Choreography Tutorials

This post is about the three days of choreography tutorials that we had for our Dance project.

First dance lesson

Rachel started the lesson off by showing us a timeline of dance starting back to when dance was first filmed and the style of dance back in the early 1900's and how the dance itself was filmed and framed.

The Serpentine Dance - The Lumiere Brothers (1899)

Pas de Deux - Royal Danish Ballet (1902)

The Magic Lantern - George Melies (1903)

After that Rachel showed the difference between the two main types of dance on film, Entertainment and conceptual. Personally after being shown the difference I preferred the Entertainment side of dance films, as they are pleasing to the eye and the seem more organised and symmetrical. Where as the Conceptual films seemed more of a mess and confused me most of the time due to the hidden messages that are normally behind the pieces, that are normally very hard to grasp at first glance. 

Entertainment Dance:

Busby Berkeley 

Busby Berkeley - Dance Until The Dawn - 1931 in HQ

By a waterfall 1933

Gene Kelly

Gene Kelly and Jerry Mouse in Anchors Aweigh 1944

HD 1080p "Singin' in the Rain" (Title Song) 1952 ~ Gene Kelly

Conceptual Dance:

Mary Wigman

Mary Wigman, Hexentanz

Fernand Leger

Fernand Leger - Ballet mecanique (1924)

We then looked at 6 different music videos and wrote what we thought about them so that Rachel could get a brief idea of what we liked as a class and individuals.

1. LXD PRESENTS: "MATCHED" STARRING HARRY SHUM JR 

Love the music, sadly the dancing is too hip hop until the ballet dancers come in and fit the music a little better. The first few moments seem quite normal, but once the main character makes himself known you know the video has a narrative behind it.

2. 1 2 3 4 – Feist  

I love how the music or beat is very catchy and easy to dance too, so the fact that the dance in the video is very messy as it looks like a group of people just having fun and the colour of the outfits I think match that.

3. Original Dance Videos - Yeasayer "Sunrise" 

I didn't really like this one as it was very serious till everyone started dancing in what looks a therapy circle to express there feelings.

4. Tamara Levinson Choreography Reel 

I really enjoyed the tribal style dancing to this video till the music changed about 10 - 20 seconds in, then it became a mess or jumble because the dance didn't match the rhythm/beat of the music.

5. Rosas | ROSAS DANST ROSAS 

The simple but repetitive moves in this video matched the pace of it brilliantly. All the dancers were on time and in perfect sync with each other. Simple but effective.

6. Ellie Goulding - Guns And Horses 

Just awful. What even is this music video.

Rachel then showed us a few warm up techniques to help us break the ice with the dancers we were going to use. With some simple space awareness exercises, moving around the room copying each others movements. Then simple movements and team exercises were one person moves the other and vice versa. Finally we used cameras to fake film certain parts of the body as the moved, helping us see the way some parts of the body are better framed than others. We also learned 2 big moves for lifting people in groups of about 5.

Finally, after the first few activities we all said what sort of dance video we'd prefer to do, music video or dance based, then we grouped up and came up with quick ideas for us to work with over the next couple of days and for when we had the dancers to work with. My group consisted of myself, Rob, Charlie and Nick. We each went round saying what sort of idea we had in mind and then went to combined these into an idea that had popular dance moves from the 90's, such as the Carlton and the Apache dance. 

Sadly the second day I was ill and didn't show up for lesson, but from what my group members told me, we added a few more popular dances into the mix and tested out getting people to dance to our idea which had grown into the idea that music or dancing is infectious.

The third day we gladly had the day with dancers, going through all the warm up techniques again, seeing what sort of moves each dancer naturally flowed with. Then we went through each group, getting the dancers to improvise what we each had in mind and to music which we might of had to go with it. The result being quite interesting but fun to watch.

When it came to our group we played the music associated with the dances and see what was there instant reactions. Most of them were very quick, jumping straight into the dance with no problem, others, they just seemed to go with the feel of the music if they weren't sure or copied the others. 

This wasn't our groups dance, but it gives an idea of what happened with different groups ideas.