Choreography For Group Performance (MU50374O)

From the very beginning we mutually agreed we didn't want to make a heart-rending, heavy 10-minute dance about sexual abuse and all of its negative effects, we very much wanted to highlight the positive parts of the healing process, whilst still being realistic and truthfully conveying the struggles someone may face with shame and vulnerability and regaining trust in themselves and others. We wanted a message to be sent that could perhaps show any victims of sexual assault that there is hope and that you can find yourself again even when it feels truly impossible. We also wanted to portray a small element, metaphorically of what the intimidation is like when someone has been sexually assaulted, and so particularly in the beginning section, we were very certain of the fact we wanted the audience to feel the intimidation and tension too so that they could then almost feel the pain and growth with us afterwards. One of the main self-help tips that are recommended for those strugglin...

  One section we have worked on in-depth recently is the section after Emma's solo, so Emma choreographed a lot of this section however when we put the movements to music we had a small section left to choreograph, so we discussed some ideas and realised there were some significant movements that we could relate back to from the opening section. There is a movement that we do in an accumulative Canon in the first section that we wanted to almost represent a "bull charging" except we are the ones getting ready to charge at Emma in the bottom corner, the video of this is linked in my previous blog. So in this phrase, we have been working on, we reprise that movement in the same corner. However, we look back to the corner in which Emma was "trapped in" and then face away and repeat the movement in a much softer, and hunched-over position slowly lowering to the floor, trying to "hide away" from the trauma of that right corner. The song used for this whole ...

A few different pieces have had an impact on the choreography we have created, a show that particularly stuck in my mind is Colossus by Stephanie Lake Company, I saw a small clip of this at the beginning of the process and instantly felt inspired I loved the use of gestures and abstract movements, and the formations instantly had my attention gripped. Something I noticed was very similar in our piece is at the beginning we used a soloist surrounded by ensemble dancers and throughout this show that is a consistent theme when it comes to the numbers on stage. ( Collosus 2021)  I absolutely love the way Stephanie uses movement throughout the piece and the choreographic style is something I would love to try on myself in the future. Furthermore, I really admire the use of sounds, for example screaming and physical slapping of the body/floor. Again interestingly this is something we have tried to implement however I feel that when it comes to performing it we don't put enough emphasis ...

  Our choreography begins with 4 of us dancing an ensemble piece with Emma as a soloist, this metaphorically representing a sexual assault event. This section also fits the word isolation from the list of different effects of sexual assault. There's one significant moment where we travel towards Emma in the front right corner from the stage left back corner, and the idea is she's trapped in that corner whilst we travel towards her to attack. This corner will also then have significant moments running through the whole piece. We then let this transition into Emma's solo which is portraying how vulnerable someone may feel after experiencing something like that, and it's an expression of the shame and upset you could go through, we then join Emma, and the idea of this is we are now all representing our own stories of, pain and trauma. Moving on into the trio section, this represents minimising and is supposed to emphasise has some may shut down what they have been throug...

The first motif we developed was the awareness ribbon, so we have found a few different ways to use our arms, or bodies in order to create the pathway of an awareness ribbon, this quite obviously links to the stimulus as we are raising awareness for sexual abuse and its effects. We will demonstrate this motif multiple times throughout the piece, at first with canon and scale in play.  Some ideas we have had would mean we each do it at different times with 4 of us completing the movement much smaller and at a higher speed and then Emma as a soloist would be executing it much larger and slower then also using retrograde to reverse her movement instantly. With the added use of embellishment throughout to develop the simple movements of the arms into pathways in the body and even formations. There is an example of this in the video linked below. Video Link -  Awareness Ribbon                              ...

We analysed our piece and its theme so far and chose 3 words we felt related to the stimulus and could help us create movement ideas. These were Punch, Vulnerability, and Melting. We then created 4 movements that linked together for each word, so we had 3 small phrases of movement that could also combine together to make one slightly longer phrase. After we had created these phrases and numbered them we used a 12-sided dice to begin experimenting with the chance method. This meant that each movement would be in a different order, which could have made it easier or more difficult to combine together. This then gave us the opportunity to put steps together that we may never have thought of originally, allowing for some very unique and more abstract movements, some of which felt surprisingly more fluid and others a lot less so we may have had to add a small linking step. This wasn't necessarily an easy task as it can be quite challenging to find an interesting way to merge the steps...