unit 5 and 6 project

Week 1 session 1 to 3
session 1
My first  impressions of the music Nimrod by Elgar was that it was clearly a very powerful piece of music that presents  respect and honour for those who died during the war. It is a classical piece of music that gave me chills when I very first heard it I feel it’s quite a sad piece of music because in the back of my mind I knew that some people knew soldiers that died and that would probably be sadden and greatly affected by this piece of music as it would bring back memories. However the music is could also be seen as happy piece as we should all feel grateful that the war is over and those who did die for us didn't die for no reason and didn't die in vain.

Watching the videos I got inspiration and a better understanding of how the war effected many people in different ways especially from a soldiers perspective as some suffered from shell shock which I thought could be included in our piece as when you think of war you mainly think of those who died so I thought to include that would be to give recognition for those who were mentally effected by the horror they saw as well as those who died for us.

we watched video examples of different performances that showed different aspects of war for example horses that were used and soldiers and my favourite is the one of two brothers that dance the role of soldiers and one of them is suffering from shell shock it was a very haunting and little bit scary piece but I think it truly showed how people were effected. We use this video as inspiration for our piece.

we chose two poems as our first stimuli which were both about war however one was about a family sitting at home while one of their loved one went to war and the other was from a soldiers perspective and is describing what he was seeing around him and how he was mentally physically and emotionally challenged. we used the poem about the solider as our stimuli because we had the idea of creating a dance where we was the solider and we was dancing as a soldier who was either loss of suffering from shell shock and didn't know where they was but still have a soldiers mind set and braveness to try and get back to where they need to be.

we started by trying to create dance movements that showed maybe reacting to different scenarios such as maybe heaving rain or strong winds or running away from something. we then took these movements put them together to try and create a dance however this a duet did not give the impression or effect we wanted and decided to work with another group who also had  really good ideas so we just then needed to put our ideas together.

 Session 2

we done a practical lesson in order to help us with our pieces so we started by walking around the room and different weathers were said and we had to walk as if we was in that weather for example a busy street on a rainy day. We then developed this busy increasing our movements. We then was given a sheet of paper with different words on it and we used Laban technique to put an action to the words. We then developed this by picking words from a given poem and putting the actions to the words in order to create a piece of movements.

 Session 3

We presented our proposal Ideas to the class so we discussed our original ideas to the class and then discussed how we think it would be better as group performance so in a group we came up with a structure of our dance so each person could contribute to a section. our structure of the dance was everyone being with their thought of debating going to war or not then the second section was going to war then the third was thinking of our family's and the lastly dying at war. Our piece is a contemporary piece and both our ideas went well put together.

 Week 2 session 1 and 2

In today’s session we all agreed on the structure of our dance piece so the first section was going to war the middle section was fighting at war and the last section was coming from the family's perspective and finally finishing with a death of a solider. we decided that different people would choreograph different sections so everyone would have contributed to the piece.me and d'zyire decided that we would choreograph the first section 'going to war' as a group we liked two pieces of music so the plan was to mix the two pieces of music together which also showed different emotions. we decided to use pauses and kicks and turns to replicate the leaving home part some movements were slow and some were fast and jumpy the contradiction in the movements replicated how before leaving you may have had conflict with family members as they would not want you to go because they don't want you to get hurt. I also thought that putting in army solutes added to how determined the soldiers was to fight for the country and how much it meant to them
The work we done today linked to the stimulus by the movement we put in it the poem gave off the
Impression of a solider being strong and brace so we added jumps and high kicks to give the audience the same impression of us being strong and independent. We also added smaller movements because the poem talked about being strong and brave however had a sense of vulnerability about it when talking about the speakers surroundings, so movements like a turn were added because when you turn   It you bring your arms and legs in towards your body which I think shows a sense of vulnerability because your body language is very in towards yourself it's closed whereas a kick can be quite open.

The feedback we received from that  session was good they liked the choreography the next step was to move on to the middle section of the piece and start choreography that we was also told to ensure that we made our sections clear so the audience knew what our piece was about.
Listening to the feedback the following week we needed to ensure that our piece made sense and we had more choreography added.

 Week 3 session 1 and 2

During this sessions we realised that our piece may be confusing to the audience as the beginning section wasn't very clear so we decided to come up with an introductory piece of choreography to try and make it a bit clearer for this part we decided to use our second piece of music 'god of war' and our first was 'sail'. During this section we started on the floor sitting with our legs bent and our heads hanging down then when the music started I thought it would fit well if we looked around confused so this introductory piece could represent thinking about going to war and thinking to ourselves the consequences of our decisions. The piece would then go into the fighting at war section and then the piece that me and d'zyire choreographed would be our motif that was repeated which represented the soldiers constantly thinking about the day they left home and if they should have listened to their family then it would go into the family section and finally death of a solider. So for this section after we finish looking around we quickly get up onto our knees and slowly raise our hands up and I. Towards each other than two of us run off and then a few seconds later the other two run off towards the back of the stage so then we finish that section with all 4 of us at the back of the stage in a position which shows us at war so I showed a position as if I was injured.

