Evaluation

For the Variety Show I took part in several movement pieces where I had to respond to stimulus for the performance work (Jive – “Rock around the Clock”), develop movement ideas (“When I Grow Up” and “Nicest Kids in Town”) and successfully worked with a partner (Jive and “Ain’t that a kick in the head”).

“When I Grow Up” was one movement piece where I had to respond to a piece of stimulus – the musical “Matilda”. As the song is taken from a published musical there was already a context behind the piece that meant that we had to perform the choreography in a specific way. Parts of the choreography for this performance we were set to choreograph small movement phrases to portray children playing. Having previous dance experience means that I am quite comfortable when set a choreography task and so I feel this is one of my strengths within the rehearsal process. This choreography task allowed me to think of different ways to portray children and I explored the ways to travel around the stage, such as running and skipping. Another strength I felt I had in this performance was the ability to pick up the choreography quickly and to characterise my performance to be child-like. I felt this was particularly noticeable when Jack gave me a piggyback. If we were to perform “When I Grow Up” again I would explore more intricate ways of portraying a child to make it more visually engaging as I feel that at times my performance would become slightly static as I ran out of things to do. However I always performed the number with high energy.

I found the Jive number “Rock Around the Clock” my most challenging number due to the complex intricacies in the lifts. Once again I was lucky to be able to pick up the choreography quickly, having done the jive before and so knew the ins and outs of the style. I am also able to work efficiently with a character and so working with Tom was fun as we always performed with high energy. I feel my weakness in this performance lay in the lifts. There was a slight issue with the fact that Tom was just a bit too tall for me and so it meant that we had to adjust the lifts to ensure that I didn’t hurt myself. However we spent a lot of time rehearsing the lifts to deal with issue efficiently. I feel that we could have perhaps been a bit neater with some of our lifts if we had had more time to rehearse. I feel that Tom and I made a really good partnership as we were both confident with the choreography and timing and so were able to spend more time focusing on bringing the performance factor to the dance.  

 

“Nicest Kids in Town” was a lot of fun for me as the choreography was lots of fun and really lively. Once again we were given a stimulus (“Hairspray”) to respond to, and this was seen through the 60s style of the choreography. I was a Chorus Captain for this dance as I picked up the choreography quickly and was confident with teaching and helping other people. In this number we were asked to create eight sets of eight at the end of the song, similar to “When I Grow Up” and Cameron and I had no issue choreographing movement but I feel that my weakness in this number and some of my other movement numbers was that I didn’t push myself out of my comfort zones as much as I could. I feel that I could have taken my choreography further to make it more challenging for myself and allow me to gain possible new skills form the choreography.

Despite this wish to have challenged myself further I felt that I was always giving 100% in this number as well as all my other movement pieces. I was always confident in the choreography required of reach performance and I was always capable of remaining in formation and was always comfortable when doing partner work. I feel that I achieved a lot during this show as I pushed myself in terms of stamina and fitness as I was always putting in extra rehearsals so that I could perfect choreography.  

When I Grow Up

The opening for our Variety Show was "When I Grow Up" from the musical "Matilda". The song is sung by the children who are daydreaming about all the possible things that they can do once they're grown up and so we had to use characterisation to achieve the same in our performance.

We began by learning the vocals and to push ourselves as an ensemble we learnt the lyrics in a three-part-harmony. This arrangement of vocals meant that we had to be able to work as individual isolated groups as well as an ensemble.

To progress our vocals during rehearsals we began to sing as if we were young children, this included softening the tone of our voices and sounding more child-like in the way we sung.

After we had learnt the vocals we had a dance session where we worked in groups of three to create one set of eight of choreography that represented children playing to be performed during the opening of the song. Ruth, Michael and I decided to recreate a game of tug and war and showing the friendly roughness children play with.

As rehearsals went on our groupings changed to larger groups and the choreography was to be performed in the middle of the song to match with the verses. Ruth, Michael, Miguel and I decided to alter the choreography to a movement similar to "ring-a-ring-a-roses".

We were then taught choreography that we were to do as a whole group. I found this choreography easy to learn but due to its syncopated timing I had to run through it countless times to ensure I was confident with the timing. As I was fairly confident with the timing I was asked to run through the timing with those who were unsure.

An issue we had with this number was our placement on stage as we had a tendency to clump into groups rather than fill the space. I tried whenever possible to fill any empty spaces.

Towards the end of the song there was about 30 seconds of music where we could improvise scenarios and this was a great opportunity to add characterisation to our performances, such as large movements and being light on our feet.

