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For weeks we worked on creating a final year two contemporary piece.

For weeks we worked on making and learning rep from Craig.

Our piece was build up from all different phrase learnt through out the weeks. The phrases included the use of breath and the use of traveling across the room.

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First lesson back after the Christmas break.
well the first lesson back and it was such a nice feeling to be back in the studio doing what I love most.. todays lesson was a very chilled and calm atmosphere. The class started as we usually start, on the floor laying on our back. We Began thinking about our breath and relaxing down into the floor. it was like a lesson full off stretching and warm up the muscles.

We done many stretching exercises using breath as a guide. One of the exercises was to sit in a frog position with the palms of the hands facing the ceiling resting on your knees, we sat in this position for a while just breathing and relaxing all our muscles letting go of all tension being held anywhere.

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run piece need to be stronger
done travelling piece on both sides
worked on new piece from the left side of the room
need to work on this as I find it difficult to work it out on the opposite side.

began standing this lesson
working on feet
Craig commented on my feet: the fronts of my feet need to be stronger

work on piles in parallel
they were stronger in first
then went and warmed up on the floor
moving pushing away from the floor
wanted as to think about pushing away from the floor through out lesson
touch on head lifted up holding centres and thinking about our alignment and posture.

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walking/running.

In todays lesson the warm up was something new and very different to the normal warm up we do. We took on a whole new task, it was to pretend and challenging the feeling of not being able to move, imagine you don't know how to walk or move? you have to think of how you would do it if you didn't know the original way, think about how you would get up off the floor? you would walk? run? travel?
this was an interesting challenge to try as you could do to the basic ways off doing everything you had to think out side the box and not think of just for example using your feet and hands to get up maybe you would use your shoulder. be different and standing out. when doing this task I really shut off to what was going on around me and focused closely on he given task as I thought it was something go had never thought of before. its like the feeling if you was to lose a body part you would have to learn all over again, I treated these challenge as a way to feel what it would be like and really think of it in a different way.
As I am always working on ways to strengthen my feet, I also used this task as a way to improve my feet and really use my feet to warm up and strength as I went on. when it came to the walking/running stage of the challenge, I really thought closely about how to break it down slowly step by step as it was basically now doing the opposite to normally walking across a room.

I had very good feedback from this lesson. Craig explained that he wish he had filmed the class as it was so fascinated by the way I challenged the task and really thought outside my comfort zone. how focused I was on the task and how I really showed step by step the intention behind every movement.

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This was now the seventh week in college. Assesssment week where every lesson is filmed and we all get individually assessed by our lectures.

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My first contemporary class back at college was let's say it was different. I was nervous being back in the studio as I was coming back as the second year with a higher expectation. I felt that there is a lot more pressure, especially as auditions, are coming around fast.

Craig began the class with informing us that he was going to teach us differently to how he normally would, he said he was going to be more laid back and let us do more of the work for 'Ourselves'.

After hearing what Craig had just explained to us, it really made me think more independently as a year 2 student and what it means to be independent.

Craig then began to teach us the new phrase which was aimed at thinking about our intention, our use of breath and our ability to feel the movement.

After this Craig insisted on only showing us the material twice to make us start thinking for ourselves. This made me feel really panicked because I'm so used to be able to go through the movement several times before doing it on my own.

When performing the material I felt less of a panic as it was new to everyone in the class not just my self. This helped me not to over think and to get myself worked up on what was coming next. Also, Craig kept reassuring me that it was ok to go wrong with the material as it was the intention that mattered.

A strength of mine in the lesson was being able to let myself go and feel through the movement for myself and not relying on copying someone in my croup when I went wrong.

On the other hand, a weakness of mine was my inability to think first and then move. I panicked before processing everything and it's something I now know I need to consider when learning the material.

In this lesson, I learned that when working with intention its ok to go wrong as long as the meaning is being portrayed.

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The second week back in college and it was a lot calmer... the first lesson back last week was unusual. The lesson had a new approach to it, the class was for us to not to rely on Craig too much in repeating the material and to really do the work for ourselves.

These classes are for us to not to be spoon fed and to really get stuck in and not over think the class and movement too much and just let the body think for itself. The goal of the lesson is to train the body to think fast and efficiently when learning new phrases, try not to think about what move is coming next but to feel it. the lessons are to help us become more independent.

When learning the new phrases Craig taught us with the lesson Craig insisted on only going through the phrase with us a few times as his intention was to help us start to think for ourselves, to help us open up parts of the brain which we haven't quite used before.

At the beginning of class we all layed stretched out on the floor this helped us to engage and find our alignment for the following phrases.

This then brought us into our first phrase, at first. started to remind myself of the material we had learned from the week before, I also reminded myself about the intention of letting my body feel the movement and to let go of the feeling of getting it right the first time. the phrase was still set with the same intention but with slight adaptions to the material to give us a challenge.

After visiting the familiar phrases and performing them in two groups, we went on to learn two new phrases. learning the phrase was slightly more challenging as it wasn't as new to us anymore. one of the phrases learned in today class was a traveling phrase, when learning this work I was having difficulty with travelling the material clear down the room with the right intention and right shift of weight, I feel like I was holding back and playing it save when moving through the material also another struggle of mine was using my kinesphere and really extending all movement to my full capacity.

I feel in this class today I was still holding back and I could feel myself switching back between turning off and letting my body feel it or thinking about the move coming next, I feel this will be a struggle at first but I feel after a few weeks it will come more naturally and I will then be able to understand it more clearly.

My target for my upcoming lesson would be to keep on working on this challenge and really taking risks and pushing myself to lose the fear.

