Week 10- Evaluation of our choreography.

This lesson was our last lesson before assessment week and now that we have completed our 10- minute piece, we wanted to evaluate and discuss our choreography in meticulous detail to help elucidate any problems we may have. Reflecting back over making our choreography, I believe that our starting objective of what we wanted to portray has been achieved thoroughly through all the research we did at the beginning. 

The intention of our piece was to highlight how people are perceived in a mental asylum and the different characteristic that they have. To the audience, my group wanted to illustrate the idea that we are confined and restricted with everything we do. We are generally characterized as 'metal' and any sense of individualism has been eradicated. This is portrayed in the triangle formation when the music tempo rises and we do vigorous movements in unison. Furthermore, within our objective, we wanted to demonstrate the hierarchy in a mental asylum and show that there is always someone who is more powerful that can dictate what we do. As the choreography develops, the audience will become acquainted with our characters journey and therefore will feel sympathetic towards them. This can be manifested when the music becomes more gentle and we all have a moment on stage where we show our personalities. This reveals that we do have an identity and we are humans that have emotions. During the choreographic process, our primary objective was to keep our stimulus of the abandoned corridor in mind and not make movements that were influenced by our music. We found this challenging as we had a circulation of ideas that we accumulated within the weeks that we wanted to put together, but now looking back, those movements would have not related to our stimulus. In addition to this, one of our dancers got injured so, therefore, we had to rethink and adjust spacing and timing issues.  Despite these challenges, my group have worked tremendously as we were open-minded about everyone's opinions. Furthermore. there was equal participation which meant a growth in productivity.

Before today's lesson, we received some feedback from our teacher to help amplify some areas of our choreography. Some of the feedback we received was: make duets look cleaner and take a risk, in our memory loss section exaggerate the movement and don't look exhausted, keep our performance all the way through and use our breath. The positive pieces of feedback were: there is a clear motif developed throughout, repeating a certain hand gesture is very eyecatching and we are all embodying the patient's mindset.  

At the beginning of the lesson, we decided to include the feedback that we received in our piece as we knew that this would take time and precision. To help make our duets cleaner, we decided to make a few changes to the contact work to make it look more daring. Instead of Storm falling on me, we decided if I took her weight in my feet so she was balancing, and then I push her up to catch her again and lay her on my knee, it would be more climatic for the audience to watch. We found that it helped dramatically as our duet didn't look fragmented and problematic, https://youtu.be/1QNmSaAW2_0. In our memory loss section, we meticulously went over the dynamics to make it looked more controlled, however, we started thinking about how we could make it more appealing and idiosyncratic. We decided to use retrograde as it gave the feel of us 'losing our minds'. Along with this, we added in the use of breath and by watching the video, it makes us look more secure in our lower body so therefore we can concentrate on facial expressions, https://youtu.be/E1LvvIpKeXg.