During our show run we had an issue with timing in the opening of the song where everyone was coming into the first verse at different times. We worked quickly to correct the slight mistake and covered it fairly well.

This number opened the show so it was important that it was full of energy and set the atmosphere for the rest of the show, it wasn't possible to go on stage with anything less than 100% energy.

Ain't That A Kick in the Head

Ain't That A Kick in the Head was a dance number choreographed by Tenda to accompany his vocals on the song. The dance is Broadway and "Show Girl" themed with plenty of kicks and formations.

I had less time to rehearse this number as I was busy working on other numbers so I had to work harder during my rehearsals. The timing in this number is crucial as the four backing dancers (including me) had to ensure that we were always in sync with our movements otherwise it would ruin the formations within the choreography.  

 

My target for this performance was working on my technique as I had to enjoy that all my movements were sharp and on point to match the theme of the song and choreography.

Our costume included a hat and character shoes so in our final rehearsals and tech run we began rehearsing with the hat and shoes to get comfortable with the costume. It was especially important that we were comfortable with the hat as the hat was incorporated into the choreography and so we had to be confident when using the hat. 

 

During the tech run I suffered a costume malfunction when my hat fell off during the routine as I had an issue with placing my hat back on my head after a movement. After this particular performance I went away and worked on the choreography and altered my movement slightly to prevent another possible malfunction.

 

I really enjoyed this number because the style was really enjoyable to perform and I found the choreography was able to challenge me to push me further as a dancer. 

 





Shiver

Shiver was a vocal performance that I did with Aaron. The song is written and performed by Lucy Rose and Aaron and I performed an acoustic version. I initially started working with Michael on a different song but I found that I was lacking confidence with the song and was struggling with the partnership.
 
It was suggested that I speak to Aaron about possibly performing together and this resulted in us choosing to perform "Shiver".
 
I find that I have less confidence in my singing compared to my dancing so I used the rehearsals of this song as a way of becoming more confident in my vocal ability.
 
Once I had learnt the song Aaron and I began to experiment with the way of performing the song, such as the delivery of the verses, an example included changing the pace of lyrical phrases. As I got more confident with the song I was able to play about with the song to make it different to the original.

My target for "Shiver" was to push myself out of my comfort zone vocally and I achieved this by changing the delivery of the bridge of the song. This change allowed me to change key and belt out the final line of the bridge and then hold the note, from peer feedback I found that people felt the key change was effective.

 

By the time we reached the shows Aaron and I had discussed how we wished to perform the song so that I wasn't left standing awkwardly whilst he played the guitar. We decided to perform it so that throughout the song we would look at one another when the other wasn't looking but I'm trying to get his attention.  

 

 



Rock Around the Clock

One of the dance pieces I was part of was the jive "Rock Around the Clock". Rehearsals began with learning the choreography. The dance was performed in partners and I was working with Tom and for me the most challenging part of the dance was working in a partnership with Tom as we had to combat a height difference. 

During rehearsals Tom and I spent a lot of time working on the lifts within the dance, such as the swing lift and the butterfly. These lifts required me to be able to trust Tom in lifting me as well as being able to hold my own weight to allow Tom to swing me around.

My target during the rehearsal process to was improve my execution during the lifts so that they looked slick when performed within the choreography.

 

As we neared the technical rehearsals we found that as a group there was a timing issue in the choreogrpahy that we had to fix. This involved walking through the choreography whilst counting through the timing to ensure that everyone was moving at the same time.

 

By the time we reached the tech and dress runs I was confident with the choreography and Tom and I had rehearsed the lifts repeatedly so that we were both confident in the execution of the lifts and we were able to perform them with more stamina than in early rehearsals. 

Nicest Kids in Town - Finale

One of our ensemble pieces for the Variety Show was "The Nicest Kids in Town" from the musical "Hairspray". We began by learning the lyrics and harmonies for the song. Once we were comfortable with the vocal element of the song we began to learn the choreography for the song.

Below is a video from our first choreography rehearsal:

I am fortunate in the fact that I am able to pick up choreography quickly and so it doesn't take long for me to commit choreography to memory, allowing me more time to rehearse.

My target for the rehearsal process of this song is to tighten up my timing during the spins and to start rehearsing the choreography while singing before our next rehearsal the following week.

Between the further rehearsals and the dress run I continued to tighten up my choreography and practising singing whilst dancing.

By the time we had reached the shows I was confident in both the vocals and the choreography and was able to put lots of energy into the performance to replicate the high energy from the performance in the film "Hairspray".

The final show