"It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance. It is the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance. It is the one who won't be taken who cannot seem to give. And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live.” (Bette Midler)
This week in BTEC performing arts and GCSE dance, students will be expected to start to question their choreographic process. Irrelevant of what you are working on in dance, it is always so important to understand how to use stimulus and develop ideas through the use of MOTIF and tracking the strengths and weaknesses of your piece. Sometimes, having the courage to reject something 'pretty' in your choreography to help progress to that next level can really start to set you apart from your peers.
Holding onto that dramatic stag leap into an ariel barrel roll just because your audience will gasp with wonder at you won't do any favours to the greater good of the dance if it doesn't fit with your theme or stimulus!
Choreographic Process broken down:
Below is a past students written plan for her choreography. Although this piece of written work was used for assessment purposes, I don't see why we can't still use this process to help ground our choreography as an exercise in good practice? It obviously did something for her as she scored top band for her choreographic process and outcome (final performance).
Title of Dance: The shape of life
Title of Music/Composer: HIDE AND SEEK-IMOGEN HEAP
Stimulus: DYNAMICS-OVER, UNDER, AROUND
Theme of Dance/brief statement:
A solo dance to show the determination and games you play to reach your goal.
My initial idea for this piece was that I wanted my dance to show my dancer reaching for a goal in their life. So it would have to have movements showing a struggle.
I wanted to use all the space provided and different directions and phrasings to show diversity. I also knew I wanted it to have a modern and contemporary style to it, as that it what I imagine when I listen to the music.
Section 1- Dancer on the floor, her head down. Music starts she does a contraction up and down then looks up to start her journey. As the section ends the dancer runs around to find her way.
Section 2- The dancer starts to fight for her goal but is knocked down by others. She gets up and shows her frustration through dance.
Section 3- She starts to play the games, going slow put with power, making sure she is noticed and it looks as if she will get her goal or will she?
My dance is a solo, and the dancer’s aim is to reach her goal. She starts off thinking her goal will be easy to reach but then find she has to play games and need a lot of determination to succeed. I start the dance with her on the floor to show that she is starting from nothing, with fluid movement. This suddenly changes when she gets up with movements that are sharp. The size of the movements also follow the same pattern that, as the movements get sharper so does the size of the movements.
As the dance progresses the space diameter used is changed constantly. I worked on different lines and levels with the arms, legs and body to show barriers she comes up against. I have done this to represent the dancer at a variety of stages towards her goal.
Changes made- Once the dance had been choreographed there were only a few changes made in the relation of movement or dynamics. My original beginning movements of my dance were very jerky and syncopated, but then once looking at it I decided that my first section was all one dynamic and there was no light and shade to the movement. I also changed my ending to the dance. Instead of leaving my dancer reaching out for her goal with an arm on the floor I had her standing up with her feet in jazz fourth and arms in jazz second, but I felt it was left unfinished and didn’t fit into the piece.
Staging- I mainly kept to original plan of how I used the space. I knew I wanted to start in the centre but use as much space as possible to show the long journey. I changed the odd direction of movements that the dancer would deliver for the atheistic reasons for the audience. But considering this, the majority of the dance mapped out as I planned.
Direction and improvement-
I blocked the dance into three contrasting sections and worked out the motivation of the dancer. From the outset I wanted to show a story through my dance, as I feel when dancing an emotion is always needed to show you the difference between a good dancer and a great dancer.
Use of music-
The song “Hide and Seek” is entirely vocal, so it let me play around with pace and where the movement syncopation would be. Even though it does keep a constant time signature throughout (4/4) but the pace of the voice changed in certain parts. At the beginning of the song it has a breath I incorporated this as if it was the dancer breathing getting ready for what is about to come.
In the title/chorus line “Hide and Seek” the phrase is prolonged I wanted to emphasises this part of the dance like no other section, so I used a repetition of an arm movement. When choreographed I took many words from the song and linked to the movement.
Rejected material-
I rejected some little movements in my middle section, as I felt it made the phrase of movements lose the flow and momentum. There was a part where the dancer was lying on her back with her knees held to her chest then would rock forward and stand up then fall to the floor again. But when I rehearsed it, it stood out as a movement not needed and just awkward to look at. I ended up still lying on the floor but with my knees parallel on the floor and rolling up through my spine.
