Jazz

For 3 weeks in performing arts we have been working on our jazz assignment. We were split into groups to create a 30 second dance one group was doing lyrical jazz, one group hip hop jazz and the last group rock n roll jazz. Jazz dance includes many different styles, and people have many different interpritations of Jazz dance,as there are no rules.
I was in the lyrical jazz group with Alice Norris and Kelly Rolfe. We chose to make up our dance to 'beautiful' by Cristina Agularia. We chose this song because it has a strong backing beat when it gets into the song, and the lyrics where very emotion to follow the style. We where able to add the lyrical feel to jazz movements. Each movement was flowing but snappy and strong. Every movement was contemporary/lyrical and had a jazz feel to it because it was quicker and more sharp than flowing. Then as part of the jazz workshop we had to teach are dance to the rest of the class, and where filmed to see our teaching skills. We divided our dance into different sections so we could each teach part of the dance. Alice taught section 1, Kelly taught section 2 and I taught section 3. We went over the dance a few times and everyone in our class got it really quickly. Once everyone new it we asked them to perform it without us, to see if they had picked it up well, and new what to do.

The next group was Ellie, Chloe Green, Laura-Ann, Louise and Shauna. They made up Rock n Roll Jazz choreography to Candyman, which I wasnt used to doing as it is a style I have never really done. There dance had a lot of positions and was very fast and precise, if you werent doing the same it wouldnt look as effective. They taught this to the class and it took a lot longer. This is because Rock n Roll is a very different dance style and not a lot of people have had the opportunity to try it. Precision is so important. I really liked this dance as it was really up beat and exciting, however it was very tiring because you are constantly moving and didnt really have breaks in the music or choreography.

The last group was Shannon, Katie and Chloe stockman. They were teaching us a hip hop Jazz sequence. Which was very different, as I dont have much experience with Hip Hop, so it took a bit longer as I had to grasp they style of it. The dance was very fast and sharp and all the movements were very too the beat, but it also had a lyric essence.

I loved doing the Jazz workshop as we got a feel of many styles but they all had there simularties.

Performing arts lessons

In our performing arts lessons we have completed all our audition pieces for musical theatre. We did an audition piece in dance, drama and singing.

My acting piece was a piece where I was speaking at my dads funeral, It included a lot of emotion as my dad and I's relationship was tragic, he used to abuse me, however in the speech I couldnt show to much emotion but I had to stay strong but show how much he effected my life. I researched into the background of how she must have felt, and tried to relate to her so I would be able to act better as her charecter. When making the speech I spoke about the past and what happened with my father, brother and mother. It was very effective because the character was a very strong girl of whom had a lot of emotion.

My singing piece was a duet with Kelly Rolfe, I was very nervous about this, as singing isn't my strong point. We sang 'i know him so well'. When we first got this song we didnt know it very well and weren't very confident, first we sang through the song a few times with our teacher and the word sheet, this got us into the feel of the song and helped us learn the tune and timings of the singing. Within the song we each had individual pieces to sing to show of our voices and there were some harmonies to compliment eachothers voice, this was hard to get used to at first, but got easier as we rehersed. After we had learnt the song and words we added simple movement to the song as it is a slow and emotional song. We used it as a chess game, so our movements included many directions rather thasn choreographed steps.

For my dance auditon piece I choreographed a dance based around the theme of the zebra from the dance film 'still life at the penguin cafe'. I watched the zebra dance and looked at the different moves used to make it more zebra like. As a base of my choreography I found several motiffs which I developed futher. The music I used was very tribal, this helped when choreographing as it was simular to the theme.
And as a whole group we all worked together to create a group performance to 'All That Jazz' following a fossey theme.

I have really enjoyed studying musical theatre, and I found it very different to all of the other units. I found it fun auditioning and covering all dance, drama and singing.