Daisy Stonier Second Year Choreography

Reflecting back on the start of this module, our aim was to create a piece which explored 'conformity within society', showing how we influence one another to make certain choices or subconsciously abide by the decisions of the majority. However, we wanted our ultimate message to be to encourage individuality and project the freedom that can be felt when exploring your identity and the beauty in having variation amongst us as humans. We set ourselves these three questions to focus on and to help us develop our ideas on this theme: 'Why are we influenced by those around us and how does that influence happen?', 'Are we fearful of individuality?', and 'How can we be free of conformity within society and why should we want to break away from it?'. I feel as though we have explored each of these questions in the different sections of our choreography, starting with the beginning of our piece where we demonstrate conformity through canon and regimented movemen...

 Our first choreographer that we took inspiration from was Akram Khan and his piece Zero Degrees. Zero Degrees combines 'complex Indian kathak dance with the speed and precision of contemporary movements', to explore the concept of duality and the blurry borders in which one thing transforms into the next  (Project / Zero Degrees, 2019) . It uses highly intricate and captivating gestural phrases to create what the Daily Telegraph describe as a 'hugely moving and visionary piece' about the fragility of human life  (AX1 Entertainment, 2008) . This gestural movement became a frequent feature of our piece, repeating our symbols of 'restriction', 'influence' and 'pressure' to reinforce the emotions and ideas that we wanted to evoke. Looking closer at his choreographic process, Khan is an innovative choreographer, who tells compelling and thought-provoking stories through dance. His ambitious approach to choreography is evident in the unique methods he...

 This week our group received feedback from our teacher, giving us some ideas for areas of focus to improve upon our choreography so far. Here are the main points we were given: To begin with, we focused on refining our timing and execution of each movement, going through the counts and dynamics to ensure their was unity amongst us in the first section. This is a very important element to our piece, as we need to show an obvious contrast between the moments of conformity and breaking free into individuality, however we feel as though this will develop more with practice and repetition. We also developed a new section from a small phrase of movement that I tried, with the idea of having an inner conflict and battle within your mind when attempting to bravely show your personality despite what everyone else is doing. To show an ongoing struggle, we used canon of running forward and reaching out to the audience, and used different levels in the group to create an eye-catching patterns...

 Between last Monday's and this week's session, me and my group wanted to focus on making a great amount of progress in the length of our choreography, to leave us enough time for refinement and improvement towards the end of our rehearsals. Over the weekend, me and Megan used the chance method in order to devise a new section of choreography. The idea behind this section was to depict the anxiety and stress we may feel as humans when trying to fit in with the pressures of society. Our movements are inspired by feelings of breathlessness, shaking and sweaty palms, which are common symptoms of anxiety. The repetition of these movements shows the fear that grows upon us in order to conform and follow the crowds, rather than break free as individuals, and us falling to the ground depicts how mentally draining this can be. Our use of gestures in this phrase, and also throughout our whole choreography, has taken inspiration from Akram Khan's 'zero degrees' - a piece expl...

 In today's session we gave ourselves three main areas of focus: polishing and refining our entrance, developing our 'connection' motif in the formation that we experimented with in week four and putting together the choreography that me and Megan missed before half term. We have also decided on what music we would like to use and therefore needed to focus on transforming and adjusting elements of our choreography to fit the dynamics and tempo of the pieces we have chosen. Although we have the idea of an episodic structure, our piece will also have two opposing sections of conformity and individuality, which will be clearly defined by the striking contrast between our two music choices. The first piece we have chosen is 'everything must change' by Olafur Arnalds, with it's harsh, almost menacing rhythm reflecting the pressurising and forceful social restrictions within society. The second piece is 'Clouds, The mind on the (Re)Wind' by Ezio Bosso, which w...