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.
Very good blog post Mhairi! I have enjoyed reading it. Have you thought of or received and intrinsic feedback? And if so how will you implement it into your choreography?
ReplyDeleteThank you Erin. Some intrinsic feedback we have was similar to the extrinsic feedback we received. We were aware of the timing and spacing issues so we were able to identify these issues to correct them! On reflection, we also realised some areas which didn't work, for example the duet section didn't flow smoothly and some of the transitions. This has allowed us to work on these and adapt the movement before the final assessment!
DeleteThis is a great blog post. I really enjoyed watching your 10 minute choreography as your stimulus was clear throughout the entire piece. I like how you’ve developed your duet section to make them link by having them start as the other one ends. If you were to choreograph another 10 minute piece, is there anything you would do differently during the choreography process?
ReplyDeleteThank you Caitlin. If I was to repeat this process I would have a better plan of the structure of the piece to help us keep to the task and ensure we are being productive in every session. I feel that on some occasions we struggled for ideas and inspiration. To overcome this, next time I would look at different practitioner's work earlier on in the process and keep referring back to the techniques we learnt in the first few weeks. We did this nearer the end of our choreography and it really helped us.
DeleteThis is a very detailed post! You have responded to all your feedback well and I'm sure this will have a big impact on your piece. I also really enjoyed reading about how you overcame all your challenges, well done. Can you give an example of how you developed one of your transitions instead of walking?
ReplyDeleteThank you Caitlyn. In one of the transitions we have used movement and gestures rather than just walking. 5 of us perform our 'restraint' gesture while travelling, in canon. We then do a shoulder roll and look to the side to where Abi is doing her solo. This is using our 'uncertainty' and 'judgment' gestures. By changing this, not only have we made the dance more interesting, we have incorporated and developed our original gestures and motifs to link the movement back to our stimulus!
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