Final Performance and Evaluation

 Now we have completed our 10-minute group dance, I’m going to reflect on the choreographic process from the past 10 weeks.

 

We intended for our dance to emphasise the idea of individuality in society by using conformity as our stimulus. We wanted the audience to feel like it is ok to be yourself and overcome the pressures of today’s society. I personally feel this has been achieved and from the feedback we have received previously, our intention is clear to the audience! 

 

After our performance last week, we received a lot of valuable feedback which will help us achieve these objectives even more. The main areas we are going to improve on are transitions, timing, spacing and making the dynamics sharper and more powerful to add impact. We have already started to work on this by changing transitions between sections as many of them were just walking which ruined the flow of the piece and wasn’t very interesting. We have now incorporated transitions using canon and our developed gestures to ensure all movement has a purpose and links to the stimulus. We have also decided to make repeated motifs bigger and more expansive to show motif development and by doing this it shows the idea of freedom compared to the movements being very structured and precise. We also adapted the duet section, so they flow better together. The duets now start how the duet before it ends, this means that each duet is linked. We also decided to stay on stage rather than walking off as there wasn’t any meaning behind us walking off. Now we perform a sequence of our gestures, one person will influence the change in gesture, and everyone follows to show conformity. This week we also decided to add more unison before we break off into our solos at the end. We added in jumps, sharper dynamics and quick changes in direction to add a highlight and build a climax in this point in the dance. The music starts to build up in speed, so this movement really compliments the music and adds drama before we all separate for our solos! As it is our final unison section it emphasises the idea of breaking free to be individual. We saw an image from Crystal Pite's 'Solo Echo' (shown below) which we used as inspiration to show the idea of breaking free.

Final Performance Evaluation

We have now performed our group dance for our assessment, I'm really happy with how it went, we adapted the spacing for the larger space and really came together as a group to pull it off! I was particularly happy with how we all performed with our faces, it really accentuated the emotions was wanted to convey and the idea of freedom at the end! 

Overall, we have worked really well as a group and always manage to overcome any issues quickly and are openminded to everyone opinions. I’m also really happy with the final piece as I think it conveys all the themes we intended it to! One difficulty we had while choreographing was finding the time to rehearse, we overcame this by being productive when we had free time at home, choreographing as part of our household which helped us create a quartet and a duet. We also used our breaks and any free studio time to rehearse all together. On occasions it was difficult to stay on task and create material that was relevant to the stimulus. Due to this, we referred back to the techniques we learnt in earlier weeks and ensured that we had used our motifs and gestures to ensure our movement always linked back to the stimulus to help get our intention across to the audience.

Practitioner Evaluation

 Throughout the choreographic process, my group have drawn inspiration from different practitioners, using their works to create movement of a similar style, how they’ve used their dancers, the processes they use, how they work and the impact they have on their audience.

 

‘Solo Echo’ is a piece created by Crystal Pite. It was inspired by “Lines for Winter” which is a poem by Mark Strand, the dance is meant to “express something essential about acceptance and loss” (Solo Echo | The Göteborg Opera, n.d.). Pite also takes a lot of inspiration from world crises and music. Her works are very socially aware and have a purpose behind them. In an interview she did with the Royal Opera House she mentioned that she starts with the music first and then creates movement to the music. This is different to how we created our group dance as initially we started creating movement based around our stimulus and added music after. However, we have taken inspiration from the social issue of conformity within society, albeit, not as serious as some issues Pite references to such as the refugee crisis in ‘Flight Pattern’. Within ‘Solo Echo’, Pite uses a range of choreographic devices such as canon, unison and repetition. We also use these choreographic devices in our piece as they’re effective at showing motif development. Our piece also features group work, duets and solos which is also shown in ‘Solo Echo’. Pite’s work has a lot of contact between the dancers and the uses the idea of one person influencing another person’s movement. We used this idea in one of our duet sections where we’ve used contact with our partner to influence the other’s ‘reaction’. The movements are really expansive and inspired us to use a floor work section to add levels into our dance.  

 

The other piece we looked at was ‘Zero Degrees’ by Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. The short excerpt I watched featured a duet with two men, they perform a sequence of hand gestures in unison while using spoken word. This really inspired us within our dance, using the idea of hand gestures to emphasise the emotion and stimulus in our dance. There is a section where we repeat three hand gestures which show the idea of sweaty palms, anxiety and a pacing heart. This is contrasting to ‘Solo Echo’ as in the video I watched, there wasn’t any clear gestural movements, it was made up of large, expansive movements. Later on in ‘Zero Degrees’ the men are on their feet repeating a sequence of movements multiple times and also perform two separate motifs which are complementary to each other while using different spacing on the stage. Similarly, repetition was used in ‘Solo Echo’ during one of the duets and also in my group piece. We use it throughout our group while developing the motifs to show the idea of individuality. Unison is used in all three pieces which is effective at showing themes within a dance which is demonstrated in our choreography by showing the idea of conformity. Similarly to Pite’s work, ‘Zero Degrees’ has a narrative. It is based on a journey which Akram Khan had from Bangladesh to India where he had been sharing the train carriage with a dead man(Mackrell, 2005). The most prominent themes in the piece are love, lonliness, life and death, very similar to the themes of love, acceptance and loss in ‘Solo Echo’. The impact the works have on the audience are quite different. I personally feel that ‘Zero Degrees’ is very hard-hitting, tense and emotional. This is achieved really well by the use of spoken word and gestural movements which makes it seem like the two men have lived through the same traumas. In contrast, I feel that ‘Solo Echo’ is open to interpretation regarding the narrative. The themes of loss are clear from the movements in the duets as it seems like they are ‘fighting’ for acceptance. In my choreography, the impact on the audience is to show the idea of individuality and breaking free from the pressures of society, initially this may leave some questions, however they are answered by the end of the piece, as they are in ‘Zero Degrees’. 

