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Before performing our piece to be assessed we had a quick run through as we hadn't rehearsed the past few weeks because of watching the other performances but we had all be watching the video from week 6 to keep it fresh in our heads. We all still knew the first section we were just struggling slightly with the ending when we're on our back and kicking our legs but we felt confident that the first section of the piece was strong and we could follow each other for the ending.

Before the lesson we checked with Dannie to see if she had managed to find something for us to use as our pool and Tom found us a big roll out of blue material that went across the whole stage. We needed two people to hold either end of it for us and because the material was soft it meant they could lower it when we were lying on our back so you would be able to see all of our legs and not just our toes popping over the top.

We had brought in towels and jackets to wear around us whilst we were running on. We all had our red leotards and shorts/skirts and then we all wore the blue shoes covers around our buns, we were all matching and we did really look like we could be a synchronized swimming team.

Before performing we set up the mats so we wouldn't hurt ourselves when diving and w also explained to the girls holding up he material what they would need to do at a certain part of the music. Dannie set up the lights so we didn't have to see the audience as we felt this would be a distraction and we wanted to stay focused, she also added some blue to give us a better pool effect.

During the performance I think we all stay really focused and all used the right facial expressions and characteristics. We had big smiles on our faces throughout the piece, and we all joined in laughing when we pushed Danni in to the pool. The hardest part of the performance was remembering to stay low, since we had't rehearsed it with the blue sheet I had always done the movements standing up properly but I needed to make sure that the audience could't see my legs when I was swimming around. Although the ending wasn't perfect as we were doing different leg movements at different times at some parts overall I think the performance went really well. We remembered the choreography, acted the piece out and we all really enjoyed ourselves which I think made the piece better to watch.

We had a friend record our performance so we could watch it back and I actually think our piece looked better than where we took our inspiration from. Since we had the mats on the floor we didn't feel scared to 'dive' in the pool and it actually looked really effective. There were some sections that were slightly messy I think this was due to us not rehearsing for the past few weeks. This was really fun for me to do and it's something that I never saw myself doing. We had good feedback from the few people watching and all of us enjoyed ourselves so overall I think our piece was a success.

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In this weeks lesson we wanted to try the piece in our costumes so we could be sure that we felt comfortable to all the movements in what we were wearing. We decided to wear shorts with our red leotard so we didn't reveal to much when we are lying on our back and opening our legs out. I found shoe covers in one of the studio which we ended up using as a swim caps, but they kept falling off our heads which was a bit of a distraction so we decided we would wrap them around our buns for the real performance. We felt perfectly comfortable in what we were wearing and we also felt confident with the piece to perform it in 3 weeks time.

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In week 6 we spent the lesson perfecting the piece. We wanted to get the timing exactly right for when we push Danni in the pool and for when we all dive in the water, we filled in some gaps in the music where we felt like we were just swimming around for too long. We also tried the piece with the soft mats for we could properly through ourselves in to the water without hurting ourselves on the concrete floor in the room we were rehearsing in. We asked a peer in our class to record I finished piece so we could see if anything needed improving. We found it hard to tell what the piece would actually look like as we weren't using a 'pool' yet so you could see our legs walking when we meant to be swimming so we were just hoping it would be more effective once we had our blue material across the front of the stage. At this point we still weren't what we'd be using for this so we could't do a technical run with it.

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5th Grade Boys Synchronized Swimming Talent Show Skit

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8 5th grade friends team up to show off their swimming "skills" at the school talent show! Background music: Johann Strauss and the Vienna Philharmonic's "The Blue Danube" (Copyright permission not needed because music was produced prior to 1923. Therefore music is part of public domain.)

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Learning objective
To listen and participate in the workshop with your teacher. To think about notes for logbook entries to help influence your decisions on a variety act of your own.

Lesson summary
Today's workshop for variety was burlesque. Our teacher first lead a physical warm up that we followed and then she began to teacher us a routine in which we would be removing gloves we were given to wear. Our teacher explained that the choreography was simple because burlesque isn't about dancing it is about removing your clothes. We then watched a video of Dita Von Teese which helped us all understand it bit more.

We learned two different way to take off our gloves. The first one was by crouching down and then putting your finger tips under you foot so when you stood up and pulled your hand away it would take the glove off, this is easier if you leave bit of a gap at the finger tips so you dont just stand on you hand and if you're in heels but we were just dancing bare foot. The second way was to use your mouth to pull two of you fingers out of the glove and then pull it completely off with the rest of your hand.Dannie told us that burlesque is about suspense and not knowing what the performer is going to do next, so the choreography was mainly soft, slow movements or hitting positions.

