last week!

most of our lessons last week were costume contstruction. We have changed what costume we are going to make first. Instead of an historical costume we are going to make a punky costume much like the ones seen in the hit musical we will rock you. i am extremly excited about this mainly because ive seen we will rock you and it is by far my favourite musical, the costumes are amazing ! there really different and make a statement and i cant wait to get started.

for homework we have to research the show and find some pictures of the costumes from it. we also have to bring loadsof pairs of jeans to our next lesson as most of the skirt we will be making will be made of jean ( as well as tartan).

picture of Meat Loaf from we will rock you.

We hardly had any dance lessons this week but in the ones we did have we split into pairs except for the group i am in which is a three and were given the task of constructing a routine including some movements or motions, things like ' sink the the floor' and ' lift object without using hands' and the whole time you have to be touching your partner. its a very physical way of dancing and it took most groups a while to get started. because there are three people in our group we are finding it slightly harder to find moves that include everyone but i am having great fun experimenting with lifts and wierd rolls and i have had a few ideas im looking forward to trying next week.

Enter achilles review

i decided to write a review on one of dv8's most well known performances. this is what i thought.

Enter Achilles review
The idea behind enter Achilles was to explore male relationships. Its set mainly in a pub, a very typical place that you would expect men to be. Its starts of with a very ‘matey’ feeling between 8 men. They are drinking beer and acting in a way that society expects men to. Then one man walks into the bar and changes the music to something that we would associate with women. He begins to dance in way that doesn’t fit with the stereotype of real men. The rest of the piece explores how someone that doesn’t comply with the stereotype can be penalised. It also examines how men feel like they have to act a certain way and this can provoke insecurities as well as tension.

Enter Achilles is a very thought provoking piece with a lot of very shocking moments in it. The chorography is very spectacular and made so that the audience will instantly know what’s going on. The almost homely setting of a pub is something every audience member will be able to relate to, as well as the butch appearance of the eight men drinking beer. The interaction at the beginning is very matey between the men. With them all moving in the exact same way, representing how they feel they all have to be the same to be excepted in today’s world.

When the other man comes in and dances in a way we would associate with women. Its already clear in the audiences mind that he will not be excepted into the group of men. I think its quite shocking how everyone already knows he will be an outsider. It shows that our society is very strict in our views.

The fight scene has some very spectacular chorography in it. Lloyd Newson captures the sense of a fight perfectly however there is no punching or kicking like we would expect to see. There is a lot of contact and very creative movements. The whole group of men ganging up on just one is an injustice and the audience will automatically pity the man. However this is something we all witness in everyday life without really caring.

As the piece goes on two of the men from the group of eight also try to brake away from the stereotype by subtly flirting with each other. However they quickly stop and go back to acting how they think they have to.

I think enter Achilles is truly amazing. I really admire the genius in Lloyd Newsons chorography and this piece really does make you think about how we just accept that bad things will happen to people who are different. It also highlights the fact men feel they cant express their feelings. Its extremely powerful movements and shocking story line make it hard to watch in places but I highly doubt anyone will turn it off. It grips you from the start by using an easy to understand everyday situation and characters that anyone can relate to. The dancers themselves are extremely talented and they almost force you to watch them. They have an amazing amount of skill and technical ability
I would recommend watching enter Achilles more than once if you get the chance. It really is a very powerful piece.
A SHORT CLIMP FROM THE PIECE

my dv8 essay!

all last week in our lessons we were working on learning as much as we could about dv8 and especally Llyod Newson so we could write an essay or do a presentation all about them. So here is my essay....

DV8 research project
DV8 ( dance and video 8) is a British dance group. However they will prefer to be called as physical theatre group as their type of dancing is very unique, some may even say it cannot be classed as dancing however most critics will refer to their dance style as contemporary. DV8 was originated back in 1986 and has been led ever since by a very talented chorographer names Lloyd Newson. DV8 has had a number of different performers in it and have produced many different routines all of which can be seen on their website. DV8 gets funding from the arts council England as well as Dance UK and many others.
Lloyd Newson was born in Australia. His interest in dance started whilst he was studying physiology and sociology at Melbourne university where at first he insisted he was a ‘sports person‘. He went on to study dance and later got a scholarship at the London contemporary dance school. He danced and choreographed with many dance companies including, impulse dance theatre and one extra dance theatre. He then at the age of 28 he set up his own company DV8. In an interview Lloyd said this his reasoning for setting up his own company was ‘I needed to really form my own company and do work that was much more socially conscious than most of the contemporary dance that I was doing.’

