Choreography for Solo Performance (MU40370O)

The practitioner I have chosen to influence my choreography is Wayne McGregor because I looked into a few lectures and articles about his work and noticed that the negative space technique and visualisation of a word, colour or object is often incorporated in his pieces. I really enjoy how these two techniques look on myself, therefore I want to take these methods into my piece.(P//) I noticed that McGregor’s work is often very free moving and open to exploring different areas of the body, in comparison to Akram Khan’s work which I think is more structured in his choreography. There is a lot of fluidity in McGregor’s choreography which is very intriguing to watch as he moves with a fluent and loose behaviour but also manages to stay controlled. Wayne McGregor also gives the dancers in his company a lot of freedom in creating movement and allows them to put their own interpretation of an instruction into a phrase.(P//) Here below is a video I used to help my research on Wayne McGrego...

I want to achieve a clear story line across to the audience and showcase intriguing choreography. The story line as previously explained in my past blogs is the gradual acceptance of aging and the struggles of someone’s ability slowly decreasing over the years. I feel the choreography should have a sense of mystery but also simplicity because the stimulus I’m using makes me feel curious yet pure and simple. The stimulus makes me feel this way because there is nothing complicated occurring in the picture, only a Polaroid picture of a woman who has tears in her skin to reveal aged skin.(P//) I selected this stimulus because I thought it would be interesting to create choreography based around the idea of losing your ability to take on normal day activities, because of age. To go into further detail, I think the stereotype of aging is interesting because as a young person I feel as though we view elder people as fragile and forgetful. However, in this piece I think it would be intriguing ...

To find the starting point for my choreography, I made some notes on actions, dynamics, space and choreographic devices to help create movement through words that linked back to my stimulus. (P//) Examples I thought I could use for actions was; escaping, hiding, ripping off skin because the message for my piece is someone trying to prevent themselves from the development of old age as they are terrified of growing old, therefore I thought of actions like escaping, hiding and ripping off skin. (P//) Dynamics I created for this piece are rough, sudden, resistant, viscous, friction and gradual. I chose dynamics such as viscous, resistant and friction because I would like the struggle of physical and mental change to be visible through my movement, so that my narrative becomes clear to the audience. I would like to use rough, gradual and sudden dynamics because I feel the choreography should have a clear contrast in movement from when the woman in my stimulus was young to when she is getti...

I looked and critiqued Justin Peck’s piece ‘In the Countenance of Kings’ by San Francisco Ballet and I felt that it helped me understand why it’s important that a performance has a clear story line. My initial thoughts on this particular performance was that it had an atmosphere of being busy and constantly on the go, as the dancers were always moving and had very little moments of being stationary. I also observed that the performers were wearing trainers, which gave me the impression of everyday life and how ballet dancers are human beings as well as athletes. I came to this conclusion because a ballet dancer usually wouldn’t wear trainers when performing, the men were also wearing t-shirts and shorts and this made them look like an average person rather than a professional ballet dancer. (P//) The performance made me feel as though dancers should be perceived as athletes as well as artists, which I think is an important message to send to an audience. Therefore I found this as a dan...