Bhangra

This week has been great fun, we started looking into the idea of strorytelling through Bhangra dance. We learnt about how every bit of choreography tells a story, which is most often based around Forbidden love, chasing someone, betrayal and love. We have also found out that all Bhangra performances have a comedy section and a happy ending.

We got split into groups of around 6 with the above storys we could use. We started brainstorming ideas for choreography once we had chose what theme we wanted to use. My group used forbidden love, we then started to create a story that would go well with our theme. We are focussing on Romeo and Juliet, and have split the group into 3's gang one and gang two. Both gangs have different religions. Gang one have a street twist and shannon is romeo, and gang 2 have a more contemporary feel to there moves, and I am juliet. We have done the street and contemporary twist to are bhangra moves to show the different religions. Romeo and Juliet fall in love, but realise they cant be together because of there religions, then there is a battle scene after this they realise they can be together following the traditional happy ending.

Once we split the group and had a theme, we started to create some motifs, after 4 lessons, we have now created are story and planned out how we are going to tell it through dance. We are more than half way through our choreography. The first dance is gang 1 then it goes into gang 2, after they have done there dances everyone joins together romeo and juliet at the front with the gang members around gang 1 do there dance at the same time as gang 2 are doing theres, showing a difference that gang 1 are more sharp and funky whereas gang 2's movements flow more. Romeo and Juliet then fall in love, and they have a duo dance, they then realise they cant be together and the battle scene begins! After the battle scene they realise they can be together and celebrate!

We still have to mix are music, but we have planned out where we need to cut the songs etc. We have chosen the songs Bombay, Nachdi De, Jai ho, Buttons and Romantic Jatt all bhangra based and some more traditional than others. Are dance so far looks great, we just need to finish off our choreography mix the music, and then add facial expressions!

On our last lesson of the week we all watched the latest Bollywood movie 'dabangg' we were watching this to analyse the dance sections and understand how they add story to there choreogaphy to help us with ours! In this film the dance was used to add comedy and show a relationship. They looked like they where having such great fun! We noticed that is rare you see one person dancing along, there are always large groups of people dancing always in unison. Watching this film has helped me have a clearer understanding of story telling through dance, and I really enjoyed myself and can not wait for next week!