week nine, developing our final section, refinement and performance

 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 of arms stretching out across the stage. To improve this section, I once again believe that we should work on our timing and expand the reaches even further to create a more dramatic impact.

Initial phrase I experimented with: https://youtu.be/vYzaKkAcQkY

Final Section: https://youtu.be/n3ZyeFNsBdw

This week was also time for us to develop our second piece of music and the 'individuality' section. To do this, we began by improvising to the first minute of the music and then choosing phrases that worked well for us, developing movement in an authentic way and also reflecting the intention of this section of the piece. By choreographing in this way, we were able to quickly generate movement, whilst also maintaining a focus on our theme, as we discovered our natural, individual styles. Filming my improvisation and watching it back to identify unique and flattering movements for my body specifically will definitely be a method that I would use in the future because I found it to be an effective, organic and efficient way of working.

Improvised entrance: https://youtu.be/6D9MzTZ_XMo

We also watched more of Crystal Pite's 'Solo Echo', taking inspiration from her expansive arm lines and fluid, sweeping movement across the stage to create an intertwining 'waltz section' (Ballet BC, 2020). This section incorporated our gestures such as the 'restriction' gesture and showed how humans can still function in harmony whilst embracing their originality, winding in and out of the circle to show our connection to one another before breaking free again, similar to the piece of string that the figures held in the image which formed our stimulus idea. 

illustration by Lena Macka

Although this section was difficult to count, using Pite's free and unrestricted style as inspiration helped us to feel able to truly let go and try to seamlessly blend into each movement. Her work is also very captivating in its physicality and rawness and so we wanted to include moments of breath and release to show our vulnerability when breaking down the barriers of social norms. To finish our final section, we break away into solos, finally escaping and dancing freely as ourselves. At the moment we don't have a clear focus for the purpose behind our movement in this final section, so next week I think it will be important to give each member of the group a different form of inspiration behind their solo, to ensure that our ending has the most engaging and lasting impact on the audience. 

'Waltz' section: https://youtu.be/HtkA2CMgDuY

Further into the week, we also performed our completed piece to the class and received some feedback, which can be seen below. I found this to be an eye-opening task, as it helped us to identify areas of our piece that need to be worked on that we hadn't initially noticed, as well as successful areas. This has helped us to find some clear sections to tackle in our final week of rehearsals, as well as elements to continue to incorporate elsewhere. It also gave us an insight into the nerves and pressure that come with performing and I found this to be a really useful experience for preparing me for our assessment.

References:

• Macka, L., n.d. [Illustration]. Gillespie, I., 2019. Recognising The Tribe & Influencer Culture. [online] The Hemp Temple. Available at: <https://hemptemple.org/blogs/news/recognising-the-tribe-influencer-culture> [Accessed 11 October 2020].
• Ballet BC, 2020. Solo Echo - Crystal Pite (Virtual Archive, Ballet BC, 2015). [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IId60ukhApw> [Accessed 19 November 2020].