A piece by Siobhan Davies- Wyoming.

From the piece I can see a large canvas that creates what seems like hills creating images of  the vast distance of the Wyoming landscape. The texture of the canvas suggests a very natural environment, maybe a more earthy surface like sand. There are also markings painted onto the canvas which could be related to Native American writings, being as the dance is inspired from Wyoming.  There are also rumples in the canvas evoking the idea of a ragged skyline of rocks/mountains.
After some research I found out the designer was David Buckland. He accompanied Siobhan Davies on her trip to America, therefore directly experiencing the landscape of Wyoming.

Within the film, I think there is a lower intensity of light on stage right, picking up on the canvas rumbles at the back. This again suggests a distant horizon. From stage left there is wall of dominant lights that create a strong parallel beam, giving the idea of landscape but at the same time hinting at sunlight. Throughout the piece there are changes in light intensity and patches of shade to emphasis different qualities of light or times of the day. The lightning effects depend on where the dancers are and camera angles.

From looking at the film their costumes were high waisted fitted trousers and baggy work-men like shirts that were tucked in. I would say  also say the costumes are non gender specific. The clothes were natural colours to give the idea that they had faded giving a sense of a lived in/everyday feel. The shirts gave a roughness and texture, which echoed the canvas. Lastly they had bare feet and free hair suggesting a everyday environment.

The movement material within the five solos, seemed to me, to be the dancers response to their environment. There is a lot of pedestrian movements e.g. walking, starring into the distance and arm gestures. The dancers also managed to reflect the idea of vast space within their movement phrases. In the second part there are a mixture of duets, trios and ensemble work. The main theme that shone through for me was the idea of encounters and influence of other beings in a such a desolate place.

The last major component within the piece was the use of the camera. By filming the dancer work, I believe Siobhan Davies has created a greater sense of space reflecting the Wyoming landscape. At the start of the dance work, there is an overlay of images;sand, water, grass, these naturalistic images reinforce the landscape qualities of the dance. In the dance piece they use a lot of cuts, framing and mobile camerawork which seems to create an idea that you are with dancers experience what they are seeing and feeling too.

Siobhan Davies Archive

As part of D-Traces Project the whole class had to take part in a library session, exploring the Siobhan Davies archive and creating a scrapbook of; videos, pictures, written resources and biography that intrigued us. Even though I had studied Siobhan Davies before, I had never had access to the volume of resources that were now present at my finger tips. Siobhan Davies had been key in my choice to enter the contemporary world, the way shes uses all aspects of the artistic world strongly in her pieces, fascinates me. It was also a great introduction to a project that been drawn from her archive. Lastly it would aid my studies for researching, writing, choreographing and improvising.

Firstly I choose the video of her piece Wyoming because I had previously studied the first section at GCSE and was curious to see the development of the dance, as I found the first section very inspiring and considered it maybe to be a creative stimulus in the future. I also saved the cast sheet, article and details about the piece carnival, this being because I had watched the piece but had no understanding about what it was about or who the dancers were. Also in my scrapbook I saved images and videos of a piece called Bank, this simply was because it had been mentioned by some of the dancers at the Siobhan Davies dance day that they were part of and I was interested to see how they moved and to see what the piece was about. Overall I believe I would use the archive again to definitely aid my studies.

Skinner Releasing Technique

I participated in a few classes in Skinner Releasing technique with Florence Peake which I really enjoyed. The Skinner Releasing Technique lets us practice letting go of; unnecessary muscle tension, holding in our body preconceptions about what is suppose to happen, what body a dancer should have, habitual ways of thinking and patterns allowing something new to happen. By doing this we find energy and power to rediscover alignment, improved strength and flexibility in a way that it feels natural to the body.  This technique really spoke to me as a dancer, it was maybe a turning point into the way I would go about achieving the steps that I wished. I have been classically trained and was always told to hold my body up to achieve such movements as pirouettes. But being told to pull your body up doesn't necessarily work for every individual dancer. I thought that if there was another way I could achieve the same results, but without the unnecessary muscle tension all over my body, then maybe it would be worth a try. 