Finding inspiration form Akram Khan and Jasmin Vardimon

The first choreographer that we took inspiration from was Akram Kham with his piece Vertical Road. Vertical Road is beautifully told through a universal language and it explores, 'mans earthly nature, his rituals and consequences of human actions,' and with this draws us into a strange potent world of memory and self-discovery,(Vertical Road - Akram Khan Company, 2015).  It combines a multitudinous amount of elaborate movements that are beautifully woven into the harmonious beats of the music, to create what The Guardian describes as,' beautiful and harrowing,' (Mackrell, 2010). As a group, we were encouraged by his approach to choreography which was to, ' take risks, think big and daring, explore the unfamiliar, avoid compromises.' whilst also maintaining artistic integrity, (About us - Akram Khan Company, 2015). Many of the intricate hand gestures and impulsive movements, (0:36 in the video), are a recurring feature throughout our choreography, illustrating 'restriction', 'confinement' and 'control'. Furthermore, from Vertical Road, we can see that khan is an innovative choreographer, who uses facial expressions as a means of provoking his narrative to add a depth into his piece. We were inspired by this because we were unsure of what we wanted our facial expressions to represent, however, by having Khan as our inspiration, we stimulated many powerful and sinister expressions that ensemble and complement our choreography. Furthermore, another reason we were influenced by the choreographer was that he approaches his choreography by posing himself a series of questions. This is evident in his work rush (2000)  as he originated his choreography by thinking about the five senses to create idiosyncratic movements. Likewise, we began to ask ourselves questions such as: 'Are we scared of our surroundings?' , 'Is there someone that's holding us captive in our minds?' and ' Are we afraid to portray any individuality?' All of these questions have been answered thoroughly in our piece, (Sanders, 2003). In Vertical Road, there are 8 dancers which create many unique formations due to their 'churning vortices of movement', (Mackrell, 2010). At 0:22 in the video, https://youtu.be/vfflMh2BBqo they are all in a triangle formation which influenced us to use it in our piece. This impacted the audience due to its sense of urgency and imperativeness. We wanted to impact the audience in the same way, so beginning the climax of our piece with all of my group involved generated a menacing and ominous atmosphere.  Furthermore, Khan also implied that the music is very significant within his choreography. He mentioned that with the music he wants to 'speak to it, rather than merely go with it.' This implies a predilection for complexity and he speaks of the significance of contrast, the use of simplicity and clarity in the body, (Sanders, 2003). Using this idea helped us within our piece, as there are many chances to use intricate movements with the continuous beat which are breathtaking in their simplicity. 

                                            (Vertical Road / Akram Khan Company, 2010)

                              The image above shows how we interpreted the formation of Vertical Road. 

Another choreographer that influenced our piece was Jasmin Vardimon with her piece called 'Medusa'. This piece provoked us with ideas on how we can use contact work to show the resilience the 'patients' have to continue the fight for individualism and freedom. Medusa is known for its 'almost violent physical movements' (Winship, 2018). This comment, along with the video, provided us to think about the use of more expressive contact work and how we can be more daring to capture the essence of frustration. Both Khan and Vardimons choreography is associated with provoking a representation of what's occurring in the world and the issues we encounter. The dancers develop a deep connection with one another to show the audience a sense of 'power an imagery on stage', (Watts, 2018). My group wanted to create this same effect by working compassionately and collaboratively in the movements that we created. By bringing our own individuality, with the help of the chance method and translation task, we were able to elect many movement styles that showed intensity and intention behind our piece. By researching about these choreographers in further detail, we discovered that Vardimon enjoys providing separate contributions and she prefers to work individually because she believes it to be, ' the easiest way',(Watts, 2018). On the contrary, Khan enjoys collaborating with his dancers to create visually complex and multivalent work,  (About us - Akram Khan Company, 2015). He does this by the form of improvisation, which we found useful when gong into our memory loss section, as the disorganized gestures manifest how we are suffering from insanity. Despite them having a different perspective on their collaborations with their dancers, personally, I believe it to have the same emotional impact on the audience due to all the dancers having no limitations. While Khans dancers ignite a passion within the audience members, Vardimons dancers show attentiveness to all their limbs which is a detail we need to be aware of for our final section. By having these choreographers as inspiration, my group now are determined and confident to take more risks and challenge our self, in order for our choreography to have that raw devotion that we see throughout Vertical Road and Medusa. 

                                    References:

Akram Khan Company. 2015. Vertical Road - Akram Khan Company. [online] Available at: <https://www.akramkhancompany.net/productions/vertical-road-2010/> [Accessed 26 November 2020].

Akram Khan Company. 2015. About Us - Akram Khan Company. [online] Available at: <https://www.akramkhancompany.net/about-us/> [Accessed 26 November 2020].

Mackrell, J., 2010. Akram Khan Company | Dance Review. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2010/sep/17/akram-khan-company-review> [Accessed 26 November 2020].

Medusa Trailer Jasmin Vardimon Company. 2018. [video] Directed by G. Amotz and R. Gabriel.

