Friday 18th September (Rent 'La Vie Boheme' Early Choreography Lesson 2 - Dance)

To begin this lesson we recapped some of the things we discussed in last weeks lesson about a dance stimuli. We spoke about what the stages are in devising a piece of dance and came up with this order:

• Choose a stimuli
• Research
• Improvisation/experimental with movement material
• Select and refine
• Add choreographic devices
• Ensure there is a climax
• Ensure there is a clear structure

We then looked at how to refine movement in devising dances what you need to look at to do this;

space, dynamics, levels, timing, relationships.

This linked with what we are devising at the moment for the song 'La Vie Boheme' in Rent which we then worked on. We blocked through our dance with the music a few times before adding some choreography in our partners to it. I was with Luke and because we do not know our characters yet it is okay to just choreograph without worrying about who is singing that part. Luke and I tried to keep the energy high by adding in a lift, we also used fragmentation to add a cha cha cha motif again in a slightly different way. We incorporated some hand gestures and experimented with doing movements in unison in different directions. 

I think this lesson as very successful and next time we will hopefully have our roles and therefore we can adapt what we have done to make it appropriate for what each character is singing and work with different people. For example Mimi and Angel have a small part together that they need to not be dancing in to be able to sing clearly but still need to be the main focus. 

To improve I would like to use more dynamic and levels and use my extension to make the movements more refined and clean.