 

References

Mackrell, J., 2005. Zero Degrees, Sadler's Wells, London. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/jul/13/dance> [Accessed 21 November 2020].

 

Göteborgs Operan. n.d. Solo Echo | The Göteborg Opera. [online] Available at: <https://en.opera.se/repertoire-for-dance-tour/solo-echo/> [Accessed 21 November 2020].

 

The Royal Opera House, 2017. Crystal Pite Rehearses Her New Piece With The Royal Ballet. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipnL4TeIbzs> [Accessed 21 November 2020].

Week 9 - Choreography Performance

 We have now completed our 10-minute group choreography piece based on our stimulus of conformity. We made a lot of decisions for the group this week, using feedback we had received in previous weeks and from issues we noticed while watching our videos back. We have made a few changes, for example, developing sequences which have been repeated to make them more expansive and dynamic to add a contrast to the original undeveloped motif, we also adapted some formations to increase interest and variety. Additionally, we rearranged some sections and removed movements which didn’t work, to ensure the piece flows well and clearly shows our intention of conformity vs. individuality.

We used an improvisation-based task to generate some movements for the solos which are featured at the end of the dance to show the idea of individuality. However, we use movements from our initial entrance motif just to link the piece back to the stimulus. We have adapted a section so it now references a social experiment which a woman walks into a waiting room full of 'patients' who are actors. They all stand at the sound of the beep. After three beeps she joined in even though she didn't know why they were doing it. As more people entered the waiting room, they joined in too until there were no actors left. This shows the idea of conformity as the people stood up on the beep even though they had no idea why they were doing it, but everyone else was, so they did too! We demonstrate this idea by kneeling on the floor then standing again, with people gradually joining in until we are all doing it.

 

This week we also performed the final group peice in front of our classmates and teacher to receive feedback. We were told that the formations were pleasing to the eye and that using accumulation, unison and embellishment was effective in developing the idea of conformity and individuality. They liked that we didn’t always have every group member dancing all the time, for example our use of duets, quartets and solos. One improvement we need to work on is extending mine and Caitlyn’s duet at the end of the dance, to satisfy the audience as we walk away from each other. Furthermore, we still need to ensure clarity in our timing and spacing. Overall, we've used a lot of different choreographic processes such as the translation task and the chance method which is clearly shown throughout the dance. Motif development is also clearly demonstrated within our piece and the use of inspiration from choreographers such as Crystal Pite and Wayne McGregor. At times it has been quite difficult to arrange our choreography however by using these techniques it really helped us generate relevant material for our stimulus and I feel that we've worked really well as a group. 

Week 8 Choreography

 This week we managed to complete five minutes of our choreography. We have created a few new sections which we used some of the choreographic methods we learnt in the first three weeks. One section was created using the chance method using 3 words; fear, passive follower and anxiety/panic. From this we created 3 motifs and put them into a randomised order to create a sequence. The idea behind this section was to depict the anxiety and pressure people may feel to try and fit into society. The movements are inspired by the feeling of shaking hands sweaty palms. Another section was created using the translation task from week 3 but in pairs rather than the whole group. We used the same words from our gestures (influence, pressure, nonchalance, uncertainty, restraint, judgement) and created a phrase based on a word with a 5-minute limit. We showed our motif to our partner once, who then copied the motif as best as they could however there were some changes due to the nature of the task. I then learnt my partners motif to have 2 original and 2 translated motifs. Each pair then developed these motifs into a duet. This has been really effective for our group by using our previous choreographic knowledge and incorporating movements which link back to our stimulus and ensure it is clear to the audience. I think using this task worked really well for our choreography as the translated motifs show the idea of individuality as that are different from the original motif. As the motifs are performed as duets, it shows that individuality within society is allowed.

 

We have finalised our music choices and started to edit them. We are using “Everything Must Change’ by Olafur Arnalds for the beginning of our dance as it starts out with a regimented beat which really works with our stimulus as we are trying to 'conform’. As the song goes on there slower parts and highlights which we have been able to accentuate to show the idea of individuality. The second piece of music is “Clouds, The mind on the (re)wind” by Ezio Bosso. This piece is freeing and light which shows a contrast to the first piece of music and further helps show our intention as the second half of our dance is showing individuality and freedom compared to the rigidity and unison in the first piece.

Week 7 choreography

This week we worked on the beginning of our dance, specifically the entrance. We enter the space by doing the ‘influence’ motif from week 5. We have developed this motif by adding accumulation, so each person joins with the motif as they enter into the space. We travel horizontally across the room in a straight line from stage left to stage right. We also added canon into the motif and the section after. We do a sequence of turns to face different directions which is influenced by one person and ripples down the line. We've used accumulation and canon in this first section because it's very effective at helping us demonstrate our stimulus of conformity. Using these choreographic devices at the start of the dance clearly shows the idea of fitting in with the standards of today’s society as each person joins in by copying the motif, following the person at the front of the line.

 

We also created a new section of the dance which will follow on from the entrance. We walk from upstage left to downstage right in a clump formation and one person at a time will do a movement different from what the rest of the group is doing. This looks really effective and also shows the idea of conformity and individuality. Our classmates told us that the intention of the piece is very clear to the audience however we need to ensure that the spacing is even when we are walking. Next week we will work on a transition between the two sections and clean up the spacing to make it more uniform.