Imagery is also a huge part of a class for the transformation process. Florence would guide us through a imagery movement score by voice, sometimes with our eyes closed, allowing us to embody the imagery and move in the way we wished. For me this created surprising ways of moving. but at the same time after class I still felt like I had been in a technical class. If I had continued to do this class weekly instead of say Ballet, would my technical ability have decreased or improved?

Pictures from my journal of imagery used within the class.

Alexander Technique.

"Movement never lies...Dance should illuminate the landscape of the soul." M.G.

In January I took part in two Alexander Technique classes with Lucia Walker. The Alexander technique is a method of noticing habits within our everyday movement, that we can change so that we release harmful tension. The technique also looks at the use of different amounts of energy for different movements. We looked at how we could reduce the amount of effort for one movement/activity so that it yields energy for many more. Within the class I noticed I carried unnecessary tension in areas that were very unrelated to the activity I was doing e.g. when I'm walking, I clench my throat and jaw, making my head be pushed back. I became very aware of this clenching in the days that followed and would have to stop and really think about not to do because it had become a natural process to do. Also on the day, Lucia got us to simply sit in an upright position. Immediately everyone sat bolt upright, which isn't a natural position. But after some explanation from Lucia, we attempted to find a better sitting position for our bodies, which would release tension and allow us to breath. I found this task exceptionally difficult as I arranged myself in a theoretically better position but it was still uncomfortable. I sit forwards on my sit bones and a hunched over position because that's the only way I can sit unaided for a long period of time without my back muscles starting to ache. For me it raised some questions; Do I have an injury? Weak back muscles? Am I doing my body more harm? or just because its not comfortable now, does that mean it always will be?

Where is the garden? and LOTT 12...

On Friday 10th of December, the Coventry second year dance students had to perform their choreographed and improvised dance work pieces. On this night, I watched two dance pieces by the companies Eden Dance Company and So We Dance.

The first piece was choreographed by Alex Howard, performed by Eden Dance Company and was called Where is the Garden?  This was my first encounter with site specific dance and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Firstly, the cast’s attention to detail; created an atmosphere like that of a garden, so much so that I felt like I was exploring the garden.  Their use of the plastic foil was beautiful and was used I believe for representation of hibernation in winter. At points, there were certain phrase/movements, which I didn’t fully understand why they had been used e.g. the circling of the arm. Furthermore, as an audience member I loved the journey I was taken on from the studio ET 221 to Priory Square.  The cast’s responses’ in both venues were completely different and never got boring, as there was always so much detail to look at. Some people may suggest that the costumes, took attention away from the movement but I have to disagree. All the girls were very natural looking and it was in keeping with the piece.  The piece was refreshing, a new takes on dance I’ve never explored before and has refueled my passion.  All the dancers gave a true and honest response to the environment which they had explored and recreated seamlessly in different locations.  

The second company was So We Dance with their piece called LOTT 12 choreographed by Rick Nodine. The piece looked at the nature of group and explored how certain numbers/groups of people changed and regrouped. Another idea explored within the piece was the energy of repetition. I really enjoyed the continuous flow of movement. For me it created an idea of a mass of energy flowing back and forth. The cast had great teamwork; this was shown through the running and stopping sequence. They were facing opposite directions but had to sense when one another was going to start running, meaning that they both started together. A hard skill which they seem to master.  I understand that one of the main principles was repetition, but I think maybe it was used a little too much. They could have still portrayed the idea without so many repetitions. Use of normal clothing created individuality and the idea of the random nature of groupings. Unfortunately the use of repertoire and repetition meant there wasn't any room for the dancers to express their own response to the idea or create an honest performance. The movement phrases probably would of come from the dancers exploration of the idea through improvisation so therefore reflecting their personal ideas to some extent. Lastly the use of contact improvisation was fantastic, a standard and target I want to aim for.

All the dancers from both pieces worked very hard and you could see all of them had really explored the idea they were given to work with. I really enjoyed the evening and can't wait to start my second year performance!

Interview with Shannon and general feeback.

