'ASK ME WHY'
Date
Rehearsal 1 - 5th April
In our very first rehearsal we played around with different contact tricks, linking movements and trying to find out different ways to stay connected to each other making it look weird and uncountable for the audience to watch.
Rehearsal 2 - 7th April
In the rehearsal today, we were yet again practising and trying out different ideas we both had. This went really well so that now we have more material for next lesson when we start putting together a section of the dance.
Rehearsal 3 - 25th April
Today we started putting together our ideas from yesterday and making different sections in the dance.
we also made the first motif up and how we are both going to enter on the stage, we also discussed staying in character throughout. My part/character
being the patient and Lucy's character being the helper.
Rehearsal 4 -
In our fourth rehearsal we added on from last lesson's starting point and used some of our contact movements we had come up with together. We are not sure this is how we want the dance to be in its final stage but this will ourselves an idea.
Video Evidence
Review
Rehearsal 1- 5th April
This links to the idea of a helper and patient with the one person helping the other. We tried some tricks and steps out and one that we both really liked was when Lucy was lying down on the floor with her head facing the front of the room and for me to be lying with my feet at the back facing the ceiling with head towards stage right. Then Lucy will barrel roll to her left and it will drag me over the top of her making me go over the top in a wave motion. I couldn't really organise my lesson apart from having an idea of some different lifts to try out and to see if they worked or not. Overall the lesson went really well and we now have a good idea of different motifs to add in the dance . My target for our next lesson is to spend a little bit more time on experimenting with different lifts and tricks. Also then we can look into transitioning movements so we can start putting parts together.
​
Rehearsal 2 - 7th April
In our second rehearsal me and Lucy went over what we did on the rehearsal before then we moved over to think of new moves and link some of them together. We have decided to experiment on different ideas we have both come up with for a couple of lessons to really have a good idea of what works for us and fits the theme. Today we tried an overhead lift which went really well, so we will be adding this into our dance routine somewhere however we tried some transitioning movements to get off the floor that didn't work for us. We had really good focus in this lesson and came up with some good ideas, so our lesson was organised in the sense that we had something to go off compared to making it up. The next lesson we are going to carry on with different tricks and lifts to add in because we want to be sure we are confident doing them and like them before we add them in. This also means we will have enough material to start to piece things together. Overall our rehearsal today was pretty successful.
​
Rehearsal 3 - 25th April
In our third rehearsal we decided to start putting a few of our ideas from the last lesson together. We started with me lying on the floor as the music starts and Lucy making her way on stage. This will represent the patient who is me and Lucy who is the helper. We decided on the different levels for us to show off Lucy's authority over me. I liked this idea as it showed the audience what type of characters we were portraying. When Lucy gets over to me on the floor we decided that she was going to lift and lower her and as if trying to perform CPR over me but not actually connecting with me yet, and then me reacting to this. Then we added in some of our contact movements after our characters had a relationship formed. In this lesson we were very productive and made a lot of progress as we finally decided how our dance would start, and how the characters are shown. The next lesson we will play around with some more ideas and add onto our starting motif.
Rehearsal 4 -
In today's lesson we focused really hard on trying to add on and make improvements to our motif from the last lesson. We started with work-shopping some ideas we had both come up with and testing them out as transitional movements on this section. We added in a roll where Lucy barrel rolls across the flour and I am lying horizontally across her, and as she rolls to the side it drags me over the top of her creating a wave like movement. This worked really well after we practised getting into the movement more smoothly which made if look even more effective. We had also thought about the idea of me being dragged on stage to create the feeling that I was unconscious and Lucy was trying to help me regain consciousness and improve my mental stability, which shows off my character as the patient. Our focus in this lesson varied as when we were adding on we were very focused but we always think it is best when we are not so focused when trying out new ideas, so we have an open mind on what we could possibly make with the movements.
Rehearsal 5 -
In the fifth rehearsal we also carried on adding on as we were conscious that we were more behind than others but still liked to experiment as we didn't want to run out of ideas.
Rehearsal 5 -
Our fifth rehearsal Lucy and I added on another eight counts to our start. We thought we would give ourselves a challenge in this lesson by making our characters stand and make their way up onto both their feet. This was challenging as we could easily find ways for us to both stand up but then struggled to know how to dance whilst both being connected and I personally really struggled with this. We decided to take a break and skip a few counts and leave that section for another day. Because we had decided to skip a bit further into the song this meant that we started creating a section in the middle of our song. We preferred doing this in our lesson as we had more freedom as we could almost start fresh and figure out a way to connect later on. This lesson did not end up being very organised but was productive in the end. The next lesson we are going to try and plan to go over both sections we have created and try our best to not get frustrated when we can't think of solutions.
Rehearsal 6 -
In our sixth rehearsal we had both decided prior to make up as much choreography as possible considering we didn't have much time left and we needed to connect sections, and add tricks in.
Rehearsal 6 -
The sixth rehearsal was about making as much content as possible and trying to get our dance finished so that we could then work on polishing and changing parts that were not our favourite so that when we were going back over and re-watching ourselves we had something to go off. This did not end up being as hard as we both thought as we already had lots of motif's that we had put together ,as we had practised or made up in our independent study times and in extra rehearsals we had put on that me and Lucy had done. This ended up working really well as we had at least something to show our peers that wasn't just lots of little sections squashed together. Also it gave others a chance to give their feedback on us and how we could improve the performance. Overall this lesson was very productive however having some knock backs as some feedback meant we needed to change certain parts and rethink the way we start our number off.
​
change in my dance/ music:
after getting feed back a week before the show i had chosen that my dance was not show casing my ability as much as i would have liked and also though that it needed something extra to help explain our characters storeys and theme we were trying to portray to somebody watching our dance. i also have constructive criticism on parts of out dance that didn't flow or look quite right, so me and my partner decided to take chunks out and redo them which looking back defiantly was the right decision to do and we were much happier with the final outcome. However i had also decided that to show of my ability more i would add in a small solo at the start of my number to set the scene and atmosphere i had challenged myself to act with my dance to really pull it of witch i think i gave a good shot at doing. I choreographed my solo a day before the performance witch didn't leave me much time but i managed to pull it off and was vary proud of myself.
my songs:
When I chose to do my solo i also had to find some new music to use, at first i was just going to go for silence but i found it really hard to count and find away to express myself to that. I ended up looking back at my original idea and obviously linking to the theme of doctor/psychiatrist and patient. i wanted to have a sound that was repetitive and linked, so i ended up going with clock ticking sound. This reminded me of the doctors and sitting in the waiting room and all you can focus on is the repetitive clock noise that stayed the same. A bit like a normal daily routine that doesn't change and that we all have that part of the day like that also them shows a bit of normality in the patient.
struggling with my choreography:
i am struggling with coming up with choreography and this effects mine and my partners progress in our lessons there for we are doing extra rehearsals outside of our scheduled practices. I have been finding that some days i have a better creative flow more than others and i am enjoying the challenge I've set myself with this contact duet even if i am fining it had to think of loads of contact movements because this is an unusual idea to base a dance off. The way i have over come this in my dance was that i like to choreography different sections of my routines not in the right order because i sometimes have a idea of what part "like the very end" instead of knowing how my dance will start. This was helpful when having a block and not knowing what to do because i only ended up then trying to find a few transitioning movements instead of a long section to think up to do.