Monday 14th September 2015 - West Side Story Prolouge

West Side Story Prolouge Choreography Ideas




In today's lesson we started to learn a phrase for the prologue of West side story, this was more of a dance rather than physical theater which we had previously looked at. We started with a step ball change followed by a step turn, we repeated this three times, at first i found this difficult to keep in time with the music as it is quite fast, as well as this, this travelling motif has to be kept low as well as not travelling far, this is because there isn't much space as there were so many of us doing it at the same time. We then had to kick out with our left leg whilst also bringing our arms up, this was also difficult to keep in time, to make it so that it would fit we decided that we shouldn't kick as high as it takes less time and therefore would be more likely to keep in time with the music. Also because of timing there was also another part of the motif that we had to cut out, when doing this we just changed turn back to a step, this also made it more simpler as there was less footwork. After doing this we learn another phrase which is used for the beginning of the dance, this is also another travelling motif. However i found this one easier than the previous one. We then added this one to the one we learnt earlier, the more we ran through this i felt more confident and therefore performed this better. 

We then looked into different types of contact work, we focused on two different types of lifts, these are shown in the video above. I chose to work with Bethany as we had previously worked with lifts before and therefore we had trust in each other, as well as this she is taller than me so it is easier to do some of these. When starting doing this we had some trouble as we could not work out exactly what we needed to do, however we then worked with another pair who had fully completed the lift and therefore they helped us so that we could be abe to do it.