Feedback from Shannon about my solo choreography after my  work in progress sharing.
After reflecting on what she said, I would say I agree about the second part of the solo going away from the idea and I couldn't think of any reason why is should be included other than it was movement I felt safe with. But in response to her saying about having a change of dynamics, I question whether that would take away from the painful emotion of restraints?

Feedback from peers, tutors and from myself.
-I have a lot of movement material on the lower and higher level but next time should explore the middle level-which I like to describe the awkward level.
-I made great sculptural shapes but I need to look at the transitions between them and how they reflect my stimulus. Transitions are just as important as main motifs.
-Rhythm and speed was varying, but I tend to rush movements where I could hold them for longer. I feel I need to look at the quality of my movement timing.
-Great eye focus and drawing attention to smaller details of movement.
-I have really started to explore outside of my comfortable movement vocabulary, but I shouldn't feel embarrassed about experimenting or that it doesn't look polished, because I'm improvising with an idea.

Solo Sketch- Reflection on my process.

Formative assessment-Solo Sketch- Reflection on my process.

Title of my piece-Restraints.

The process for the making of my solo sketch has been a big learning experience, that at times was very challenging. For me, choreographing material has always been the biggest struggle, purely because not only am I exposing myself as a dancer but me as a person. I find it very easy to perform set material, because to the audience I am entertaining them as a character. The audience know in reality that isn’t who I am but there is no direct relationship between the audience or me as a performer. This also reflects me within life, only my close friends and family know the real me. I would rather play a character dancing than be rejected or laughed at for exploring the way in which I wish to move.

    My stimulus was of a cowboy lassoing a horse, on a desert backdrop. This immediately caught my attention and brought back memories of my time spent in the Grand Canyon while travelling. From this picture I picked out two key areas; the horses’ wild main and the restricting ropes. These I thought were two very conflicting images. At first the freedom of the horses’ main, reflected the feelings of freedom I had felt while away and made me passionate about the choreography. Constructing a mind map with words such as: vast, running, expansive, I began to improvise while embodying the word. I later did this for the image of restraining ropes and then began to film this. From this I began to choose and build up a movement repertoire, that reflected my stimulus. After this Hannah and I shared what we had so far and gave each other feedback. My feedback was that I needed to explore using more body parts to demonstrate vast space and freedom. Not only my arms and legs to indicate it. This I did, by holding my arms behind my back. I found that my torso played a very important role and explored within this. Then it came to show a working progress to the group and gain peer feedback. I showed the improvised restricted movements I had worked on  at the very start and also the repertoire of movement about freedom. From this I gained essential feedback that I had not noticed about my dancing pattern. This being, for the freedom movement I had just used movement I was very comfortable with; ballet jetes, pirouettes and contemporary runs. Someone stated

     “ I felt like I was watching a contemporary dance class, but the distorted movements you were doing on the floor intrigued me a lot more.”

       This was a very fair criticism that I felt was necessary within my development to honestly portray my emotions about my subject matter, rather than doing what I knew. Revisiting my subject matter, I discovered another emotion I had written down on my mind map that was coherent with the distorted  movements I had improvised. The feeling was, coming back to education and the reality that is normal life, I realised how restricted I felt, having structure and there not being a lot of freedom. Taking this as my topic and the image of the ropes as restraints, I went back to my movement and explored putting myself into impossible positions how I would get out of these. This led to an exploration of different body parts and levels.

      I believe I maybe concentrated to much time on exploration of distorted shapes and the restrictive quality I was trying to portray, I never left myself enough time to look in detail at my spacing and timing. That is why a lot of the restricted movements I do on the upper level, are more about struggling to move within a distorted position rather than using a lot of movement. Next time I will definitely allocate more time to do this and consider portraying the idea through the timing of movement. I believe that motivating myself within the studio outside of class, is something I need to work on. I found the tasks that were set in class helpful and think this would be beneficial to apply these to my outside studio practice. However uncomfortable the tasks and improvising were, to begin with, I’m glad I took them seriously and threw myself into them, because I feel like I have pushed myself as a choreographer.

      To conclude I believe I’ve gained a lot from the experience, it has given me a lot more confidence within improvising and has opened me up to a new way of working.