Dance workshop

Day 1

Firstly we looked and discussed dance videos and what we liked about them, and if there were effective or not.

Matched - L XD presents
Uses props to assist the dance. Concept is similar to dancing in the rain. Good relationship between music and dance. Simple Concept.

1234 -  Feist
Colour costume. One shot camera. Busby Berkley.
Dance goes with music, beat, each different component of the song. Song is about young love, so the movements can represent this.

Sunrise - Yeasayer
Shots change a lot due to speed of dance and focus on more than one person. Simplistic. Immature approach.

Tamara Levinson Choreography
light and shadow.  Slow motion. Isn't a sense of space or direction. Focus on the dance because no background. Music didn't match movement.

Rosas danst Rosas
Repetition.

Ghost Catching
Tracing dance all dependant on the type of dance. Remnants of movement in space.


In terms of thinking about dance and choreography we first tried a really interesting and fun exercise where we were given a partner to control and move around. This got us thinking about body movement and directing someone else. It also exercised our improvisation skills too.  We were also practicing lifting exercises as a group which was good to see how powerful working as a group can be, and also shows how much dancers trust each other.

Day 2

On day 2 our idea which was formulated on day 1, was practiced and developed more. Our idea was originally about identity and finding yourself. We wanted a character to be in the middle of a circle of people who were all doing the same movements, and being like each other. The person in the middle would then break out of the circle and start doing a unique dance, representing that it is ok to break out of the tradition, and be yourself. However, when practiced we found this looked more like a ritual. We changed our idea to several people sitting in a row, doing move movements like they were in an office. A person would then come in a try to copy these movements and be like everyone else, however they would fail, by doing the movements clumsily. As all the dancers would stand up to go to a meeting, the clumsy dancers will fall over creating a domino effect. We thought this may look a bit better, and create a better narrative for our piece.

Day 3

On the last day we had dancers come in and work with our ideas. This day was really useful as we got to direct actual dancers, and learn how to do so, whilst them incorporating there own ideas and style to our idea. We changed our ideas a bit as we went along, as we were able to see what worked and what did not.