Sanders, L., 2003. Akram Khan. [online] Akramkhancompany.net. Available at: <https://www.akramkhancompany.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Akram-Khan-by-Lorna-Sanders-May-2003.pdf> [Accessed 26 November 2020].

Vertical Road / Akram Khan Company. 2010. [video].

Vertical Road / Akram Khan Company. 2010. [video].Gorgon For The #Metoo Era. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/oct/23/medusa-review-a-snake-haired-gorgon-for-the-metoo-era> [Accessed 26 November 2020].

Winship, L., 2018. Medusa Review – A Snake-Haired 

Watts, G., 2018. #Metoo Medusa - Dancing Times. [online] Dancing Times. Available at: <https://www.dancing-times.co.uk/metoo-medusa/> [Accessed 27 November 2020].

Week nine, developing our final section of choreography

This week, we received feedback from our teacher, giving us some areas to focus on to improve our choreography. Below are some of the corrections that we got given:

To start with, we concentrated on timing and the clarity of each movement so our dynamics matched the sinister undertones of the music. Furthermore, we wanted to ensure that we were all together in our unison sections, as that's the most salient point of our piece that will encapsulate our stimulus due to the harsh, expedience lines. 

We also developed a new phrase which will mark the end of our piece with the idea of all of us being victimized and trapped in a cycle that we are trying to extricate from. To illustrate an ongoing struggle, we decided to embody the concept of wearing straitjackets to convey how confined we feel and the exasperation we go through each day to make our voices heard. To show this aggravation, we decided to use unison and different levels to create eye-catching patterns but also to show that we have relinquished our fight to be treated normally, https://youtu.be/PHrxPCr9G7k. We found this part of our choreography hard to come up with the movement as we all agreed that a myriad of movement is terminated from the arms and that's the main way you portray your emotions. By having our arms behind our back for this part made us realise that we need to exaggerate the use of the upper body and refine all leg movements. To improve this section further, I believe that we should continue working on our timing and expand the movements further in order to portray a sense of urgency. 

This week, we also developed some other sections of our piece including the memory loss section. To do this, we used the translation task until we got some pieces of movement that suited the undertones of the music, whilst also maintaining a focus on our stimulus. By using the translation method, we gradually accumulated many ideas that we used throughout the piece. What we did like about this method was that our individual characteristics and style became evident, which therefore meant we could fully relate to each movement as we were confident with what we produced. Because it was a more systematic way of working, we accomplished more in that lesson. 

Further into the week, we performed our completed choreography to the class and got some feedback from them which is below, https://youtu.be/jewiHGU5yKk.I found this to be extremely beneficial for clarifying our piece as some of the comments that were made weren't initially noticed by my group. For the upcoming weeks, my group have decided to go through each section meticulously and to develop or incorporate anything. I am happy that we performed in front of the class as a fresh set of eyes really helped determine the positives and negatives of our choreography.

week 8 - continuing our choreography

In this weeks session, we focused on polishing and refining our entrance as we decided to develop and intertwine all of our motifs using the chance method. We were inspired by the music; The Chase, from the film Stonehearst Asylum as we found that the monotonous high pitch beat in the background would be effective for our short movements created by the chance method. I referred back to Kate Flatt's book that encouraged us to consider the importance of the atmosphere we immediately create in the opening and the last thing that the audience will see or question in the ending (Flatt,2019).

                                                                       (Roberts, 2017)

To start our entrance, we decided to use the chance method as we did this task in week 2 and we agreed that it was beneficial for enabling us to come up with idiosyncratic movements, https://youtu.be/NVS8CM3yShs. Below is a photo of how we got these movements.

Following on from this, we also decided on using a new regimented formation that we have experimented on for a couple of weeks. The idea behind this section was that we wanted it all to relate back to our stimulus of the corridor, therefore, we are going to relate this part of our choreography to when we are entering the mental asylum for the first time. The formation of us all being in a parallel line connects to the idea that we are confined and that we have lost all individuality and have become homogeneous. Following the research that we did in week 4, we found out that many of the patients had their arms tied in straitjackets to limit their amount of movement. The small motif of the hand rising into a claw position in the middle of our entrance relates to the concept of how they were desperate to break free from these physical restraints. All of these small motifs we made by using the chance method will be used throughout our piece to capture the audience and immediately establish our theme of being controlled. 

