Year 2: Group Choreography

  Week 8: This week we focused on the sections that include our sticks: the ending of Coming Together and the Countdown.  Before starting, we watch "Sutra" by Sidilarbi to give us a starting point for our movement. The skilled Monks inspired our ideas as we seek to move with the same control. We decided to use sticks as props as it helps the audience visualise the world we are trying to create.  They are used to represent guns, barbed wire and barriers to cross before going into battle.  In addition, they are a way for us to include some form of contact work with the current COVID restrictions. They add an extension to our group patterns and symmetry as well as sharp dynamics and sound effects. Our stick work aims to display skill, control and unity as we navigate them into our movements, giving the impression of mastery... but this will only heighten the contrasting impact war has on the best of bodies. Repetition is used at the start and end of the Coming ...

 Week 7: We met week 7 with enthusiasm and a clear idea of what we wanted to achieve in the lesson. We quickly finished the music selection and started working on the Coming Together section. This was a very enjoyable process; a strong work ethic was established as we fed off each other’s ideas and were open-minded as we experimented with the choreographic method, improvisation. With all members of the group focused on teamwork and cooperation, our rate of productivity was high – all were able to contribute ideas as well as listen to the thoughts of others.  It was in this lesson that we decided to adapt the original Coming Together section as we felt our message wasn't being expressed to the degree we wanted.  Previously only representing the unity of an army, we adapted it to give an insight into the characters and personalities of the recruits. We see training taking place, demonstrated through movements such as leopard crawls and salutes, but we also express ...

Week 6: During this week’s session, we worked in our groups on details that needed refining. We started by choosing music, taking the musicality, tempo and dynamics highly into account. We considered: does this music generate the same level of emotion we are trying to produce?  Is there a clear connection between potential movement and the music? Will the music enhance or diminish the impact of our dancing? We then reviewed the Marching motif started in week 4. We rearranged the patterns and placement; added and developed parts to bring more clarity and purpose; found stronger dynamics and inserted pauses to give a more robotic, characterless impression.  With our motif expanded and developed, we then performed it to the class. Only after this performance, dancing to the sound of Nathan’s counting, did we have the idea to simply use a metronome of 120 bpm as the ‘music’ for this section combined with his counting.   We also concluded that we wanted to make certain p...

Week 5: Structure and Gestures  The lesson started with a talk about the importance of Structure: to know where we are heading, to use movements with purpose and to review carefully what we want the audience to notice.  Choreography - Creating and Developing Dance Performance  by  Kate Flatt , was referred to and the words " establish the world you like the audience to enter"  resonated with me. The first task was to create our structure. Seven sections were created: 1. Marching 2. Coming Together 3. Countdown 4. Chaos 5. Fear 6. Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder 7. One-Minute Silence  Each section is of importance and, as they develop, we see people becoming ever more fearful and damaged. We are revealing the rising internal distress that will eventually consume. Marching is simply the organised, and impersonal front where an individual works only as part of a group. Once completed, the reality of war is revealed. The audience gradually develops a deeper conn...

 Week 4: Adding Depth to our Stimulus: Today’s class started by further exploring our chosen stimulus - War. Our research of key historical figures pointed to a clear correlation between them all: the reason they had gained notoriety was because they had acted in either a rebellious, heroic or maverick manner. With this in mind, we formed one of our key concepts: soldiers are individuals. ‘Army’ is defined as: "an organized military force equipped for fighting on land/ a large number of people or things." (Oxford English Dictionary)   We can view an ‘army’ as a robotic mass of fearless people; 'death caused by War' as figures on paper.     We can, unintentionally, become numb to this.   Our intention, therefore, is to portray these people as individuals, with real lives, emotions and ambitions. War may bring about some positive outcomes, but the aftermath of violence is far reaching.   The aftershock takes various forms: life-long grief and...

The formation of our ideas: At the end of our third week, we were placed in the group with whom we would perform our 10 minute assessment piece in late November. Our team of 6 wanted to choose a stimulus that would enable us to: express a powerful theme/narrative, convey a fundamental message, and encourage the viewer to reflect upon the ideas being communicated through the dance. We all agreed that, whatever the theme, the real aim was to galvanise a new sense of understanding through the art of movement.  With this criteria in mind, we contemplated various themes. We questioned, what had been present/persisted throughout history.  What problems had overshadowed us despite the development of humanity? Thoughts included: Women's and Human Rights, environmental problems and poverty.  All these themes prompted rich and diverse ideas, however, we ended up settling for a topic that we knew we could easily track throughout the human timeline, that   has ...

Lesson 3: Translation Task  Today, we explored a new choreographic technique - Translation. The first exercise started by standing in a line in our groups. One person from each group was privately given a word as a stimulus to create a small phrase that lasted for one count of eight. These words included; flow, alone, inside, gentle, sticky etc. The other group members turned away from the choreographing dancer.  The next step was for the second person in line to watch the eight counts - they saw this performed just twice. They then performed this to the third person - who saw this performed just once.  Simultaneously then, the first and last person performed the routine they had in mind. This process was repeated three more times whilst swapping the roles of each person.  More often than not, like Chinese Whispers, the original and final version of the motif was very different! After establishing our new phrases, the rest of the lesson was dedicated to constructing ...

Lesson 2: Chance Method  Today we explored a different method of creating movement - the Chance Method. In advance, groups were asked to bring in any stimulus - we decided on a house plant.  We started the lesson working in small groups, going around at a fast pace annotating our ideas on each stimulus. Unlike our session the previous week, we did not have others'  thoughts as an immediate source of influence. The class then came together to compare and contrast ideas.  We then picked three words we found compelling. Our chosen words were: Trust, Individuality and Rooted. With these in mind, we created four separate movements for each of the three words. This resulted in a total of 12 individual movements, numbered 1-12. A random 12-sided dice generator was then used to form a pattern that included all the numbers. During this process we gained an extra three numbers in our sequence from the repetition of the digits 10, 9 and 6.   The sequence: 1 , 11 , 6 ,...

 Lesson 1: Art Political Tool  Today's class was designed to exercise our interpretive skills, develop our ability to work efficiently in a team and test our creativity when given an open field of possibilities. Six picture-stimuli were given, all sharing a common theme: political disruption. The first task, in small groups, was to spend three minutes per stimulus annotating the page with our thoughts, opinions and questions. The time pressure made us operate rapidly, pushing us to use our imaginations and creativity.  However, maintaining momentum became more challenging as the pages began to fill. At this point, we had to work especially hard to look at the later pictures in a different light from the groups before. As the annotations increased, we were able to fill in questions asked by other group members and develop their ideas. This task allowed me to witness the expansion of ideas that can come from collective collaboration. After the annotation task, each group wa...