Planning & Process
05/04/23
For the beginning of my duet, I decided to start out with finding a song that would boost the idea of a conversation, Something that wouldn't take too much attention from the choreography and that would only compliment it. With my duet partner, we sat down to try to find specifically an instrumental piece of music as I felt words would make the audience realize what my choreography is about immediately when I want them to really dip deep to try and understand the meaning of a mentally drained patient trying to explain how they work in their mind. "Fall in line" by Christina Aguilera and Demi Lovato was our initial song choice. Even though it had words in, I liked the aggressive side to it and its harsh sounds in the beginning specifically. We didn't start any choreography during this session as we couldn't find stuff that fit with the music, at home I am going to look on YouTube for some inspiration that could like with specific words from the script.
07/04/23
After finding the song, I tried to choreograph a type of conversation, however I struggled with with inspiration within the song. Over the holidays I'm going to experiment with song so that I can see a clear conversation within my choreography. Within this lesson, I had the idea of a plan costume choice such as an oversized t-shirt preferably white/beige with black cycling shorts. Even though as a group we hadn't decided what to do for the performance yet, I felt this would work for everyone as it was simple and affordable for everyone.
25/04/23
Today we experimented more using props such as chairs, as I thought they could fit with my idea of a conversation during a therapy session. After changing my song to Angel by Tokio Meres, as it fits better with my concept, something wasn't fitting right with me and felt it was my style of dancing personally so I choreographed Elise into my place instead due top her having better technique then I did so she worked perfectly with the choreography I had in mind. I have envisioned the duet now is Elise will be the patient that Iz is trying to constantly communicate sanity to. After working with Elise and Izzy, I felt the as if the chair's were in the way as I wanted contact work. We've recorded the section of what we worked on today which is the first 43 seconds of the song. I have watched it through and I can see parts I would like to change Izzy's walk in the beginning and that is because it needs to be slower and needs to flow more but we'll go over that during either independent or next week.
26/04/23
This session wasn't my slot so I focused on the beginning of my choreography, I came up with Elise's entrance as there is a 20 second start before the part of the choreography we've already filmed. I played around with different concepts for the beginning as I couldn't decide if I wanted Elise to portray her role as either the innocently insane or a maniac. Throughout I felt the innocence added a better aspect as I would like my audience to pity her even though my piece is about the speaker wanting to kill herself. I thought of her doing some kind of spin to make her look delicate to then being pulled in one direction to then being pulled back and falling/rolling in to the starting position with her knees up. This is shown in the video from 25/04/22.
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04/05/23
Within this lesson, I figured out timing for the choreography to fit perfectly imperfect as certain parts will fit different for each of the dancers. After reviewing previous videos, i can see that the girls are doing different timing for the music so I need to go through and highlight key positions i want on parts of the music to make the choreography more effective.
03/05/23
After evaluating my work from last week and speaking to my teacher, I decided to use the same inspiration from the question and answer we all did previously with Morley in an improvisation class. As shown in the video their movements are different but almost as if they are mimicking one another. Taking this idea, I tried to think about how I could incorporate the difference between the two in this conversation. I wanted Izzy to be more aggressive and consistent with her movement showing her constant attempts to help Elise, whereas Elise will be tired gradually building up to be more aggressive as in this script the it says that the speaker blames themselves at the end. In the video, both dancers longue forward in the direction they're facing, I feel this should be longue to add more of a pause in the choreography. With this music I am a lot happier with the way the choreography is turning out, however the only thing I'm wanting to change is the fact the song has lyrics whilst the song is building up.
09/05/23
This session i experimented on different types of contact work for Izzy and Elise. I took a specific move from an improv section; which is to stand up whilst their backs are still in contact with each other, pushing against one another to fully stand up. After trying a few times, it wouldn't work so i got the girl to push through the splits to their knees so that I don't have to have them standing straight away. From the script, I have taken the quote "depression becomes anger" to use as inspiration for the rest of my choreography. I want there to be an obvious build happening and for the audience to easily see you possibly using the idea of a one sided conversation more often which I will try incorporate in next lesson.
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16/05/23
This day we carried on cleaning the set choreography as I really wanted the girls to focus on their timing due to that being my biggest concern from last lesson. I tried to pin point area that i wanted on certain parts of the music and eventually they got the hang of it. No choreography was added this lesson.
23/05/23
Unfortunately, Elise was ill this day, which is why I'm in the video instead, so it was a little harder to add choreography without her there, however we still carried on with what I had planned. During our contemporary class we ran through our running order that us as a group had come up with to show how our pieces all looked together for Lois. After looking at what I had done, she then gave us all further feedback to help us along our process, and she expressed how she felt the beginning needed more of a conversation feeling; I completely agree. So during our next class, I decided to add more of the arms into it the beginning to emphasize the conversation from the beginning. Even though me and Elise are different sizes, Iz and I tried to do some lifts for her to possible try out the next day.
24/05/22
Both Izzy and Elise have solo's so they worked on those whilst I caught myself up written work and just watch some YouTube videos on partner work specifically Dance Moms as they are known for their synchronization and duet work. I also looked back on previous video we had recorded just to see if everything that is set works and to come up with any other ideas.
25/05/22
After reflecting the previous day, I decided to go over small details. I got Elise to learn the part she missed and to try out the lift we had previously tried out with Izzy and I, however I wasn't sure where to put it yet as it needed the right part of the music to go with it. We continued to go through small details until the girls wanted to do some of there solo work.
06/06/22
After having a week off, coming back only having 2 weeks left I felt a lot of anxiety for the show. We had started to run all the pieces in a new order as ours didn't work as well as we though; it felt too planned out and not chaotic enough. We all kept running things but mainly focused on the group pieces during this session, we pieced everything together. I finished the last minute of my dance revolving around the idea of a one sided conversation, specifically when the helper says "-Are you? (silence) Are you? (silence) Or are you? (A long silence)" the helper eventually becomes frustrated with their patient not communicating, I got Izzy to improvise a 3 step section to repeat indicating her constant approach to get the patient to open up; With Elise I got her to repeat as well but she gradually got angrier and faster to show her frustration in not being heard. I also ended up adding everyone else into the ending of the routine to repeat the beginning section of the original duet to indicate that the patient isn't alone, that even though it is extremely frustrating others are going through similar struggles. The pieces ends with Elise being alone to show the fact she keep blaming herself.
08/06/22
This is the day before the show, we ran lighting all day and ran the whole show together as we had completed all the choreography now. All the pieces have been put into order and i am extremely pleased with the outcome of my routine, all we needed to do was go over a few timing issues but we sorted it out quickly.