We then went in to separate groups to create our own routines and then we showed then to the rest of the class. My group had lots of fun when creating our dance and all the groups but a lot of effort in to their routines so they were fun to watch.

I don't think I would do burlesque for my variety piece as I feel like it would be too much of an easy option to do as a dancer. I want to try and do something unusual and something that I will find a real challenge and out of my comfort zone.

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Learning objective
To listen and participate in the workshop with your teacher. To think about notes for logbook entries to help influence your decisions on a variety act of your own.

Lesson summary
In preparation for today workshop we were told to wear shorts and to bring a towel. Some of us thought we might of been painting with our feet but it turns out we were going to be pole dancing. There was a few of us that were very excited to do this but we knew it would be difficult and tiring.

We started of by doing some stretches on the pole as shown by our teacher. When doing all of the moves we learned today you had to use your dominant hand and even though I am left handed I sometimes use my right hand in sports so I decided to try it both ways and I think it went better when using my right. In all the moves we learned our dominant hand needed to go as far up the pole as it could and the other arm would go across you chest with your hand holding the pole. When you actually try and swing around the pole you couldn't just lift your legs of the ground you really needed to wrap them around the pole as a way to keep you up, you couldn't just rely on your arm strength. I have very little arm strength but was also struggling to get my legs in the right place the first few times so I wasn't staying up for very long.

We learned the fireman, the angel and the reverse angel and at the end of the lesson we climbed the pole. The hardest one for me was definitely the reverse angel as I couldn't get to grips with how to turn back around after walking forward to start the movement. I also found it hard to climb the pole as not only do you need a lot of strength to do it but because my hand and legs got sweaty I kept slipping.

Pole dancing is something I would consider doing as an act for the variety assessment. I don't think I would be confident enough to do it on my own so if there was a group of us that wanted to do it I would be more comfortable. After the workshop today me and some of the other girls have decided that we want to attend the pole classes as our college that start in January. If we do pick to do a pole dancing act for the assessment we could use those lessons as practice for our assessment and we could perfect the moves we already know and learn more and make a routine out of them.

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Learning objective
To listen participate in the workshop with the guest lecturer. To think about notes for logbook entries to help influence your decision on a variety act of your own choice.

Lesson summary
When we first walked in to the lesson we were unsure of what we were going to be learning today as the guest lecturer wasn't wearing any kind of costume to give it away. He had a big bag with him which I thought might of had a dummy in it for a ventriloquist act. Then he pulled some balloons out and we realised we were going to be making balloon animals which excited a lot of us.

First he had two students blow up the balloons until they burst so we wouldn't be scared of the sound, he also showed us that by leaving a little bit of air at the end of the balloon you could twist the balloon in to different sections and you wouldn't pop it. Then he demonstrated how to make a dog and some kind of bird with two volunteers.  When he was showing us how to make the animals I was very entertained and this made me think about how if I was going to do this as my act for my variety assessment I would have to make it in to a performance so it would be interesting for the audience and also get them up to interact.

After this we all got the chance to go make the different animals I started off with dog and had to make it several times and I kept making the proportions of it's body wrong, but you could still tell it was a dog. Ellie picked it up really well and was able to help us all out. I didn't have a clue how to make the bird so I just stuck with the dog and tried to perfect the one animal. I was very proud of the dogs I made.

When we were all happy with what we had made and felt ready to move on he started to teach us how to make a bear. We all got very excited about this but then there was a group of us that felt a bit disheartened when we realised how hard it was. I started out good and was following our teacher very well but then my entire balloon unraveled and I had to go sit with the group that needed extra help. It was really had to create 8 different sections on the balloon and keep them all there. The teacher came over and made the 8 sections for me then I could follow along with the rest of the class on how to tuck and twist the different parts to make the bear. I then got to decorate my bear.

If I was going to do animal balloon making as my variety act I would have to pick a few animals and really perfect them and become confident that they would come out right first time every time because it would look really bad if I was on stage trying to show the audience what to do if I didn't know what to do.

Lastly we got to make hats with butterflies on them which I followed quite well. You needed three different balloons to do this, one for the hat itself, on for the butterfly body and one for the antennae.  My favorite part of making the hat was learning the special tricks to make the wings of the butterfly go the right shape and to make the floppy bits on the end on the antennae.

