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Welcome to my Blog!

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Our initial inspiration for the collaboration project originated from the performance theory seminar itself when we were instructed to create some sort of movement and conversation consisting of gestures, pedestrian style movement, and set oral phrases between three people (myself, Eloise and Jess).  Using the simple movement gesture of ‘tapping’, we created the movements of tapping on a table and the keys of a laptop (typing). We then added sound on top of our movements such as ‘humming’. We further developed these every-day gestures and included greetings into our project such as handshakes.

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We then set these initial ideas into the surroundings of an audition for a dance college and attempted to show how nerves and anxiety can have a negative effect on everyday things such as one’s speech, mannerisms and walk for example. Our approach in demonstrating these anxieties, was to capture the anxieties that most people face on a regular day at dance colleges such as dance assessments; singing on your own in front of teachers and peers; remembering personal corrections of a dance class or even deadlines of theory work.

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During the beginning of our collaborative project we came across a few clips of Frantic Assembly’s chair duets, we found the ideas behind them fascinating. The idea of sitting side by side in chairs performing gestures in repeated sequences managed to show a whole relationship between two individuals. This was another influence behind the handshake sequence, what inspired us to move it from standing to sitting on the floor.

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As I was assigned to be choreographer I took the responsibility to investigate other works. I found many interesting videos on YouTube, particularly this video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhE4LERF9zQ
Obviously, this percussion duet incorporated a more rhythmic focus, hence why I found it fascinating. Initially when the group discussed this duet we wanted it to show the pair as a silhouette to keep the identity of the performers hidden, however the lighting wasn’t strong enough behind us to create such an image.

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Another performance piece we watched was Entre Archilles – DV8 Physical Theatre Company. We found the natural setting of this piece most remarkable! Hence our pedestrian movements turning into a themed storyline of a “Typical day at college”.

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I expect the work that we created to be relatable to fellow students because it was set in the environment of a dance college, exploring the every-day anxieties that we face as part of our training. Although there are some humorous aspects to our choreography, I also think that there are some distressing images which may be of a sensitive nature to those who may suffer from anxieties. It should be noted that as a group, we aim to offer awareness of the subject of anxiety and to highlight the fact that there is always some sort of support from friends and that ultimately, we are in a safe environment to have fun and to enjoy our training.

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To ensure that we portrayed the feelings of anxiety in the most accurate way I looked into ways to show it in maybe not so obvious ways. I found this video on YouTube,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CfdYcKY9sU

At the start and very end of the piece, the performer runs her hands up her neck, moving them around the head and hair, coming back down her neck. This made me feel on edge whilst watching the piece, which was almost what I was hoping our audience members would feel at certain points of our video. Also, her eyes always move constantly, ensuring that she never finds herself looking directly into the camera. I know that in the far away shots she is looking up but there is never direct eye contact into the camera. On some close-up shots she is looking around inspecting the floor or she has one of her limbs such as an arm or a leg blocking her eye focus.

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One of the main issues that we faced as a group was finding the time to meet and film the project as three of the four people in our group were not available on weekends and finding the time after college was difficult when we finished at different times. Having said this, we managed to get all the filming done in one day the week before half term, this was handy but concerning as we only had one day with the camera so if anything was wrong or needed to be re-filmed we were unable to do so. Thankfully all the film footage came out alright, we took three film shots of the same scene every time we done a new bit so then we had three different versions in case the first didn’t look great. Another issue which caused great annoyance was trying to edit the noise of our piece which included constant clicking of fingers.

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As our initial idea was to include sound patterns and rhythm this created some difficult when editing as some of the sounds overlapped one another or weren’t in a repeat pattern or constant rhythm which was our primary aim. Some of the noises included singing, clicks, slaps, steps, and alarm clocks, although hearing these noises at the same time was interesting we decided against this idea for it was rather annoying. To fix this problem we came up with the solution of isolating the individual sounds. This took a little longer than anticipated but we were all really pleased with the result.

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Interestingly one of the best clips which was filmed ended up being the simple dripping of the tap on fourth floor. This footage had almost a calming feel to it, which was a dramatic contrast from the rest of the film which was hectic, loud, and slightly manic. This scene was simple which made it nice to watch.

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My assigned part in the creative process was Choreographer. I played around with different movements to portray a nervous atmosphere, such as shaking of the foot, twirling hair, tapping, and fidgeting. It was a challenge to try and create a movement motif with all these aspects without it looking too staged or unnatural as the group and I were working towards a more realistic showing of a typical day at college.

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In relation to the handshake motif, research was carried out to enhance my understanding of this gesture in a performance environment. That was when I came across these interesting Body Percussion videos online. The First one was a performance style video of four boys mainly working with claps, slaps of the thighs and stamps of the feet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWmoLP7A0MY

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Whereas the other video was a class being filmed whilst interviewing certain individuals. It was from this video I learnt you could tell a story through specific actions and particular sounds. Each part of your body will create different sounds, this was interesting to investigate, finding what noise creations I could make on a soloist and progressing into having two people make a body percussion-based handshake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2GYnSWsxZc