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Final Performance evalutaion

My experience across this module has been a very positive experience both with the choreography content and our group dynamic. Overall, I would say that our final choreography piece was successful because I felt as though we kept the message throughout the piece due to relevant motifs and the use of choreographic devices. I think we achieved what we set out to do from the beginning by sticking to the planned structure of the piece and using the research/ own experience of COVID-19 to portray the more personal side of the piece. However, my group decided that as we developed the choreography that there wouldn't be any duets or trios which I think would have utilised the choreographic device of split focus.  Although I have mentioned the group dynamic having a positive atmosphere, a challenge that I faced as an individual was not being verbal enough. For instance, if there was a moment where we were discussing the choreography content for a section, I would hold back my ideas because...
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Reflecting on your group starting objectives

As mentioned previously, our choreography is about COVID-19 and the different perspectives that everyone had on the virus. Our intended message from our piece was that no two lives are the same and even though there are many similarities within movements, using choreographic devices such as cannon and mirroring can show different perspectives. From this we wanted to have a reflective effect on the audience; As we perform our take on the virus they can think back to their experience and see any similarities or differences.  One of our main starting objectives was to have separate sections within the piece that had the essence of continuation from one to another and not having a static structure to the piece. Considering that some of our ideas that were originally planned were either developed into something different or were not continued I think we performed a well-structured piece that had a clear change in between each section without it being too stressful to the eye for the aud...
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Continuation of choreography

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The most recent section that I have been developing is the last section of the piece. Throughout the majority of the piece, we created each section of choreography collaboratively rather than spending time individually creating a sequence and then teaching it to the group. As mentioned previously the theme for the last section should have a nostalgic sense to complement the music. Keesha, Anita, and I have been inputting ideas for this section, We all agreed on the theme of this section. I spoke with the group for this section and mentioned how I was struggling to come up with movements that correlated with the music and we discussed how I should concentrate on watching the sequence to see if the movements were in the style of the music. In general, I would say that we don't have specific roles within the group as we maintained a collaborative contribution.    https://youtu.be/bhdChdLOmCQ As a group, our main task was to create choreography without backtracking and discarding ...
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Inspiration and feedback

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Our inspiration for one of our collaborative movements was researched on Instagram by Anita, another member of the group. In the video, the dancers gracefully collapsed onto one another. Their movements in doing so were subtle and controlled. It began with the first person lying down which then created a ripple effect in which the rest of the dancers became more grounded and piled gently on top of this person. This influenced us into applying this same method to our piece and using it to help convey our message to the audience. With our reinterpretation, Max is the first person to fall to the ground, and then in height order, we use the same ripple effect to gracefully collapse over him. We then portray a sequence of arm movements followed by a canon, similar to the video, to stand. We used this to show the physical struggle of the effects of the virus and that you can feel very fatigued and exhausted and you would need someone to help you stand.  https://youtu.be/gdmtJF9GZK8 Shown...
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Composition and Structure

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When we began discussing the pattern of our choreography, we created a google document that we shared with each member of the group to allow equal interpretation. The beginning of the piece starts with a heartbeat sound, we wanted the audience to feel the stress of COVID-19 at the very start of the piece. The significance of the beginning section is to show the spread of te virus by having contact with one another and random duets.  The next section has the intent of building into something more highlighted within the piece as the music has more elements and movements within the section have more dynamics and a quicker tempo. We created the build-up for this section because the restriction of going into lockdown is portrayed and we wanted the audience to feel the fear and uncertainty that we all experienced during that time. The highlighted part in this section is the solos that we each perform due to it showing different interpretations of people in lockdown. For example, my sol...
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Motif development

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 So far in our choreography we have five motif developments that have evolved from the beginning motif. We wanted to relate all our motifs back to the stimulus so that it would keep a meaning throughout the piece; Each motif is a COVID-19 stereotype or has been further developed from the beginning process.  Our first motif is the action of coughing. Within our group, we discussed that due to one of the first symptoms of COVID-19 was having a dry cough that this action would reinterpret the topic of the piece. The idea started with you using your hand to cover your mouth as you did an upper back contraction. This was then developed further into coughing into your elbow whilst having the same contraction in the back due to the health advise to cough into your elbow.  Our second motif is the motion of cleaning hands after you have been in contact with someone. This idea came from the stimulus because we discussed some of the health regulations during COVID-19 and washing you...
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Chance Method

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This week's focus on using choreographic techniques was the chance method, created by Merce Cunningham who is renowned for this strategy. Cunningham used this method to 'Structure his choreography' to create eye-capturing choreography that had a beautiful sense of imagination and flow to the movement. (The six sides of Merce Cunningham, 2021) In this lesson, we were given 3 words that were linked to our stimulus and created a sequence resembling each of these words. Our words were Normal, hope and isolated. We discussed what each of these words resembled and decided that normal represented life before COVID-19, Isolated represented the inhumane and lonely emotions due to having zero contact with anyone outside your household. Hope represented the aspiration of coming out of lockdown. After we had been given our words we had to create four movements for each word, at the end of the task we had 12 movements. The chance method is a creative technique that the practitioner, Mer...
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