Monday 11th January 2016 - Teaching America

          In this dance rehearsal i had to teach the America dance to a few other people who hadn't had he chance to learn it at the same time as the other people involved. I started going through the male dance breaks without music so that Jordy and Eliott had a chance to pick up some of the harder dance moves, once they got these we tried it with music. When we did this they found some bits harder than others, this is because the music is quite fast and therefore it is hard to pick up. To help with this we just went through it multiple times so that they had a chance to pick it up more. Once they had learnt this we moved on to the movement in the song, to do this we first just talked through it without music and after doing this twice we put on music and ran through this more until they knew what they were doing.

          Once they had learn all of the movement we were able to focus more on the characterisation in this number, this mostly consists of reactions between the boys and the girls, as well as acting proud and confident to show the girls and the audience that we are the best. The more we ran through the song, their reactions became better and more engaging, after a few rehearsals all of the boys had more connection on stage and it was more obvious to the audience that we were a close gang. To make this song more interactive between the two sexes we decided to start mocking the girls in a jokey way when they were dancing, this helped show the audience how confident proud the Shark boys were.

          Personally i think the hardest part of teaching the boys the dance was trying to get the boys and their partners to have a relationship between them, that shows the audience that even though they like each other they do not have a problem mocking and making fun of them. when i started rehearsing this number this is the part that i found the hardest, however i think that after a few rehearsals me and Pheobe had worked on having a cheeky flirty relationship on stage that was visible to the audience.