White Man Sleeps

White Man Sleeps was choreographed for Siobhan Davies new company in 1988 and was a piece created for five dancers. However, over the years Davies has continued to rework this piece in order to achieve even further how she wanted the piece to look and feel.

The use of lighting and music in this piece really reflects the dancer’s movements. I think the dark lighting helps to emphasise each movement and the music creates an overall fluid feel to the dance as it performed to a string quartet. There is a strong use of repetition in this piece that is present in both the duets and group dances that helps to emphasise particular movements. The movement vocabulary mainly consists of strong leg movements, hand connections to the head, spirals and soft but fast feet movements. Throughout the piece the dancers come into contact with each other a lot of the time and this is particularly evident through the various lifts that Davies includes in this dance. I found it interesting to see how the dancers would work together in a group, but they would still be reflecting each others movements. This helped to focus on the movements that were being conveyed and it also emphasised the idea of repetition again in the dance.

Overall, I think this piece is interesting to watch because of the fluidity of the piece and the close relationships between the dancers.

50 Acts-Wendy Houston

I found this piece of work interesting because of it's limited use of dance context in the way that most audienec memebers would know it best. Instead of using flowery and decorative movements, Houston stripped it back and used simple, everday movements to explore the theme of a spirited retaliation against ageism.
In her piece she used:
Random Acts
Small dances and big ideas
Invisibility
Ghostly apperances
Apologies and errors
Stupidity

Lea Anderson On Screen

As part of Nottingham Dance Festival we went to listen to a talk given by Lea Anderson on the relationship between choreography and film. She spoke about three different ways in which you can use film to create a piece of dance.

Flesh and Blood
This was the first time she had ever tried to use film as a starting point for choreography
Used Joan of Arc, the silent movie, as inspiration
Tried to remember what the film looked like in fast forward and therefore didn’t watch it back
Tried to embody something that she couldn’t completely remember, but still had a vague idea of the feeling it brought her.
Anderson didn’t play the video to any of the dancers as she wanted to commit to her imagination of what she remembered and then embody it.
Strong memory of head gestures which she conveyed in her choreography
Tried to look for a different movement vocabulary in flesh and blood, and she felt that the use of film really helped this


42nd Street
The movements that were created were taken exactly from the film. The only change was the mannerism in which the choreography was delivered.
Each dancer had to watch a particular dancer from the film and re-enact their movements
Anderson copied exact camera movements. For example, if there was a close up, only one dancer would remain on stage.
Believes that this was a “breakthrough in the idea of recycling work”
Would rather encourage dancers to try something new and observe other peoples movements as opposed to improvising.


Edits
Worked strongly with the idea of on and off stage
Found off stage choreography more difficult because of particular timings, such as taking off costumes
In this piece she was “looking for the invisible movement”
Found that the character became the costume rather than the person
Used two of the same character to create what was a mirror image of someone in a film
The three rectangles were used because the piece had to cut from close up to close up and therefore it was too difficult to emphasise that in the centre rectangle.

So We Dance- Lott 12

As audience members took their seats the dancers began to run from one end of the studio to the other, in a linear line, one at a time. This immediately created a constant level of energy and repetition which was explored throughout the performance along with the nature of group. It also conveyed each performer as an individual, but still made me think about the company as a whole as they were performing the same action. The dancers broke apart to begin dancing on their own, again this was done one at a time. I found it interesting to watch the energy level increase as a variety of movements took place including running, rolling and pausing. As the movements were performed in a range of different directions this emphasised the idea of the group working together as a whole. I particularly enjoyed watching the strong repetition portrayed in the last section of the dance. All the dancers performed the same section, however it was broken down, performed in smaller pieces and then gradually built up again. The use of music and sileneces at particular points in the performance helped to emphasise the change in tempo and energy which helped to bring my attention to the details of the dance.

Second Year Performances

2011 002
Originally uploaded by c_27

Second Year Performances

2011 006
Originally uploaded by c_27