Audition day, Program note

My piece is based on Beauty and the Beast, i took the two characters and put a twist in the story. During my piece i want to portray the story of an abusive relationship and I felt Beauty would work well as the victim and the beast would work well as the abuser, the characters are good for this as they already have very contrasting names which adds to the story. The reason i went with an abusive relationship is because it is something that means a lot to me and it happens in everyday life way too much. I hope I am able to give an emotional performance and the use of costume and props will help, i will also have a painted beaten face which should add to the effect,

6th March 2015

In today's lesson a Break Dancer called Kofi came into college, he gave us a high quality breaking workshop. We began warming up using a lot of  time working on our core strength so we could give it our best in the workshop. We done this by doing continuous drills of core workouts such as sit-ups crunches and planks. The first thing we worked on was our butt spins, we did this by learning different techniques of gaining speed, this included going from being spread out to pulling ourselves in which created speed or by starting from a kick. After we all felt comfortable with these we went on to trying to do head stands, we learnt how to do this by first having only our toes and forehead on the ground and then replacing our toes with our hands and gradually being able to lift our legs and arms higher into the air.
                                                                     

- This was what it looked like before you lift your legs higher. Some people were also brave enough to lift their hands.


After we worked on these we worked on different ways of getting straight into them, this involved going from butt spins and rolling over our shoulders or sweeping our legs round from a press up position and then rolling backwards into it.

We then split up into groups and worked on our forward rolls, we worked on being able to chuck ourselves past a certain point before putting our hands down and then going straight into a head or hand stand.

we then went over 1, 3, 6 snd 8 steps and perfected our technique and hand placements,

At the end of the lesson we had a bit of a freestyle session, we then went on to a freestyle circle where we showed everything we had learnt in the lesson combined with other skills and styles.                                              

I really enjoyed taking part in this workshop, it is a new style and one that i really enjoyed learning, i like the fact that there is a lot of individuality involved and a lot of tricks that look amazing when done right.                   

Lesson Logs!

January
14th- in this lesson we worked on our Brighton live productions workshop Keeleigh and I worked out what song we would be using and worked on creating our workshop brief we decided to use 'immigration song' by Led Zeppelin karaoke version.This song is from the film Shrek and this means we can stick to the on going theme in college at the moment which is fairy tales.

After we did this we watched our peers choreography and gave them feedback and how they could improve.

16th- In todays lesson we recapped the 'oz' routine then we created a short section in small groups and taught it to whole class, after doing this we sat and spoke about how to use PEEL in our writing task during our assignments. 

21st- Today we carried on doing work for our BLP workshop and we had to think of different ways to keep our students motivated.

23rd- In this lesson we started to look at pictures as our stimuli to inspire our duets and ideas, I started to look at pictures of different Disney couples and decided that I felt Beauty and the Beast were definitely the best fit for my theme. I then went on to look at stories about domestic violence and came across a few documentaries one that stuck with me was 'Murdered by my Boyfriend' 

February
3rd-  Today we provided feedback to our peers on there solos and duets.

4th- Today we recapped the skills of a good workshop leader, we identified streghths and weaknesses of our peers.  we also developed our jazz technique through travelling exercises and centre phrases.

6th- In todays lesson we carried on recapping 'oz' routine and tried to clean and perfect it, after this we had then had time rehearse our duets and solos before lunch, after lunch we had a workshop with godson, he taught us a street/hip hop routine, this was an amazing opportunity we got to learn all different things.

9th - 13th 
Audition Week! (look at rehearsal diaries/review) 

27th- Today was concentrated on cleaning the 'oz' routine and making sure everyone knew what they were doing, we managed to get everything set so everyone could remember what they were doing for each section. after we done all this we had a work shop with Rhymes who trained in bodacia and also starred in into the woods, and street dance this was a good workshop I leant a different style that I had never done before, whacking, even though i have done some of this in class i was never taught proper technique so doing this properly was a good experience

3rd march 
Show week!
. 

Research

  
For my piece i got my inspiration of characters from the beauty and the beast this is because i felt those characters would be a god fit to the theme of my piece.

Beauty and the beast is about a woman who falls in love with a beast who was once a prince. i am going to twist this story and make it show an abusive relationship

i focused on a documentary called 'murdered by my boyfriend'  the story line is as follows: Drama telling the true story of what happens to a teenage girl when she falls in love with the wrong man. The everyday story of young love turns dark and sinister when the handsome and charming stranger seeks to dominate every aspect of the young woman's life. A tale of contemporary Britain that every young person should watch.

here is a link to the programme, i also plan on using the voice over at the beginning of the program at the beginning of my routine to set the mood. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b047zl98/murdered-by-my-boyfriend 

5th march 2015 (SHOW DAY)

During the show I feel my peice went really well. I was really happy with the emotion we were able to show throughout the piece and I feel this was the most effective part of our performance along with our use of technique. My main personal target within this term was to work on my confidence whilst creating choreography, I feel I really improved with my confidence in general and whilst coreographing, this year is the first time I have ever completed a peice of coreographing and been happy with it. 

One way I feel we could have improved the performance is with facial expressions as although they were a high slandered in the show I feel the story at the begining was not as clear as at the end and this can be massivly helped by using more expression. Also I would have liked to go back and re coreograph the entrance of the peice as it looked like we were unsure of what to do after we had sat down. In the future I will insure I have looked at even the tiniest details like these to make the peice at its higher level  one thing I feel could have been worked on was our freezes whilst the other person was dancing, I feel they poses should have been stronger but not so strong that they take away from the dancing next to them.  

Only on one or two occasions did rehearsals not go well for us, this wa because we were distracted by other situations but we didn't let it keep is behind as we quickly caught up, it did not affect our performance in a negative way. I feel our rehearsal time led for us to grow stronger as a pair and as a result led to us being able to connect more with the peice and eachother.

In my future tasks I now know I am capable of create a peice as strong as this and have no reason to hold myself back, I am also going to think about who I pair myself with as did this time because it works really well.

Three prices of advice I would give anyone undertaking this project would be:

- take and listen to feedback 

- use all the time and space you have wisely

- don't be afraid to use your ideas 

Final Performance: 
https://plus.google.com/113666908628453139413/posts/f3b4H3zbKSQ

3rd + 4th march 2015

in these lessons we did a full run through of the show and were able to get used to doing my piece in the show space, we also started to develop our emotions and facial expressions. For the show i want to make sure we have Perfect timing and full use of emotion and facial expression so my piece has the best possible effect on the audience.

2nd march 2015

In todays lesson we done a tech and dress run of our piece and created the rest on the choreography: