Friday 27th February 2015 - Cats Dance Motifs (Ongoing)

Friday 27th February 2015
Cats Dance Motifs

In todays lesson we began to learn the physical theatre dance that is going to be used in the year 13s production of Cats. Firstly we did a range of different warm ups, starting with running around the space and every time one word is mentioned we had to either turn, roll or jump. This is good for improving focus as well as warming up before a dance lesson. Another warm up we did was different stretching routines that involved planking, squatting and lunges as well as other things.

After this we got into two groups, the photographers and journalists and learnt the motif that is the basis of the physical theatre dance. After we had learnt this as  a class we had to work within our groups  to use choreographic devices to change the motif to make it different from the original. 

We used:

Fragmentation - this is where the motif is split up and put back together in a different order.

Canon - this is where the same movement is done by everyone, one after the other, this is instead of always dancing in unison. Unison is where everyone is doing the same movement at the same time. 

Levels - we incorporated different levels to create variation for example in one section alternate people go forward and down while the others go up and back. This makes the choreography look more interesting to the audience.

Before we did these motifs we had to create four freeze frames in our groups, we had to use characterisation skills to create an image that would resemble journalists.  For example we had to look as though we were all fighting each other to get a good story.  To do this we used different levels, with some people on the floor being trampled on and others jumping on top of others to show how desperate these characters are to get what they want .

Friday 6th March 2015

I did not take part in the majority if this lesson, however we ran through the motifs that we choreographed a few times and worked more on the transitions between different parts. Last rehearsal the transition between the freeze frames and the main motif was messy and unorganised, running through this today helped us to find a way to make it look better. As well as this we has one extra person in our group compared to last rehearsal, consequently we had to change our original formation to make sure that it was suitable for us to still do our parts in cannon.

Friday 20th March 2015

We had a longer rehearsal today, this meant that we could learn most of the choreography of this dance. Because of this we have more time to spend making sure that timing and our interpretive skills are the best that they can be. We learned the next section before the marching bit, I found this relatively easy to learn as it is very similar to other dances that I have done before, therefore I was help other people with parts that they found difficult. We then had to make up small solos that could be used in the next section. When doing this I used different things from all of the other sections of the dance, this is because I wanted to it to look completely different from the other parts.

Peer Assessment

- Paige

When watching Paige I thought that she had really good characterisation, she is a pap so she has to fight all of the other paps to get the best photograph of the models. I thought that she used really good facial expressions to show the audience that she was really serious. I think that she could improve her extension a little in the parts where she has to reach across the others to get to the front. If she did this then it would improve her whole performance.

When watching my own performance I self assessed...

Paige assessed me and gave me one star and one constructive feedback, her star was that i had good extension in my legs however i need to develop my facial expressions to help portray my character.

My targets are, to improve my posture and alignment especially in my back this is because at the moment i feel as though i am dancing slightly slouched. It is impo

Friday 17th April 2015

We continued to learn more of the peaks and the policles dance, in today's lesson we focused on the ending of the dance. This when we all come towards the front and come up and then in towards the runway. After This we had to go back to doing our solos, at first we were goin to go off of stage after these. However it later changed to everyone going down and then rising up and on the phrase "scattered like sheep" we all run off.

Friday 24th April 2015

This was the first time that we got to dance in the space that we were using, it was a lot smaller than the dance studio. Therefore we had to change our staging slightly instead of being more spaced out we had to dance closer together. This meant that some of our movements we had to make slightly smaller or travel less, for example when I rolled on the floor I had to travel less to make sure that I didn't bump into anyone else, which would have made the dance look messy and under rehearsed.

We also learned another motif that we were going to perform at the end of the show. There were some movements that I found to do in the space because they needed more room and sere was a lot of people dancing in a small amount of space I couldn't do them to the best of my ability, this was especially when doing the round kick. I Found the other parts of the motif easy to pick up as it they were quite simple and counts fitted to the music.