Week 5 - Gestures

  

In this week’s choreography lesson, we recapped the three motifs we created in pairs last week and made sure we knew all three motifs. The motifs came from three different words, these were: uncertain, influence and connection. My word was connection and we wanted to show the idea of connection through the mind instead of actually touching, so we decided to use gestures but moving as if our hands were stuck together.

 

Once we had recapped in this week’s lesson, we had ten minutes to discuss and think about how we could use these three motifs in our choreography as well as with a formation. We tried out a few different ideas for each motif and we were really happy with one of the motifs for the word influence and we decided that would be the opening of our choreography piece. 

 

We then sat down as a class and had a look at the book ‘Choreography: Creating and Developing Dance for Performance’ by Kate Flatt, we looked at page 158 which led to us creating questions about our piece, such as: what do you want the audience to feel? What will the first thing the audience will see? What will the lasting impression be? What is the message? (Flatt, 2020)

 

As a group, we reflected on these questions we decided that for our piece about Conformity we wanted the message to be about encouraging individuality as well as wanting the audience to feel that individuality is a good thing and not everyone has to think and do everything the same. We also discussed that the start section of our piece will be about us all doing the same motif one after each other as if we are all copying each other and trying to fit in with the crowd whereas, the ending will contrast this as will we all do the same motif but add our own section in to show  growth of individuality.

 

We then discussed sections of our piece and we had a few different ideas however, decided on three main sections which were: the idea of conformity and being the same, breaking into individuality and then everyone finding their individuality. 

 

Our next task was to think of six words for these sections and individuality think of a gesture for each word, these could be simple to start off with. As a group, we decided on the words: pressure, uncertainty, influence, judgement, nonchalance and restraint. After we all decided on a gesture for each word we showed each other and decided on how we could make these gestures bigger if they needed to be. Some didn’t need to be adapted whereas, some of the gestures we used more than one person to really get across that word and feeling.


Below is the link of a video of all our gestures:


https://youtu.be/Y7wtwtS1g6I


Bibliography:


Flatt, K., 2020. Choreography : Creating And Developing Dance For Performance. The Crowood Press, p.158.








Comments

  1. Mhairi Wallace27 October 2020 at 09:05

    You've clearly described the tasks you were given and I like that you have explained how the tasks and movement created can link back to the stimulus. You mentioned that you adapted some of the gestures, is there an example of something you did to change and develop the simple gestures?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Megan Foster4 November 2020 at 10:23

      Thankyou for your comment! For the gesture of the word pressure we started off with just a hand movement and this got developed into a lunge and push down and we developed it even further so one person was pushing down on another person in the group.

      Delete
  2. Eloisa Goodall2 November 2020 at 11:18

    I really like the shape your group have created using the tasks. What is a gesture you used and how did it link to your stimulus?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Megan Foster4 November 2020 at 10:25

      Thankyou! We used a shrug for the word uncertainty as one of our smaller gestures and this links to our piece as the topic is conformity and we are wanting to break into our individuality instead of copying the others.

      Delete
  3. caitlyn francisco27 November 2020 at 02:15

    This is a very clear and detailed post! I enjoyed reading about how you have developed your motifs and it is really good that you've already decided on a general structure for the overall piece. If you had to think of 2 more words for gestures that relate to your stimulus, what would they be and why?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Megan Foster27 November 2020 at 02:36

      Thankyou Caityln! If I was to think of two more words I would probably choose anxious and isolation, as I feel people often feel anxious to stand out and would rather just go with everyone else. I also feel isolation is appropriate as this is also a fear of people’s when being individual is that they are isolated from everyone else if they are not involved.

      Delete

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