Tuesday 5th May 2015 - CATS Evaluation

Tuesday 5th May 2015
CATS Evaluation

Designer In The Jelicle Ball - During the jelicle ball I was a designer, this meant that I had to stand on the stage blocks holding my folder. I decided to have a confident attitude compared to some of the others who were shy and nervous. This meant that i had to use facial expressions to keep an expression that shows the audience that i have no nerves at all. We then had to walk up to Deuteronomy one at a time and show her our designs, when doing this i opened my folder and pointed at specific things, although this was part of the scene it was in the background. Therefore we ha to make sure that our movements were not too big and consequently draw attention from the main performers, as a result of this we had to keep our movements at a reasonable size. When walking i made sure that kept my head up and held my folder our on my arm, this also shows the audience that i am confident. We also had to sing in the ensemble parts, in rehearsals i found it harder to learn the "practical cats, dramatical cats..." part as there is no set tune to follow and there are a lot of different words to remember in order. To make sure that this was okay we had extra singing rehearsals where we just continually ran through it so that we would be able to remember. I thought that my singing in these ensemble parts were good as i knew the pitching, words and rhythm well so i could sing it confidently, i felt as though my diction was good especially when singing "cats" as i was making sure that i annunciated my "t"s. However i think that my breath control could have been better so that i wouldnt have to take so many breaths in the "practical cats, dramatical cats..." section, this would have made my performance smoother.

Journalist In Peaks And The Policles - I thought that this dance looked better in rehearsals as we had enough space in the dance studio, compared too the theatre where we were in a more confined space. However i thought that it looked okay, because of the spacing we had to change our tablos, as we didnt have enough time to change to our original places, this still looked good as we all kept to our original aims which was to fight to get the front so that we can reach the catwalk. Because of the change, this looked different on the first night compared to the second. I found it difficult when doing the motifs in our groups either side of the runway as when i had to roll there was a wall right next to me so i had to change my direction to make sure that i didnt bump into the wall or anyone else. Then we had to change into our partner bits, this wasnt as good as in rehearsals because my partner who was supposed to come behind me, didnt therefore this made it look like we were missing a person in the dance. We then had to sing "there are dogs out of every nation..." this wasnt as good as in rehearsals as well because in both shows some people didnt sing and therefore wasnt a strong and loud as it could have been. On the other hand i thought that i sung this well, i could have improved it by rehearsing more whilst dancing at the same time, this is because when i started dancing i noticed that my singing became weaker. In the first show i was supposed to move to the front for our solos, however i couldnt get through and i ran out of time so i had to stay in the same place to do it, on the second show i had enough time so i was able to move in time. I thought that when we did the barks, they were in time and were sung well, as a class we kept on the correct pitch as well as this i thought my extension was good as i fully stretched out my arms in this section. I also thought that my extension also good when we had to sink down and then rise up when Sophie was singing to us. As well as this i think that i had good dynamic variation especially when we finished fighting with each other, we were all supposed to freeze, i thought that my transition from that was quite quick and therefore looked good. At the end when Sophie sung "scattered like sheep" i thought that we all ran off quickly and therefore this didnt drag on the transition between the two scenes.

Singing And Dancing At The End - In the last part if the show i thought that the second night went better than the first this is because on the first show some of the ensemble singing at the end wasnt good as not everyone knew all of the words. However inbetween the two shows we has a singing rehearsal where we learnt all of the words and kept on running through them to make sure that we all knew what we were singing. In the second show our singing was all in time with each other and everyone was in time and on pitch. The dance wasnt as good as it could have been as there were so many people dancing in a small space. In the finale the year 12s were at the back doing a simple repeated motif, i thought that i performed this well as i used over the top facial expressions that fitted with the theme of the song. As well as this i fully extended my arms and kept my eyeline and focus up making my projection better.