Week 8
With 4 minutes of choreography completed, we were set a challenge by our teacher to have the whole ten minutes of our choreography finished by next weeks lesson. With this in mind, we started choreographing our third section, The Countdown.
In this section we wanted to juxtapose the 'teamwork' section by creating an anxious atmosphere as a way to make the audience feel uneasy and overwrought. We did this by using sticks to represent guns in which we took inspiration from the performance "Sutra" which was choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. We looked at how they used the sticks to create an intense and powerful atmosphere. We liked how they used the stick to create different sounds and dynamics within the music.
When creating this section we used the choreographic process from week 2, to help us imagine the concept of what we wanted to portray during this section of our piece. We words we chose were 'panic',' power' and 'adrenaline'. Into our choreography we also used choreographic devices to help develop our dance, these processes consisted of; accumulation, canon, repetition, unison and slow motion.
This video shows our 'countdown section'
This video shows the end of the countdown leading into 'War'
Once we had our countdown choreographed, we performed it to the class in order to receive feedback. This was our given feedback:
-It was effective leaning back and showing the emotion of some individual dancers.
-Clarify movements, making sure everyone is moving at the same time as well as just making sure everyone is together. We will do this by revisiting counts and slowing making sure everyone understands which count they move on. This will make the overall aesthetic of our choreographer neater and more professional.
Following on, we then finished our choreography completing the sections 'War', 'PTSD' and 'Respect'. We carefully choreographed the War section by deciding as a team that we wanted to make the audience feel tense and uneasy. Branching from this idea we created movements and patterns to give the illusion of chaos and panic. Adapting our previous progress on our PTSD section, we used half our music to improvise our emotions as we thought it would be more raw to the audience, we then decided as a team that we wanted to show how the soldiers were are still connected mentally besides being apart. We showed this by doing complimentary movements towards each other although we are trying to touch but can't. This then leads into out final section 'Respect' here we wanted to use very minimalistic movements so that the audience can reflect on our piece and the message me conveyed instead of focusing on the movement in which we were doing. Simple gestures such as salutes and head nods are examples of the simple movements we included. We then added a bomb over the music to show how war is a continuous cycle and a ever lasting trauma soldiers have to go through.
I really enjoyed reading this blog as well as watching the video of your choreography. You spoke about how you have incorporated the use of sticks in your piece as a prop, did you face any challenges with this?
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment Megan, I am glad you enjoyed watching our choreography. Our main struggle when using the Attucks was figuring out intricate and unique movements which still liked to out theme of War. We overcome this by watching “Satra” and linking the idea of using the sticks as ways to create different sounds within our choreography. An example this would be hitting the floor creating loud hits and ‘bangs’. I feel although this creates dynamics and texture musically within our choreography.
DeleteI enjoyed reading about your experience in our group work and how you feel we represent the stimulus, I feel we are progressing well. As well as implementing the class feedback what do you feel the next steps are?
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DeleteThank you for your comment Eloisa, I definitely think our next steps will be cleaning the overall performance piece. This will include straightening the lines, working out timing and figuring out specific heights fir our sticks. Overall I am feeling very confident with our contemporary performance now we have finished our piece and I fell although glad we have finished our piece
This is a great blog Lucy in which i really enjoyed reading. I love how you have included the use of sticks as props within your dance as i feel this looks really effective and clearly links to your stimulus. Did you feel the choreographic process you used from week 2 helped you to create choreography in a more efficient way?
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this blog Louisa, I feel although you explained the task well including clear explanations for the decisions we chose as a group. Did you face any challenges when creating your gesture? If so, how did you overcome this?
DeleteThank you for your comment Rosabella, they choreographic processes really helped when creating our new choreographic at is allowed our movement to have a meaning and and reason behind it. This allows our choreography to be purposeful clearly identifying and showcasing our idea of war.
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