This is the whole of our group performing the 'heartbeat' dance we have been working on.

this week in performing arts

This week has been very good! We had our first practical on Tuesday this week and it was a double so everyone was tired at the end of the day. We were working on the contemporary dance we started the week before to the song ‘heartbeat’.

To help us with our assignment on DV8 we started looking at how we can add emotions and a story to our dance. We then split up into groups and had to think of a story that would fit the chorography and of course the song. I think most people went with a heartbreak situation as it fits in very easily with the lyrics. Then we had to make up our own ending and sort of end the story. We had to make sure that every movement we put into our chorography added to the emphasis of the story and had a real purpose in the dance.

As I mentioned we were set our next assignment. It is all about the physical theatre group DV8. We have to do a big research project into everything about them. Quite a lot of the focus in our project is the chorographer Lloyd New son. His routines always tell a story and contain lots of emotion as well as meaning. He doesn’t choreograph for the fun of it he tries very hard to get his message across with very dramatic pieces of dance. This is why we worked very hard on the emotional side of dance this week in our lessons.

In costume design this week, we started making mood boards using the colours we want to include in our final design. We cut out things from magazines (relating to our colour scheme) and arranged them on the paper to see what went well. I think we will continue this next week as nobody quite finished.

I am really looking forward to next week as we are going to try and dance like DV8 which will be fun but painful. Also, next week a few of us are helping at the rock challenge auditions which is very exciting!

Week beginning 13th September

Our first lesson this week was on Monday and we were set our first assignment! I already know it is going to be a lot of work but I am looking forward to starting on it. I also found this lesson quite useful because I could see and understand how all the assignments will work. On our next lesson, the fun really started as we began to learn a very pretty contempory dance. It was our first practical lesson and I think everyone really enjoyed it. Then for the rest of the week we carried on learning the same dance and adding bits to it.

In Costume design this week we were looking at the colours we want to have in our final design. We painted a colour pallet using the two, three or four colours we had chosen the previous week. We started of painting our colour, as light as we could then gradually got darker. I must admit I did ruin my first attempt but once I got the hang of it I managed to produce two good ones, one was in blue and the other cream/gold.

I am now starting to look forward to starting work on DV8 physical theatre group tomorrow!

10th Serptember 2010
we had our very first BTEC performing arts lesson on monday! We were basically just told about the course,how it works and what we would need to do over the next two years. Theres a lot involved in the course but it sounds like its going to be so much fun. The next day we had a double lesson. We set up our blogs and were trying to understand how to make them look lovely, i think it took everyone a while but now everyone sort of understands how they work. then in our other lesson on tuesday we were introduced to the costume design side of the course. im really looking forward to starting the design process properly. On wednesday we learnt how to mix our own soundtracks! this was my favourite lesson of the week. It was really interesting learning how its done and now i appreciate how hard it is to make mixed soundtracks. It was really exciting listening to what you had created and then completely changing it because it really didnt sound right. Next week we are starting on dance development wich I'm really looking forward to. Everythings just really exciting !