I don't think I will be doing a balloon making act as my variety performance as I don't think I could ever be confident enough with the balloons themselves to then making it interesting and enjoyable for the audience. I would be to nervous about doing something wrong that it wouldn't be entertaining. Despite that I really enjoyed today's lesson and feel like I have learned something valuable as I can now use this at my work were we hold kids parties. I would definitely take part in another balloon animal making workshop, especially if it was from the same teacher we had today.

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In this weeks lesson we finished the piece which we didn't expect to happen when we wrote out our original lesson plans but since then we realised the piece didn't have to be as long as what we thought so this meant we wouldn't need as much time.  After finishing the choreography and running through it a couple of times. We finished off the last song which did take the longest to choreograph just because we wanting the timing to work for the end leg section. Once we felt like we had rehearsed it enough we discussed with Dannie what we could use for our 'pool' , we had the idea of using the blue yoga mats but they would of been difficult to keep standing it. The water needed to be high enough so you couldn't see to much of us when we're swimming but low down enough so that when we're lying on our back you can see our legs.

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In week 4 we recapped the choreography and continued to create more for the next song. We did a bit of research in this lesson as we wanted to take ideas from the video that gave us the inspiration for the synchronized swimming piece. We also had to work out timing for the first section for when we needed to dive according to the splashes. After working out the timing and the new choreography we felt happy with our progress and decided to begin some theory work and write up some notes of what we'd done so far and how our original plan had changed so we could type this up in our logbooks and keep up to date with the variety work.

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In this weeks lesson we wanted to start our choreography to and try and make up from the lesson we missed out on last week when we were still editing music. We felt a bit worried about choreographing a 10 minute syncronised swimming piece as we thought we might run out of ideas and it might begin to get boring for the audience. We decided to speak to Dannie about the problem we were having and then she reminded us that the piece only had to 2 minutes. We then had to quickly re-edit the music down to 2 mintues, we still wanted to keep all the songs we orginally had to we just shortned down how much of the music we used. After cutting the music down the task of choreographying a sycronized swimming piece didn't seem as daunting. We also managed to start the choreography in week 3,  we choreograpghed the first two songs. We used the first song to run in and get rid of our towels and warm up and stretch. For the second song we were in the water and we used the lyrics in the song to help develop our movements.

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This week we were still editing the music, we were having problems with the software we were using and also struggling to get the right cuts and sound effects exactly when we wanted. Whilst Ellie and Danni were adding the final touches to the music me and Lydia started to research costumes and props. We were originally looking at buying swimming costumes and then wearing nude footless tights with them so we wouldn't burn our legs when jumping on the mats when we pretend to dive in the 'pool'. After looking at different swimming costumes and the prices of them we decided that we could all wear our red college leotards as they look like swimming costumes and we all have one that fits us already. We were also looking at flowery swimming caps. The flowery old fashioned swimming caps were around £15 each, all the swimming caps that were cheap were plain and boring looking. We decided that £15 was too much for a swimming cap we were going to use once, but we didn't want to buy the one colour caps so in the end we thought we could go to primark and buy shower caps for around £3.

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In the first weeks lesson we started to think of songs we would like to use for our piece, we tried to find songs that we water or swimming related, this was a difficult task but we did managed to find some to include after searching for a large portion of the lesson.We also wanted to include a classical song so we could choreograph some movements similar to the ones in the video. We added some pop songs that would be easy to create choreography for and fun for the audience to listen to whilst we are performing. Ellie and Danni were the ones editing the music as me and Lydia don't know how to, so we were looking for the songs and which sections we could use whilst them two cut and edited all the music and sound effects together. We expected to be working a lot faster than what we did as we really wanted to make the music perfect and add splashing and water sound effect at certain times so we didn't get chance to discuss out set ideas with Tom but this is something we can do outside of lesson time.

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Week 1: Music ideas, discuss 'set' ideas with Tom and watch videos for choreography inspiration.

Week 2: Start choreography

Week 3: Research costumes, create a budget sheet for set, props and costume and recap the choreography from last week.

Week 4: Recap choreography from last week and add more on.

Week 5: Recap choreography from last week and add more on.

Week 6: Finish the choreography.

Week 7: Recap last weeks work and perfect the piece.

Week 8: Rehearse piece with props and costume.

Week 9: Full technical run in the black space (if possible).

Week 10: Performance