At the beginning we are all very slowly looking around which again refers back to the poem because we're looking at our surroundings thinking if we should go to war or not it also conveys to the audience how we are trying to imagine how war is like. Our sudden movement when we get up onto our knee is supposed to replicate maybe a sudden decision we made which also refers back to the poem when we react to the different surroundings we're in e.g. a forest or a trench.

 The feedback we got from today was that it is a lot clearer that our piece is based on war and to improve our piece is to keep practising with our timings and to then create more choreography.From our feedback our target for the next session is to create the war section which is the main section of our piece and to rehearse what we have already created.

Session 4 session 1 and 2

In today's session we danced the war section which Rae choreographed with the help of the rest of the group’s contribution. This section is the climax of the piece and the most exciting as the music in ' god of war' is very fast the quick movements represents the highs and lows of war and the success and struggles of being a solider. We start by walking forward towards the audience in a line  keeping in the positions that we finished the first section in ,however when we walk forward we look weak and feeble as if we're injured from war then the music changes and we're dancing very strong and definite movements so jumps and floor work. Floor work was included because it gave the audience a clearer image of us being soldiers as the floor work symbolised perhaps being in army training when you have to complete circuits, and roll around on the floor. we ended this section with a double turn and then we jump out of it our stimulus helped us with this because in the poem it talk about the solider having no 'ground beneath his feet' so I interpreted that as because bombs are constantly dropping as a solider you would have to be very alert of your surrounding and be aware that the ground you walk on could crumble beneath you. Also the jump at the end creates an image for the audience as if a bomb has just exploded and may need to run and jump out the way. The feedback for the session was to finish the last section of the dance and mix the two pieces of music together.

 Week 5

This week we finished the last section which is the family part, during this part there is a duet which represents a husband and wife relationship and a trio which represents a family relationship between husband wife and child. I felt this worked well because it showed how during the war loads of different people were effected the death at the end shows how some soldiers came home and some didn't as in the poem we read it didn't actually have an ending so we never find out if the solider came home to his family or not as in the poem it says "another widow mourning " which could mean anybody not the actually speaker. Once we put all our sections together we realised that mixing our two music choices together would be really hard because they we're so different so we decided to try and dance our whole piece just to "god of war" music and it actually fit quite well we just had to add a couple of movements so the sections link together, I suggested that we do cartwheels because it adds to the sense of rush and panic when at war I also suggested to run towards the audience then at the last minute drop to the floor before going into the death section because it shows how a solider constantly has to be on edge and anything could happen at any moment. regarding the technical aspects of the piece we decided to have a red spot light of lighting during the introductory piece because it could foreshadow potential danger then during the middle section we decided to go with a slow strobe lighting when walking forward which represented the flashing lights during war time then finally finished the piece using a red wash to symbolise danger. When doing the tech run in the theatre all our ideas worked to plan and therefore didn't need to change or adapt anything apart from our spacing during the dance the theatre stage is bigger than the studio. So during the actual performance we just need to remember the dance and the sections also the timing.

Evaluation

Over the term we worked on a piece which was about war the brief was to make a proposal of what you  wanted your piece to be about, we could have anyone in our piece and it could be about anything as long as it related to the theme war. A challenge that I foresaw was that I am quite young and therefore wasn’t around during war time so being able to give off the same emotions and aspects of a real war could have been challenging. Our starting point was we was given a piece of music to listen to and we wrote down emotions that the piece made us feel we was then told that the piece of music was The Last Post which is associated with Remembrance Sunday and the Army. We also watched famous war pieces of dance like War horse in order to get inspiration to help us devise our own this also showed us the different aspects of war. We were giving several poems we could choose from which worked as our stimulus for our own pieces. After watching the videos and reading the poem I could then decide on how my partner and I was going to create the proposal. We decided that the poems gave us some good ideas on how to choreograph a dance about war as we wanted to dance as a soldier who was suffering from shell shock and thinking about our family. However I thought that this piece should be a group dance because it would look stronger and therefore symbolise how strong a solider had to be. so in our proposal we asked another pair they wouldn’t mind working with us and they agreed so we then had to incorporate their proposal into ours which worked well as they wanted to dance about how different people were effected by war so in doing this we structured our dance in 3 sections which incorporated the idea of how a soldiers family and friends were suffering just as much as the solider and how each family went through something different.