Lloyd believes in having a meaning in every routine he choreographs. He likes to take subjects that audiences would find shocking and turn them into a very physical and emotional piece of dance. From what I have watched I get the impression he doesn’t want to try and change peoples opinions about certain matters, for example gay relationships, but he wants us to see it in a different way. He kind of points out the obvious that we as humans are trained not to see. He uses dance to explore human relationships and behaviours in a very dynamic way that ensures you wont forget what you have watched.

All of Newsons pieces contain a lot of contact between two or more people. there is hardly any solo dancing in any of his work. Newson doesn’t believe in adding a move for the sake of it or to waste time but every move he puts into his work has a meaning and a right to be there. He also has a strong belief in the flow of a piece. It means that no one can stop moving unless it feels like a natural thing to do. Also every move links to the next flawlessly. For me the natural flow that runs through all of his pieces adds an odd realness to them. I think that may be his intention as this will help an audience relate to his theme or story he is trying to portray.

Newson gets some of his genius from three practitioners that inspire him
The first of which is a lady named Martha Graham. She was born in 1894 in Pennsylvania. She, like Newson, had her own dance company named ‘The Martha Graham centre of contemporary dance’. I watched a clip from a piece she choreographed named ‘ night journey’ this particular piece has a story running through it and much like Newson her dance style is contemporary with a twist. I would even say there are a few moves she includes in this particular piece that today would be classed as street.

Another person that inspires Newson is Isadora DuncanShe was born in 1877 and began teaching the children on her street how to ‘sway’ at age five. Many people will call her the creator of modern dance. She joined a theatre company in New York and instantly fell in love with the art form. She was one of the first people to test the boundaries of contemporary dance. She wanted to brake away from the precise moves involved in ballet to create a very unique type of dance. She is very inspirational to lots of modern practitioners as she wasn’t afraid to try something different. Still today many
aspiring dancers have to study Isadora in great detail

Merce Cunningham is the last of the three main people Newson admires.
Merce was born in 1919 and died only last year. Through out his whole life he had been looked on as an exceptional dancer. Much like all the practitioners that inspire Newson Merce set out to challenge how we portray contemporary dance. I watched one of the pieces he choreographed named ‘beach birds’ in this piece he uses very abstract movements that represent birds very well. The movements are quite rigid, static and sharp. This dance does have a lot a ballet related moves in it but is very different from most peoples ideas about what ballet should be.
Dv8 are known as a project based group. This means that they change their cast depending on what their next project is. Currently they are holding open auditions for their 2011 project. They are requesting middle east and Asian dancers to star in the piece which explores religion and censorship. Although the chorographer is of course very important the performers must also be very talented. All the performers involved in Dv8 have to have a very high technical dance skill as well as a lot of strength to pull of some of the moves Newson puts into his pieces. They are all also extremely good actors, an essential skill needed to make Newson pieces work. They must all be able to empathise with the characters they play as many of the performers will have very challenging emotional parts to play. the end !

This week!

This week in performing arts, most of our lessons were costume design. Our current project is based on historical costumes and we will eventually make our own. However, we have to do a lot of research into styles, patterns and colours that will fit with the historical theme we have been given.

my neturals mood board

We choose what colours we wanted to use at the very start of the course and we have been producing painted colour charts for each of our colours (mine are gold, naturals and blue). Then at the start of this week, we had to produce another colour chart but with paper, we had cut of out magazines. I think it was quite hard trying to find all the different shades we needed but in the end, it did look very effective.

Towards the end of the week, we began to create a mood board. We will eventually have one for each of our colours but this week I only managed o complete my natural’s one that you can see in the picture. I am not very artistic but I do not think I did to badly. At the start of the course I did not think I would enjoy the costume design part very much as I am not very arty but I am having loads of fun with it now and I really look forward to the lessons, I have learnt loads already!


In Dance this week, we continued to look at DV8. We started doing workshops and the idea was we were meant to try to learn how to use natural flow, like Lloyd Newson, to travel across the room in a group. I am really starting to appreciate Newsons work and chorography as I personally found this quite hard to start with. I think this is because the natural flow idea is very new to all of us. It is a unique way of dancing that no one in our group will have tried before. It got a bit easier as we sort of just moved forward instead of trying to plan every step we wanted to do. So far, I am really enjoying learning about Dv8 and I love trying to dance/move how they do even if I am not too good at it yet. I can’t wait to carry on next week.