Today in our dance lesson with Emily, we managed to get
through the rest of the choreography for our ensemble piece, extracts taken
from Grease. I found this lesson beneficial as we completely finished all the
choreography for our sequence and went over, in detail parts of the
choreography we had learnt last week that we still needed help with or weren’t too
sure on.
A very enjoyable part of the dance that we learnt and devised
today was the very beginning. The four boys in the class were placed in centre
stage and learnt several counts of Grease inspired choreography that Emily had
devised herself. This included manly clicks, hand gestures and complex knee and
leg movements. Whilst this was going on in centre stage, the girls in the class
were split in to two groups of four and were placed to either the left or right
of the group of boys. I was with Jess, Livvi and Amber on stage right and we
were set slightly back from the boys. We choreographed a set of three movements
which we continuously repeated whilst the boys were dancing their introduction.
At this point we were the ‘chicks’ of Grease the musical and were the backing
dancers to the boys if you like.
We created three movements;
1) Step and
click with attitude for eight count
2) Shimmy
forwards and backwards for eight counts
3) Step,
raising and dropping arm for eight counts
We chose these particular movements because we felt that with
them, we were staying true to the original moves in Grease however they were
our own moves we had devised ourselves. Putting your own twist on dance is
always a good way to go otherwise there is no personal achievement if you have
copied the original, it is therefore not your own work.
At one point in the dance routine, I am partnered with Livvi
and this piece of the dance was one we had choreographed last week. Today we
went through the logistics of making the opening part of our dance come to
life.
For this, we used Henry to jump over as we leap frog him,
forward down stage centre. Last week this worked perfectly because Henry’s
partner wasn’t here however this week his partner is back and we had to work
out how we were going to make this happen for the actual performance.
We decided that Henry and his partner would dance first and
then when it is time for Livvi and I to dance, Henry is going to stay on stage
for an extra 16 counts so we can leap frog over him as we had planned. Henry
moves in to centre stage and Livvi and I jump him. After, Henry runs to the
back of the stage and kneels down with the others who have just had their turn
at dancing, watching and bobbing to the beat as we have ours.
Livvi and I chose to do a slid to the side after the leap as
this is stylised and is a typical move that the chicks would perform in Grease.
To fill the final counts before we start the main routine, we have used Livvi’s
unique move of moving your arms in on the other as you take quick steps to move
out of the way. This looks very typical of a girl and really effective on
camera.
The ending of this dance we have yet to finish because we still need to decide as a class what we want to do, as it is not going to bet 100% set movements, but a jump in the circle and improvise kind of feel. This will give the dance a more natural and edgy feel to it.
We will finish and perfect this dance on Tuesday 27th January, as we have timetabled two hours in the after noon, 1-3pm to do so.
Here is the final piece that we ended up with after two hours of rehearing, this is something I am proud of and am also proud of all of the class for the effort we put in to this piece.
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