To develop our piece we had to consider the style of our piece which we decided should be contemporary as I feel this style of dance tells a story best. We then had to decide music I found a piece of music on YouTube called ‘god of war’ which made me think of soldiers fighting and would fit well with our ideas however we wanted to produce a family section in our piece and felt the music should be slower in which we found a slower piece of music called ‘sail’ which also fit well with ideas so we decided to mix the two pieces of music together. However had decided a few weeks later this was going to be incredibly challenging and made our whole piece work with just the ‘ god of war ‘ music. The lighting for our piece was red in some sections as red symbolises danger just like a solider is constantly in danger and we also had a bit of strobe lighting as the flashing lights represented the different lights and sirens that were around during the war. No props were needed as we feared that having props on stage would distract the audience from the story of our dance however for costume we decided that we would all wear our performance blacks but wear an army jacket over the top as we was mostly playing the role of soldiers.

My individual responsibility was to choreograph the first section of the dance which was the leaving home section. I did this by choreographing 4 8s which included moves like a kick out with your leg with your hands on top and pushing your leg away from your body as I felt this symbolised pushing your way through the war and surviving and also pushing away others opinions on your decision of going to war. I also included kicks and jumps as I feel this shows strength and bravery just like the quality’s you need to be a soldier. I feel I contributed successfully to the piece as I also suggested other movements in different sections such as a movement that would change the positioning of everyone on stage such as a cartwheel and running.my other responsibility was to ensure that if someone was away when I had choreographed something to teach them what they missed so everyone knew the dance well and to also help others when they were stuck so I did this by giving them ideas that showed different emotions such as missing home or feeling lonely for example turns and suddenly dropping to the floor.

The main problem that arose during the process was our music. We had chosen two pieces of music which was very different from each other so the problem we was stuck in was to either wait and see if a professional could mix the music for us which could have taken up more time than we had or could have been impossible to do or to mix the music and hope that it sounds good or to pick a different piece of music and hope that it fits with the choreography. To resolve this problem we decided to try and fit the dance with the ‘god of war’ music which surprisingly fit very well with our choreography just needed to work on our transitions which meant maybe changing the timing of certain movements or filling up and 8 of the music so each section fit well and made sense, however after doing this our piece was finished and told the story we intended it to. So overall the solution to the problem worked very well and probably worked out better than if we was to mix the two pieces if music together. We applied our practical and performance skills very effectively to the piece as after watching the videos of other dance pieces on war we got an idea of the emotion we wanted to convey to the audience and the problems that came up did not affect our practical skills negatively in fact I think the problem that arose worked in our favour as working with one piece of music meant one less thing to worry about and then all we had to do was concentrate on our dancing. To convey the right emotion while I was dancing I was thinking about a time I’ve tried really hard at something whether it be when I’m jogging and I really need to stop and walk but I have to push myself to carry on jogging or when I’m performing on stage and I want to do really well in a dance I perhaps have struggled with so it shows the fighter within a soldier.

Overall I do feel I fulfilled the production brief satisfactorily as the piece had a clear story line and structure to it which also helped in the production process of the piece because it made things a lot simpler to choreograph also the poem that worked as our stimulus gave us inspiration throughout and meant we could refer back to it whenever we stuck on what to do. I feel I fulfilled the performance brief also satisfactorily as I knew the emotions I needed to convey at each section of the dance. The final stage performance I think was performed well and when it finally all came together I fell looked a strong solid piece with a clear story line. I feel our piece answered the brief successfully and we met the needs to the theme war well as our piece included different aspects of war that the audience may not have thought about. It was clear to say that our piece was about war and I feel we expressed this to audience successfully. From this project I’ve learnt the importance of planning something especially when coming up with a dance from scratch you definitely need structure otherwise your piece will not make any sense. If I was to do this again I wouldn’t waste time trying to use two pieces of music as this only causes conflict and waste time, personally I think I could still improve on my facial expressions when performing and being more confident in myself and knowing what I’m doing and as a group I feel we could improve on being slightly more organised as towards the end of our session we had to rush as we was running out of time. However as a group I think we worked really well as team and supported each other massively especially when someone is struggling I feel we gave each other confidence in ourselves and also everyone ensured that everyone contributed in the piece.  we choose the war music because it had a fast tempo which indicates a sense of rush or panic which definitely conveys a war atmosphere it also had a couple of slow sections which helped convey the feeling of giving up or reflection we used this part of the music as the family section as solids might have often been thinking about their family. the fast dynamics in the god of war music meant we could include loads of jumps and kicks and travel movement to try and replicate fighting during war time.            


production planning