Pairing up for park dance

To start off the lesson, we did our normal warm up, routines and corner exicises. Doing these improves our flexibility every week and is called progressive overload.

After this we went over the park dance as a group. Once we refreshed our minds of it, Laura picked what characters would go well together and paired us up. We had to make up our own motif in our characters with the use of two chairs (park bench). I enjoyed doing this because we could both experiment with our ideas and movements and make the motif challenging. If we was to do it again, then we would make sure we didn't use so many kicks in the movement, and also make sure when we are standing on the chair that we are balanced and don't wobble.

Working towards choreography

In today's lesson we started with a fitness circuit using different components of fitness in each station. This was hard but very important as it will improve my fitness and help towards my dance.

In the main part of the lesson, we focused more on different ways of interpreting choreography which will eventually help us when we make up our individual pieces. One of these techniques included pairing up and making different movements with our partners by them moving different parts of our body. This was really helpful and different but in the end made a small motif for each of us that looked effective. 

Another exercise we did was laying on the floor whilst Laura said different words that we had to think about... Then start making the movements without actually doing them. This was a really effective technique as we could think about every movement before performing it. It was slightly different when I danced it but was  a very helpful way to interpret choreography.

Evaluation of lesson 4

Today we had a 3 hour workshop and we learnt the rep of Ruby Tuesday from the production Rooster.

To start off the lesson, we had a long warm up including many different techniques and styles of dance. This was very inspirational as I can use bits from the exercises when I do my own warm ups.

In the second hour was when we started learning the rep. It included 4 sections which were all completely different. Each section included movements that were repeated in other parts of the show.  Also, the dance included a theme that was explained to us by the lady which we have to include in our homework.

This dance is a girl wearing a long red dress. The personality of the girl is quite dippy and in her own world, this is shown in section 2 and 4 of the rep when she walks around playing with her hair as if she is in a world of her own. 

The last part of the lesson was more based of our own choreography/improvisation. We had to pair up and create a small motif including parts of the rep we learnt. We had to show our ideas to the rest of the class and I enjoyed this because I could see everyone's work and what they came up with.

Evaluation of lesson 3

In today's lesson we has a 2 hour practical lesson.

We started off with a few stretches to ensure we do not pull any muscles or create any injuries during the class. After this, we went over and refreshed our minds with the 3 exercises we learnt in lesson 1. We added more movement to the  flowy/fluid exercise and performed it in groups to the class. To make the exercise more interesting, we mirrored each other doing the same movements but the opposite way.We then did the same corner work in pairs that we did in lesson 1.

We ended the lesson learning the start to a routine. The routine was based on a park with all different characters and each of us individually will have to choose our own character. I liked this routine because it was more jazzed based and will eventually be performed in different styles by everyone in the class because of our characters.

We ended a good lesson with a cool down and a chat about upcoming events.

Evaluation of lesson 2

In today's lesson we had a 2 hour practical followed by an hour of theory.

To start of the practical lesson, we had a 30 minute fitness session where we worked on core strength, cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance and muscular strength. The exercises we did were a plank, sit ups (using an exercise ball) and a balancing core exercise also using the exercise ball. We also learnt about progressive overload and FITT (Frequency, Intensity, Time Type) and how we are going to interpret these into our lessons.

We then moved onto improvisation where we pretended we had the exercise ball and was improvising with it. After we developed this idea by improvising movements of circles in all different sizes and levels. Finally, everyone had to pretend that we was painting pictures with different parts of our bodies. This was really effective and made me portray movements I wouldn't normally do.

Our next part of the lesson was portraying our own choreography. This included us all developing each others movements and ideas and then developing our own motifs by following a set of ingredients. The ingredients included words that we displayed in our movements. We also included choreographic devices and picked 3 to show our classmates our finished motif.

Finally, the second part of the lesson was theory and we watched a dance piece called zero degrees. We jotted notes about the elements involved in the dance and then wrote a short essay of what we interpreted.

Evaluation of lesson 1

In my first lesson of AS dance we had a 2 hour practical lesson. We started off meeting our new classmates and going over what we will be doing throughout the course.

After this, we learnt 3 short exercises which were all completely different. Each time we learnt the exercise we would pair up and help correct each other if there was anything we wasn't doing right. This is called constructive criticism. The first exercise included flexibility and relaxation positions/movements, the second one incorporated more travelling movements & the last one included steps that were flowing and fluid.

We then moved on to corner work, which we paired up for. We started off doing some fast travelling movements for example runs and jumps, and then moved onto leaps across the studio.

Finally, we ended the lesson with a cool down where we stretched out our body muscles. I would say that this is really important because it reduces the risks of any injuries that could occur and it also brings your heart rate back to its resting heart rate.