Taking Flight 2011, Day 2...

The start to day 2 was full of excitement as we had a little 'taster' of what the week would be like on the Monday.  We all met at Telford and travelled by bus to Glenrothes where we would be performing later on in the evening in the Rothes Halls.  We got there pretty early and as some people had workshops on it meant the rest of us had a long wait until the performance so we thought we would explore glenrothes shopping centre and look for Britney outfits for my Britney themed birthday party later on in the week, this literally took up half an hour if your lucky so we decided to make some entertainment of our own...we did some PR'n in Subway, Magenta and Chris done a little site specific and we also had some fun in the xfactor booth showing off our all round talent! aha and after all the excitement we ended up going through some work for college in the library, how productive!

The performance went very well and we had a full audience which was fantastic it really created a great atmosphere.  Also we had our friend Karen who danced up to HND with us watching that night which was really nice and she gave some really good feedback after the show, even complimented my facials! never thought id see the day but I was over the moon when she said, so thanks Karen :)
all in all it was a great night.

Taking Flight 2011, Day 1...

On Monday we kicked off the tour at Queensferry High School.  The show went really well and i think the students enjoyed the performace as we got some good feedback at the end for the Q and A session. As for the dancers the space wasnt so good it was a gym hall that didnt allow us much space but we adapted as best as we could.  The main issue was 'My Hero' for the lines and as there were no wings it got slightly confusing as to who was dancing and who was offstage but we realised what went wrong and discussed as a group what we would do differently in that situation.  I feel like Monday was a really good warm up for the week as it was quite a short day but got us more prepared for the shows ahead and I also really enjoyed performing Yasmin's piece for the first time as it allowed us to feel what it's like performing it to an audience.

Taking Flight Tour 2011

Next week is the start of our tour 'Taking Flight 2011' where we will be showcasing works from students, teachers and our guest choreographers, Lisi Perry and Ashley Jack.
The running order for the show is as follows:

• Interpretation (Lisi Perry)
• The Abyss (Yasmin Doak)
• My Hero (Winefred Jamieson)
• Algorithm (Rebecca Lamont)
• R.B.T.F (Carole Percival)
• Prince (Laura Proudfoot and Ashley Jack)

We all have individual roles within the tour that will give us the experience of taking responsibility for something other than ourselves, which include Tour Manager, PR team, Costume People, Rehearsal Director, Q and A leaders and Health and Safety.  Myself, Iwona and Janine worked together on promoting the show, which included distributing leaflets and posters, advertising through facebook, creating biographies for the dancers, sending out cover letters to anyone we thought might be interested in seeing the show and taking charge of the advertisement board.
Im very excited for the tour but at the same time I am unsure what to expect, there were a lot of last minute rehearsals and adjustments to the pieces but I'm sure we will have a great week.  Wish us luck! :)

16 Stories...

Thursday 10th of February was the official opening for the Theatre in the college and I am very glad to say I was a part of the performance which marked the opening that night.
It consisted of eight dancers and eight actors which each told their own story throughout the piece, the story of how we got to where we are today and who helped us get there.  I really enjoyed this whole experience and collaberating with the actors was amazing, we learnt a lot over the 16 days it was created in and I am quite sad it's over now.  The piece was very emotional on the night and it created such a great atmosphere both for the performers and the audience, although it was an emotional night we all had so much fun performing.  It was something new for both the actors and the dancers, just shows you anything is possible...

21st Century Choreography

Back in December we had our 21st Century choreography assessment.  My piece was called 'Interpret This' as it was all about interpretation of images whether they be visual images or mental images.  It was based on how people view these images and interpret them in a completely different way from each other, so the idea was same image, different interpretation.  On the day i felt very pleased with my dancers performance and the only thing i thought could have made a difference at the time was if my dancers had been given some sort of interaction with one another or even an emotion, i felt this could have uplifted the piece and made it more interesting but this is something i will take into account on my next choreographic work.  We got the results for this on the 20th January, and i was very pleased with my result and i know exactly what i have to work on.
After weeks of rehearsals and creating a 5-7 minute piece, which was assessed before the Christmas break we were required to do a presentation on our choreography as evidence of the process and what we learnt throughout the experience of creating our own choreographic work.
My presentation was delivered on Monday the 7th of February, I felt like it went really well and that i was unusually organised and prepared.  I still think i could be a more confident speaker but the presentation itself included everything I thought was relevant and all the negative and positive things I will take from the experience itself such as the use of tasks and learning to be more organised and time efficient.  Overall the 21st century choreography was a great learning curve for me and i am looking forward to starting rehearsals for my IDP now :)

Showtime...

On Monday 31st of January we performed the first night of our 'First Footing Show' in the new theatre, which was really exciting.  Makes such a huge difference having the theatre here in the college and it's a great space to work in.
We performed a piece which was choreographed by Lisi Perry during the week we spent with her here in the college which was not an easy week! It was very intense and physical making us all very sore and tired but we pushed through and by the end of the week we had a great piece called 'Interpretation'  which was double cast.  I loved the whole process of creating this piece it made me realise how important it was to create a certain energy by performing everything as it should be everytime and enjoying doing so.
Anyway we performed this piece along with our Jazz piece which was really energetic and exciting and the night went down very well.  It was a great show :)

We were supposed to perform Monday to Thursday but unfortunately Thursdays show was cancelled due to safety regulations within the theatre, we were all very dissapointed but completely understand why it couldn't go ahead.

Teaching assessment week

Monday 24th January was the beginning of our teaching assessment week.  I did a workshop with a primary one class at Ferryhill Primary School based on the rep from 'My Hero', which is a piece that will be featured in the BA tour this year.
I was really excited about teaching the class and I had never taught such a young age group before so it was an entirely new experience for me.  The class were really well behaved and I enjoyed teaching them although I did make a lot of mistakes for example I was so scared that I would lose control of the class I kept them quite confined and I wasnt sure that they were fully understanding what we were doing most of the time so i demonstrated aswell as explaining but possibly spent too much time trying to explain rather than just doing it and letting them explore movement for themselves.  I also planned to number movements from the sequence to get them thinking and counting whilst moving but as  I thought I was running out of time I started to rush and ended up finishing the class too early.
I was very dissapointed with the way it all turned out but the only thing I can do now is think of this as a positive learning experience in which I will think about all the things I could have done better and hopefully get some more experience in order for me to improve my teaching skills and gain more confidence in what I am doing.