# data[].attributes.body
As this was our first lesson back, we looked at the theme 'elements of life' which included the 4 elements: earth, air, fire and water. The dance doesn't require special steps. It was a way for us to channel our energy into the different elements to create a flow. We worked in groups of 4-5 where we were given each an element (water). We then focused on ideas that could possibly link to water and we came up with fluidity and speed. water can flow, shower/ comes in heavy/light rain, waves, ripple etc.

# data[].attributes.body
I am making a dance by:

I would like to use different methods to convey within our dance such as the 16 ways to manipulate. I would also like to use Laban Effort Actions within our piece, and the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water.

I am making a dance which:

Will include variety of choreographic techniques which will be shown through the variety of styles we will be using in our choreography; contemporary and hip hop. It will look manic and chaotic, which is what our intentions of the piece are, as two opposites come together to fight for power.

I am making a dance that:

Will show the progression and regression of someone who suffers from dissociative disorder, and how they pull through every day, and how they try overcoming it; which is very hard for them.

I am making a dance about:

Dissociative Disorder; also known as ‘split personality’. We chose this theme as a duet would be able to explore this theme quite well. The reason we chose split personality is because of the contrast and contradiction within it. We had the concept that we wanted to raise awareness for the audience to understand it into depth, and that many people do suffer from multiple personalities.

# data[].attributes.body
What methods/techniques or influences are you drawing from?

Once we finally fixated on the theme we wanted to choreograph on, we decided to look at stories online of people who had suffered from split personality. We saw an interview of this women who suffered from three different personalities, where she changed into an angry man, a little girl and an old woman. She said the cause of this was sexual abuse as a young child and not receiving any help from her grandma. This caused all of the three people to become personalities in her head. We thought of making a piece on that woman to raise awareness on affects young children can have growing up causing any sort of mental health issues, prioritising split personality.

Discuss the different styles you would like to use, and how to prepare your dancers to do so?

As we want to show contrasting ideas within our piece, we thought of using two different dance styles to encourage that idea. we focused on well-known styles such as contemporary and hip hop to show power and weakness of the two people. Even though my partner was playing the role of power and authority, we switched around on the style and used contemporary as well as hip hop for their role. To prepare us for this, we put the music on and started improvising ideas which we recorded and added to our choreography. This helped to a greater extent, as we weren’t fixated on the idea of just linking to the theme, but focusing on the style and ideas we had progressed within our ideas that we mind mapped.

How we worked, and methods used- at the beginning of our process - we struggled to start at a certain point, however the dance making classes we had really helped us to start somewhere. This gave us inspiration for our piece. For example, Earth, Fire, Air, Water, which could come into contrast with emotions/ personality for us individuals. We used fire as it correlated with violence, anger and we mind mapped ideas around fire; which enhanced how chaotic it is. We used earth within our piece to explore grounded work, where we did a lot of floor work and explored with earthy movements. Following this, we used 16 ways to manipulate and the Laban Effort Actions to create further movement for our piece.

Throughout our process, we kept going back to the Candoco workshop where looked at progressing our vivid facial expressions and to endure differentiating movements.

Costume? – as this wasn’t a large public performance, we knew costume wasn’t a big priority within our piece and we hadn’t really thought this far for our choreography. However, we decided that we would go with something that can show us apart and that the audience will be able to catch on that we have a difference. My partner wore black to show authority and power and myself to wear white for purity and innocence.

Changes? – structure/music? – to begin with, we started planning our dance with the Binary form of ABC, positioned around the day in the life of someone with split personality. However, because of how we choreographed, the structure changed to Rondo form which was ABACADA. This was because of how we went back and forth with our personalities.

The music we had started with had completely changed by the time we started getting into depth with our choreography. However, we came to an agreement that we needed something with no lyrics, and with a chaotic tempo so we can explore the two different styles we wanted to include in our choreographic piece.

Process-

To further our choreography, we really focused on the classes we had been given before our choreographic process. The Candoco class we had taken really helped us with facial expressions, which helped create movement to help us get started. It helped us develop further and continue with more ideas such as 16 ways to manipulate and Laban Effort Actions. We did our research on Split personality and found a lot of information.

Split personality is a disorder that is caused by many factors such as severe trauma during childhood (usually extreme, repetitive, sexual or emotional). It is a disorder that starts to control our behaviour from time to time causing it to be called ‘split personality’.

We focused on the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water for our piece as we thought it would really help with causing contradiction in our piece. The two main ones we focused on was Earth and fire as we wanted to show power and authority, but also show grounded weakness from the opposite.

# data[].attributes.body
Feedback from mock-

Our feedback was from a senior peer who had not seen our work or even had an idea of what we were studying.

Once they had seen our piece we had been told how our work was showing the contrasting styles throughout our work and how we were somewhat exploring something related to mental health. To improve on our work and how to enhance the theme, we were to make the piece even more messy and chaotic, so we focused on 16 ways to manipulate and used ides to further our choreographic process

# data[].attributes.body
Evaluation-

Overall our choreographic piece explored the theme to an extent as we used different methods to portray our further understanding within our piece.

The feedback and grade we had received from our work told us how we clearly had shown a vast amount of research and understanding about the theme we focused on and how it allowed us to create ‘striking and unusual movement’. We could’ve improved on extending our rehearsal process and made sure that we were more comfortable with working with each other.