This is a video of the travelling phrase from class today.

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This was now our third week back in the studio. Our third lesson In contemporary. I feel at this point of the term I was starting to find my feet and really stealing back into my routine at last.

Starting on the floor, as usual, we layed on our back with our eyes closed as Craig spoke to us with slow music in the background. as we laid there Craig was trying to get us to think about our alignment and pushing our pelvis' on the floor. Craig then said to lift our light up so our feet were now resting on the floor and then begin let our leg drop to the side of us, then engaging our centers to pull them back up to center then reporting this a few times.

After trying the exercise Craig showed us another he said for us to stretch out pushing our legs and arm away and then engaging our stomaches to curve over to the side into a ball using only our center to move us there then bring ourselves back to our starting positioning and repeating this exercise to the another side.

Both exercises were to make us think about holding our center at all times during any movement whether its phrase on the floor or in the air.
I think engaging the stomach is so important and effective in dance and its a weakness of mine at the moment so I feel these exercises really helped me and I will definitely use them for myself sometime in warm ups and warm downs as they were really beneficial.

Now going on about the rest of the class we then went on and we went through all the phrases had learned over the past three weeks. Craig showed and went through with us the materials and give feedback for all of what bit needed more energy.

Craig also went through timing as we were all doing it all different times. he told us to think about the timing and not to slow down to really think about our energy throughout and not to stop and think about the movement to just feel it and move through the material like you know it.

we also went through the left side and direction on the other side of all the phrases because as a class this was a real confusion for us all. so Craig went through all the phrases direction so we weren't struggling.

After going over the movement we then showed all the phrases in groups after mending the issues.

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Within todays session we began the class with our normal structure and warming up our bodies with doing our centre exercises on the floor. for an example engaging the centre while dropping the legs side to side.

Another exercise that was introduced was, we would still be laying on the floor and we would lift one of our legs up ad let go and let it the leg drop to the fall to the floor with out controlling and holding it back from hitting the floor. Letting gravity take the leg and just allowing yourself to let your body relax in to the floor. we also tried this exercise with our arm too.

I found this exercise very tricky as I found it hard to not control the landing when I dropped my leg. this is down to fear of thinking it was going to hurt but after trying it I just let myself not think about controlling and to relax the leg more. After I got to grips with the intention of the task I thought it was a relaxing exercise to warm and get my body engaged.

Once we was finished warming up and connecting with our bodies we moved on to the phrase, as the lessons before we went through the phrase once then within the small group performed It first on the right side then on the left to get the body used to doing the material on both side for future and present training.

All the phrases are based around shift of weight and intention and feeling the movement through out. when performing the phrases Craig addressed that as a class we wasn't quite understanding the meaning of shift the weight.

He then showed how it is meant to look like, we then as a class tried many different ways how to move. We was then told to engage the centre and push the belly button forward to travel. we was showed the way we was doing it and the right way so we could then learn and eventually achieve the meaning of shifting weight.

We spend most of the last have of the lesson learning how to shift our weight as it was a big thing within this class as the phrases included weight exchange within them.

we then done a exercise which was based around a handstand he explained about not arching the back and the way we had to control it with our arms. it was harder than doing a normal handstand as you had to think more about the weight exchange for that how long you could stay up in a handstand. Craig explained that the head to be tucked under looking toward the mirrors and not at the floor and the legs didn't straighten they maintained bend. Also another thing Craig told us was not to land on one leg like you would do if it was a normal handstand, to land on two feet. another thing was to go under with the arm going under you not going forward and straight down. Going under with the arm how a big challenge and different it made it less like a handstand which ent it was more tacky to do.

Personally for me I struggled with the last exercise as I felt like I was holding back I lot in the handstand task. I find this was a struggle as going upside down is a small fear for me. I think from past accidents with handstand I over think it has made a fear about going over and landing on my head or back and hurting my self.

But.. from this being a challenge for myself. it give me something to work on is this class. Letting go of fear and really pushing myself to take many risks to improve and get stronger.

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I was absent due to illness. So I did not attend my Contemporary class on this day.

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The sixth week back in college. I just can't believe how fast the first term has gone. The week before assessment week and half term.

So... The class began on the floor as usual we done all regular exercise to connect with our body and think about our alignment.The exercise are there for a reminder.

During warm up on the floor today we tried new exercise the first one was to move like your being pulled down by the floor so trying to think of ways to move with the feeling off being pulled.

The second one was to think about how you would move if you was pushing away from the the floor the different ways and level you could use to show you was pushing against the floor.

The last two were to imagine you had a ball balancing on a part of the body and you can't drop it on the floor you have to move the ball to different parts of the body. and the last one being a helium balloon attach to a part of your body. When doing the balloon task you had to think about high and think about going up with your body part. we was then told to imagine there was a balloon attached  to our head this was to make us think about how eye focus and not to look down and watch what our bodies doing.

we then moved on to the phrases going over them and practising them to improve them as a class and in group. we also learnt a new phrase which was all about balance but most about pooling. I thought this was very tacky as I found it hard to pool without losing my balance quickly. this could a lot of focus and strength to achieve. This is something i would love to be able to be stringer at so I will continue to always challenge myself when put to the test.

When we got to the one but last phrase we spent some time going to through the run at the ending. Craig explained how he wanted us to run with shift and for the run to be large and grounded. we then practised running with large grounded strides around the room trying to run every time with a less number of step than before.

The first time I run, i run using 8 steps. The second time I tried  both being 5. Also working on our strides Craig wanted us to think about our control when stopping. think about stopping straight away and not falling off it.