Thursday 17th December 2015 - America Singing Rehearsal

     In todays lesson we focused on the singing on America, this is because we had mainly rehearsed the dancing. We want our level of singing to be a high as our dancing, therefore it was important that we work a lot on this more to perfect this. After we had warmed up we just sang through the song without movement, this is so we could focus on intonation and articulation rather than just characterisation and performance. This was important so that we are singing the correct notes and our timing with the band. This was the first time we ha sung through with the piano rather thank just singing along to the original version whilst dancing. Although this was a good way to learn the words and the timing it didn't help us technically develop the singing in this number.


      After we were more familiar with the pitching we decided to try doing this with the movement and dance, it took us a few times to run through this as we were not used to singing certain phrases and pitches. However once we had practiced I thought that we had a better idea of what we were doing. On the other hand I felt as though it was difficult for me to concentrate on the characterisation, movement and singing at the same time, this is because some of the parts and melodies were different in this version of the song rather than the one we had previously been using and therefore some things were not like we had learnt.


     Also as part of this rehearsal we worked on characterisation, this is especially important for this number as the point of the song is that it is a battle between the boys and the girls and therefore we have to act as though there is friction between us. We worked through each line of the song so that we reacted appropriately to what was being said. One example of this is where there is a section where the boys and the girls each have a line and it is an argument between them. Our last line in this section is "If you're all white in America" this suggests that there is a racist explanation to why the Puerto Ricans are being treated the way they are, this is performed in  different way to the last line which is "If you can fight in America" this is because this is said more in a comical way compared to the idea of being discriminated against because of their race.


     For me personally after this rehearsal I feel more confident about the rest of the rehearsal process for this number, as we have now looked at both the singing and the dancing. As well as this is we have focused on characterisation, which has helped me in-between the dance breaks and choreographed section to keep my character even when not specifically doing anything.