Myself and Storm continued working on our duet that we have been creating throughout the week. We decided to get some inspiration for Jasmin Vardamon from her piece called Medusa. We were inspired by the use of breath in the piece and found that even though it's a simple gesture, it adds meaning and depth into the piece. Vardimon mentioned that they use breath ' to acknowledge each other' (How does the use of breath influence and initiate movement in Medusa, 2019) and because myself and Storm have some contact work in this section, the use of breath is important to make sure we are both prepared. The idea behind our duet is to show the audience that we are desperately trying to find prosperity in the environment we are in, which is portrayed in the contact work at 00:47, but there is always a dominant force holding us back which is illustrated by the repetition of the 'claw' gesture, pushing my head down, https://youtu.be/7bfW568JEBU.

References:

Flatt, K, 2019. Choreography: Creating And Developing Dance For Performance. Ramsbury: The Crowood Press Ltd, p.158.

How does the use of breath influence and initiate movement in Medusa. 2019. [DVD] Directed by J. Vardimon.

Roberts, S., 2017. Heartbreaking Snaps Show The Struggle Of Life For Patients Of A Mental Hospital In The 1930S. [online] The Sun. Available at: <https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/3051543/pilgrim-state-hospital-1930s-alfred-eisenstaedt/> [Accessed 27 November 2020].

week 7, continuing our choreography

 In this weeks session, we continued our choreography but we decided to focus on areas such as cleaning and clarifying our middle section as it covers the salient points of our stimulus. This section starts with myself standing in the middle, lost in thought, doing very minimalistic movements such as swaying, twitching and shaking which was inspired by a choreographer called James Wilton in the piece 'The Shortest Day,' https://youtu.be/y5_8XULLto0. This choreography is 'based around the physiological effects on people and how many of then hurt themself in an attempt to find hope.' At 0:33, the dancer named Kynam Moore is inattentive and absorbed in his own thoughts. I have taken this concept and adapted it into the beginning of our choreography to show the distress that these patients were under, https://youtu.be/mEb_6tWshR0.

By constantly referring back to our stimulus of the corridor along with doing further research, we decided to dedicate a portion of our choreography to a treatment that many patients experienced which is called electroconvulsive therapy. This is a prominent piece as it links to Beulah Jones who was given 15 rounds of electroshock treatment. We wanted to create a climax within our choreography with the sharp, meticulous movements along with the minacious pace of the music. Before figuring out a formation, I did some further research into shapes and what they symbolize. I found out that a triangle 'contains a profound meaning which symbolizes strength ... its the strongest shape which is the culmination of mind and body', (Advani, 2020). Because of this information, we decided that it would be intriguing for our formation to be a triangle as we want to illustrate that we are more dominant when we empower each other. We were then further influenced to use this formation as a choreographer called Akram Khan uses it in a piece called Vertical Road, https://youtu.be/vfflMh2BBqo. From this video, we saw how it portrayed a sense of urgency and imperativeness and we wanted the audience to feel the same way about our piece so we decided to use it. We started with mine and Storms gesture of our hand grabbing our arm that we did in week 5, but decided to add cannon to show the build in tension as we are being restrained persistently. Soon after, we change formations with myself and Storm on the floor and the rest of my group behind. There is a high pitch moment in the music in which Bella, Hannah and Sadie lift their arms up at the same time myself and Storm lift our bodies off the floor, which demonstrates that there is always going to be an omnipotent force hindering us to break free, https://youtu.be/GpChfgUODhg.

References:

Advani, R., 2020. Triangle Symbol Meanings In Different Forms & Religions Are Surprisingly Intriguing. [online] Starbiz.com. Available at: <https://starbiz.com/love-life/triangle-symbol-meanings-13067> [Accessed 28 November 2020].