Choreography Journal
10th September - Week 1
We had our first creative session today. For the first hour, we had a combined class with Level 3 performing arts students as their teacher was late. In the second hour, the performing arts students left and we started our creative lesson, in which, Lucy asked Sam to simply follow her instructions. Her instructions were pretty easy, such as, walk 5 steps to the right, turn around the chair, however, we as the audience were asked to record every movement he made. Once we had done that, we had to get into to groups of three and develop this routine further. I was in a group of three with Rhian and Marie. We could change levels, add layering and even add our moves as part of the choreography. But we could not use music to develop this routine we had to do it without music, which was our main task to choreograph a routine without using music and lyrics as a stimuli.
24th September - Week 3
I have spent a week working on my choreography and planning my choreography. I have finally decided my concept and it is very apt for my music. The concept that I want to use in my routine would the idea of the triumph of good over evil especially in Indian mythology.
After thinking about my piece carefully, I decided to create a short motif and taught it to my dancers. After teaching my dancers the motif I asked them to develop the motif according to their character.
I explained my dancers individually about their characters and how I want them to develop the motif further.
8th October - Week 5
My motive for this week is to structure my piece because up to now it's been all-over-the-place. Also I would like to work on the end, climax of my piece with my dancers to give them a rough idea of what the finishing pose should look like.
Today was our feedback day. We were asked to share our work so far with the entire class and we would be given feedback upon it and also to know if any what changes should be made in our choreography to improve it further.
The feedback that I was given for my piece, was that the choreography was very authentic and Lucy quiet liked the introduction of my piece where the Marie, who is playing the tiger walks on her fours and enters the stage while doing the walk and then starts her choreography. Lucy wants me to use it further in my dance and to continue the way I am choreographing and to keep it authentic as the concept is seen clearly through my dance and a story is told.
17th September - Week 2
We have been introduced to our creative project for this term which is to choreograph a solo, duet or a group and the choice is on the choreographer whether they want to be in the piece themselves or not. The only condition is that we cannot use lyrics in a song to choreograph the routine. We were asked to use an instrumental piece or spoken word and base our whole routine on a concept. The dance routine could be in any style we want it to be.
There was a piece of music that I really wanted to work with, however, I could not think of a concept that would go in hand with the musical piece. I wanted to keep the piece very indian as in the style of dance and waned to use my indian classical training and folk training to my advantage. but being the only dancer with that experience in my whole group made it difficult for me t choose my dancers and yet I thought of choosing dancers that are fairly good in contemporary and have balletic training as it would make it easier for me to work with them.
This week I have finished choreographing my piece, however, as I forgot to record the rest of the choreography I could only remember it vaguely while teaching my dancers and so I focused on remembering my choregraphy in the two hours of creative instead of teaching the routine to my dancers. Also on this day, I was not feeling too well as I had fever and was suffering through its symptoms such as, weakness, fatigue and I later started throwing up later in the day to find out that I had caught onto the food poisoning bug.
1st October - Week 4
15th October - Week 6
Following the feedback given to me by my teacher, I have decided to add a another section where the tiger walk happens again in a duet of the tiger and the goddess against the demon. Also I have started working on the battle section of the dance where, the good and the evil fight it out and it is in a very indian folk form, I want it to continue looking authentic. By the end of this week, I completed choregraphing my whole piece with all my dancers and I just needed to polish my piece. Also another thing I did was that recorded the piece so my dancers do not forget the choreography and can also work on the movements at home.
22nd October - Week 7
This week we are showcasing our pieces to rest of the class and it is the final week to make any changes and to polish our work. For me this whole process of choreographing was quite new and I enjoyed every bit of it. However, things got a little stressful on the day of the performance as one of my dancers had forgotten a few steps and wanted to back out of the piece as she could not remember the choreography, this was because we only had a week to polish my piece and therefore, the choreography was not muscle memory yet.
The performance went well, and I was highly impressed with my dancers as they worked very hard for this piece only because they had to learn a whole new style in such a short time and even if they made a mistake in the performance, they carried on gracefully and did not let the audience know that.