We will rock you

Denim and Tartan mood boards.

Costume Construction - Historical costume

The two pictures above are my historical costume mood boards. They are green and blue because I have chosen my historical costume colours to be blue and green.

The three pictures above are mood boards that I have created. They explain with good detail about fibres and different fabrics that are used in costumes.

PQA audition at Royal Academy of Music

On Sunday 12th December I went to London to the Royal Academy of Music to audition to be in the Pauline Quirk agency. I work at Pauline Quirk Academy(PQA) on a Saturday morning and I am then a student in the afternoon, 9.45am - 5.45pm.

Before PQA started the academy was called BOOST, I was in the BOOST agency but my agent who was the principle of the academy then had a few family things she needed to attend to so therefore jobs for me and many others became unavailable. 

As soon as I heard that there was going to be an agency involved in the academy I knew that I was definitely up for it but unfortunately the audition for it was 31st October and as it was half term I was away on holiday so I was unable to attend to it and I wasn’t happy about not being able to go at all. Thankfully my boss told me that there was another audition for other PQA’s and that even though I wasn’t part of the schools, I could still turn up for an audition which I then became very happy about!

I was emailed a script that I had to learn for the on screen camera test and I was playing the role of Jess, it was pretty easy to learn as I don’t have much trouble learning lines. I also had to have two songs prepared, my first one was ‘Your Song - Ellie Goulding’ and my second song was ‘On my own - Les Miserables’. We only had to sing one of them and I was told that Simon (creative director of PQA and Pauline’s husband) was going to chose which song. I was also told that whilst the other students were going into their singing auditions and having a one-to-one with Simon, the rest of us were doing improvisations with Lisa Millar who is the musical theatre teacher at my PQA and as I work along side with her every Saturday I was very relaxed and I wasn’t nervous about doing improvisations in front of her, I was fine doing them in front of the other students as well but thats because I didn’t know them so I didn’t mind if I did an embarrassing one.

We were to arrive at the Royal Academy of Music at quarter past 12 so that we were ready to go into the auditions at half 12. I went with my dad and it was all fine as we turned up at 10 past 12. My boss/principle of PQA Hemel Hempstead was there and so it was nice to see a familiar face. Adam took us into the improvisation room where Lisa was sat at a desk, we were told that the whole thing was 1 hour long and so I knew I would be doing quite a few improvisations. 

I would say that the age range in the group I was in was 13-16 so I was used to working with students of a similar age. It was a lot of fun doing the improvisations as they had quite a lot of humor in them. I did things like convincing the owner of a club that I should play at the club as I am a very good DJ and sleeping at a haunted house. Each student was called out one at a time for their individual audition and I was 5th person to be called out. Adam took me into the room that Simon was in and I did ‘Your song - Ellie Goulding’ and I thought it went well, the on screen test was a bit nerve wracking but I managed to make Simon smile and give compliments so I left the room feeling relaxed and happy with my audition. I also had some photos done for the spotlight on the PQA website which I didn’t like as I’m not very photogenic!

So overall it was a pretty good audition and I was then looking forward to do some shopping and having a big Mcdonalds! 

'Dance That Means Something!'

On Friday 10th December the B-TEC Performing arts students put together a showcase ourselves to show friends and family what we have been learning and what we have achieved in the last 11 weeks.

Our first half of the show was all about DV8. Although, the first dance we did wasn't a DV8 dance but it was cleverly choreographed by our teacher Miss Dolan and she made up the moves to be very sharp and very powerful which we hopefully achieved to open up the show successfully. Alice, Kelly and Myriam moved straight on after the dance and used Kelly's power point presentation on DV8 to help the audience understand exactly what we have been focusing on.

It was then time to perform our own paired dances that we each choreographed ourselves, Myriam and Kelly performed theirs first, then Alice and Shannon did theirs and they were amazing. I was next to perform along with the rest of my trio - Chloe S and Ellie, and then so on with the other pairs. We used the song teardrop by massive attack because it was to highlight the mood of the dance. It had been great doing a trio with Chloe and Ellie as each rehearsal went by we were progressing towards the middle section of our dance but then we decided to re-do our dance as we weren’t happy with it as we believed we could produce a better standard of work. Our dance was based on a goal which was getting to the box, in a three we took it in turns to try and get to the box which was choreographed so that one of us would try and get to it somehow but the other two would do something to stop that person getting to it. In the second dance we kept the whole idea of two of us would stop the other person trying to get to the box and so we choreographed and worked on the dance and we worked well, but as we hadn't got as far in the dance we had hoped when it came to only have 2 and a half weeks left, we didn't panic, we used our lunch times to do extra rehearsals in the performing arts classrooms which turned out to be a huge help and got a big laugh out of it as well which was what I enjoyed so much with working with them two.

All of the pairs had performed their dances on DV8 and so it was time to perform the first group dance which involved Shannon, Danielle and myself doing the street side of the dance and Alice, Kelly and Myriam doing the ballet/contemporary side of the dance. We used the song ‘It was all in your mind’ by Wade Robson, we used this as the music was great for both style of dances and it worked well with the choreography we had made up for the story. The class decided that this group dance was going to close the show so we knew we had to come up with something for the audience to be talking about when they have their biscuits and tea. We used our different dance styles to help show bullying as Alice, Kelly and Myriam did their contemporary bit first and used powerful yet elegant moves and then me, Shannon and Danielle then did our street bit to show the differences between the two dance bits, the story progressed to show that the contemp girls tried to over-power us street dance girls and mess with our heads, we used lifts and different levels to make this clear. It was a lot of fun to do and we got a lot done in all rehearsals which was great to have done as a group.

To open the second half of the show, the other group dance performed their story with dance, the group were made up of six girls, Chloe G, Chloe S, Ellie, Shauna, Louise and Laura-Anne. Their dance was a great opening to the second half of the show.

We then had other acts performing such as Ness who performed a very moving piece of dance, Ness is an inspiration to us girls as she is clearly really into her dance and always makes her dances mean something very powerful. Ness is also a big part of Rock Challenge at Kings Langley School so we get to know her more through that which has been great.

Also there was a paired dance with Alice from B-TEC PA class and her little brother Jack, they are both great ballet and contemporary dancers and did a fantastic dance showing their amazing talents. Another paired dance was Chloe G and her friend from her dance class outside of school, they did a really great and funky disco dance and got the audience clapping and cheering all the way through. Also we got a special performance from Chloe S as she performed her majorettes solo to the song ‘One night only’ from Dreamgirls, it was so good! We were all holding our breaths as each time Chloe through the baton in the air she did a clever move and we were hoping she wasn’t going to drop it but she did fine as she caught it behind her back and under leg! An outstanding performance!

After Chloe’s performance we did our final group dance which involved all of the B-TEC PA students, it was choreographed by Miss Dolan and it was called Ramalama. It was a brilliant dance which was supposed to be powerful, weird and abstract at the same time, it was a great way to end the show and it was my favourite dance to perform.

All the money that we raised went towards the B-TEC PA class and the CRY charity which was a great success as we raised a good decent amount of money for both the B-TEC and charity for Cardiac Risk of the Young.

Overall I think that the night went very well and I enjoyed every minute of it!