In our first dance lesson back we started looking at ways to manipulate movement and emotions based on themes. To begin the lesson we did a warm up which consisted of jogging on the spot and jumps to work on our stamina and to prevent injury.
We then started to develop a motif with simple arm movements with a few steps and lunges. I enjoyed learning this motif because it was easy to pick up and it represented a lot of the theme through the movement and gestures. Our theme of this motif was media and advertising exaggerating the real truth and telling lies, confusing people and causing upset. One movement that I feel stuck out in this routine was when we took two small quick steps forward bringing our feet together, whilst moving our arms one at a time past our mouths and towards the front, with our palms of our hands flexed. I felt that this really resembled the lies being told, and that we shouldn't always believe what people are saying is necessarily true.
We were then put into groups of two, and were asked to develop this motif using choreographic devices such as retrograde, fragmentation and repetition. I thought that to develop the motif further we would leave the action, space and dynamics how they were so that we could focus on choreographing the motif, and this meant that we could develop it after we are familiar with the movement. I worked with Amber for this part of the lesson, and I felt that we did well in our choreographing, as we were able to manipulate the routine and improve it, along with adding movements onto the end of it. We started by using fragmentation on the routine so that we could create a motif that was our own in terms of choreography and we could become familiar with it. We then retrograded what we had come up with, and added repetition to emphasise certain movements to link to the theme. I felt that this was effective because it made it clear what the theme was, and we made the simple motif look more complicated and appealing.
We then started to experiment with feelings and emotions, about how the media makes people think and feel. For example its common to get an article in a newspaper or magazine about a rumour of a celebrity with no real evidence, however the media insist on it being true to allow people to become intrigued to read it, however it will make the celebrity feel upset or embarrassed, so we started to play around with the idea of people not wanting to hear what they were saying, so to show this in our choreography me and amber came up with a lunge to the side, and I push my arm towards amber, and she covers her ears to represent the fact that I am forcing her to listen, but she doesn't want to, and then we repeated this in the other direction, and instead we did it the other way round so amber put her arm out and I covered my ears. I think this helped portray emotion and it linked to the them because of the use of movement. We then started to think on ways to develop the movement of how we move our arms and hands past our mouths as I feel this movement is the most effective in the piece. We first performed the movement together to show the realism of how people believe in the media and what they insist is the truth, and how the words spread through so many people, but when we repeated it later in the motif I started to perform the movement but Amber grabbed my arms from behind and forced them to stop. I really liked this because it isn't too clear who is most controlling, the media or the public, but it shows that if the media tell a story or a lie or exaggerate then some people won't believe it, or if the public try and speak out, or a celebrity tries to say that media are lying, the media will stop them.
-Group choreography with Amber, Holly, Sam
-Video Evidence
Overall I enjoyed this lesson because I was able to develop and manipulate two motifs, and make them look effective. I feel as though the dancing went well and our ability to make the theme clear to the audience. To improve I would like to work on facial expressions to portray different emotions for the duet with Amber. For example, I seemed to keep an angry facial expression throughout the performance to represent the lies being told and the mysterious feel it gave us, however I think that a scared or worried facial expression would work with some movements such as the covering our ears and mouths, as this shows that sometimes we aren't shown the full truth and are not often told the truth.
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