was the time that it took to teach pieces of choreography. As people were teaching their sections of choreography, issues that they would potentially face were not considered and therefore it took more time in class to resolve the issues that could have been prevented beforehand. This means overall we would have less time until the asse...
5 comments
Read more

How I choeographed and Adapted my section of the peice

My allocated section of the piece to choreograph was the first 42 seconds. This section, according to the music represents a sense of normality that then leads to chaos as there are many different elements in the music. This could be related back to the stimulus quite well as there are many emotions all in the same place. Furthermore, the split focus really compliments the idea that there is a lot of confusion and maybe multiple identities. One of the challenges/issues that came with this was spacing. During the section where everyone is moving as their own emotion, the idea of confusion was successfully portrayed, however there were some clashes between dancers. To combat this problem we had to adapt the spacing and swap places between dancers so that we could minimise crossing pathways.   The creative process behind mine and Portia’s section was very much all within our class time. We allocated everyone their emotions and then gave them 5 minutes to create some movements specific...
5 comments
Read more

Choreographic Devices

  We have now started to choreograph our piece as a group. One of the choreographic devices we have used so far is formation. Our piece begins with a formation on     centre stage. This is meant to resemble the brain which is the focal point of our stimulus. We then proceed to all move out of this formation using pathways, thus representing the different emotions. Now we have created a split focus effect as everyone is moving in deferent ways, which is another choreographic device. Once we have all separated, we were planning to carry on with the split focus but by using levels. A group will be dancing centre stage on a higher level whilst surrounded by everybody else on a lower level with their individual movements.   During the choreography process for this section many decisions were made based on the last movement. For example, when everybody splits from the initial formation using pathways, naturally it lead to split focus which we then incorporated into the nex...
4 comments
Read more

Structuring our Piece

Image
What is the structure of our choreographic piece and how did we develop it?   During our choreography class, we all as a group came together to discuss how we should structure our choreographic piece. Firstly, we listened to our chosen piece of music and took note of the elements in the song. For example, the instrument/s used at that time, the pauses and the tempo. Once we were aware of all these elements and when they happened we could create a sort of story line for our piece and give it an initial structure. After we had created this initial structure/story line, we could decide who was going to choreograph certain parts. Overall this makes the choreography process easier as everyone can take time outside of class to work on their assigned part and then bring it back into class to teach to everyone.    What are we going to have to do to fulfil the structure we have created? To fulfil this structure/story line we have created, we are going to have to carefully craft pi...
4 comments
Read more