Aspirations and Dreams Evaluation

As part of our BTEC Performing Arts course, we had to organise a variety performance at the end of the year in front of an audience. This was quite different to our other assignments as we had to organise the whole production, including the title, theme, programmes, tickets, venue, colour scheme, costumes and guest acts. We did this all by ourselves and it all had to be organised and ready for the final performance on 27^th of April.

It was quite hard thinking of a theme for our show as the acts all had to be linked to it. At first we thought about having an Oscar theme but then as we were talking about ‘Annie’ as one of the acts in our show, the idea came to mind that it should be ‘Aspirations and Dreams’ as the orphans from ‘Annie’ have aspirations and dreams. As a group, we all have aspirations and dreams and these were said in our bio in the programme that we designed.

The colour scheme was easy to come up with as purple and silver was grown up and pretty which is what we liked. The decorations followed this colour scheme too. The tables were decorated with purple table cloths, purple and white flowers, purple and silver balloons, tea lights and silver confetti. This made it have a more professional look. We wanted to be different and not have rows of seating, so we made tables spread round the hall with 8 chairs around each table, we also provided the audience with food and drinks.

There was a slight problem when it came to deciding what the ticket should look like, as we all wanted it to represent what our performing arts group is about, however we couldn’t decide on a picture which was frustrating, in the end we just used two of the girls from our group from rock challenge on the ticket which was fine. IT skills also came in when designing the programme too as we needed it to be printed double sided but we managed to do it thankfully. We decided to put a bit of information about us as individuals on the programme too just to let the audience know a bit about us for those who didn’t really know all of us.

We decided that we would use some of our previous performance numbers that we have done in the past to put into our show too as we all agreed that they were great and everyone seemed to enjoy watching them as well as we did performing them on stage. For example we decided to use our ‘All that jazz’ cabaret dance as it was our favourite dance that we had ever done as a group. We also wanted singing, acting and musical numbers in it too to create more of a variety, to help us to do this we also invited guest acts.

The majority of the BTEC Performing Arts girls did a singing solo each and some did a dance solo and singing duet, Louise also did a drama monologue. As we had made We Will Rock You costumes we decided to include some of the songs from WWRY so that we could wear them in our show. We decided to perform ‘Don’t stop me now’ which had very high energetic moves in it and as we sung to it too, we were very tired towards the end. We also chose ‘somebody to love’ which was fairly easy to choreograph as it was Chloe singing and the rest of us as backing singers and dancers therefore we didn’t want to make the dance too energising as it would take the attention off of Chloe.

Here is a picture of us rehearsing ‘Don’t stop me now’. We hadn’t cleared the stage here therefore we didn’t have all the spacing that we would have on the night, however, it went well, we just needed to sing louder for next time.

We had invited many guest acts with different talents, these students were part of A level drama, GCSE drama, my dance crew that I teach, Jack and Alfie who had written their own song themselves, and more musical acts. They all happily agreed to participate in our show and we were all really looking forward to it. Once we had all the guest acts respond and our group numbers and solo numbers were chosen, we decided it was time to make a running order and start non-stop rehearsing so that we could get the dances/songs/monologues to a very high standard.
A week before the show, we rehearsed our duets and solos as we hadn’t done it in front of each other before and wanted to before the final rehearsal on stage. This was a really helpful lesson as when Alice and I went to rehearse our ‘Popular’ song; we found that the backing track was totally different to what we had rehearsed to before for some reason, the CD’s must have been mixed up, so we had to find a new backing track which we did, but there was obviously a slight panic there. We also organised a rehearsal for Jack Dent (student guitarist) and our BTEC group to rehearse for our final song ‘Use somebody’, the rehearsal went to plan and we all felt confident with the song by the end of the rehearsal which was good.

It got to the technical rehearsal which we held on Tuesday 24^th after school for all our acts to rehearse on stage for spacing and technical information for Chris (on sound), Jack (on curtain) and George (on mics and runner) which was completely student lead which was more stressful than we thought it would be. All of our acts had joined us in the hall and Myriam and I introduced them to what we would be doing for the next two hours and we cracked straight on.

We started off with the dancing acts as the microphones were not ready to be used therefore my street crew rehearsed first which I was quite nervous about, but thankfully they were fine as they looked good on stage. After their rehearsal though I did go through a few things and made them practise when they weren’t doing anything whilst the other acts were rehearsing. As their dance teacher I felt the pressure from their performance so I wanted to make sure it was perfect so I polished hands and positioning of arms which was very beneficial for the performance later that evening.

As soon as we got the hang of our jobs roles that we assigned ourselves, the rehearsing began to go smoothly, we started to stop panicking and things got a lot easier. The whole rehearsal went well; we sorted out technical details and made sure everyone including the performers knew what they were doing.

For the rest of our BTEC lessons, we ran through all of our solo, duet and group numbers so that we were all confident and prepared for Friday. We made sure everyone knew what time to be there Friday and where they should be. Alice had also gone to town to get any extra tights, socks and hot pants that we would need for the show which was very helpful.

It came to Friday 27^th and we were all very, very nervous. We had all brought bags and bags of costumes, make up, straighteners, hairspray and all the other essentials that we were going to need for the show. We also stayed behind after school to set up the hall and the stage ready for the evening. Once everything had been set up, we went upstairs to set out all our costumes and make up in the order that we would need them. Chloe Green had also printed off a few A3 page running orders for us and our acts to see for the evening so that it reminded us for who was going on when. Once that was also done we went back downstairs to the hall to test the microphones and sound.

We asked the acts to arrive to the school at quarter past 6 to get ready in their changing rooms and start doing any group rehearsals before going on stage. Once everyone knew what they were doing and where they were meant to be, we started to get into our first costumes which was for ‘Annie’. We had fake tanned, put stage make up on and done our hair and we were ready to do the vocal warm up at 6:45 with our singing teacher. It was then 7 o’clock and the show had begun with Jack Norris introducing us.

Here is a picture of us on stage for our first number of Annie. We decided to sit on the edge of the stage for this as it was to show the innocence of the ‘orphans’ and it’s the start of our dreams. The song we sung was called ‘Maybe’. The number went well as we had had a big singing warm up beforehand therefore our diction and volume of our voices was very clear. We performed this as a whole group too to open up the whole show. If I were to go back in time and improve anything I would make my drama actions more clear as looking back at photos and videos, facial expressions cannot always be seen from the very back of the hall.

Here is a picture of us performing ‘Hard knock life’. This song went straight after ‘Maybe’ and it was a great combination of dancing, singing and acting as we had to sing like children, ac t like children and dance like children. This meant that in our head we just had to think that we’re young children at an orphanage. This was one of my favourite song numbers in the show as it was a chance to act like a character I haven’t played before. By receiving audience feedback I found that this number was in the top 5 favourite numbers in the whole show to some individuals which is good to know as we all worked hard rehearsing it.

After our performance were Gabriel and George (GCSE drama students). They performed a drama piece from ‘Blood Brothers’, they were so funny and really made the audience laugh. The reason we chose these two was because we had seen and heard how good they are at drama and Miss Dolan recommended them to us to invite them to perform at our show and thankfully they were delighted to. These two students were very good actors and even managed to pull off a Liverpool accent.

We also had my street dance crew perform after Gabe and George and I was very, very pleased with their performance. It was honestly the best they’ve ever performed it and I was so proud of them all. There were only seven girls therefore it was quite tricky when it came to working out formations and group work as it would have looked more affective with more students but we pulled it off. I had remixed the soundtrack so the two songs were merged into one. These songs were ‘blow remix’ by Kesha, and ‘bounce’ by Timbaland and I chose these songs as they had a great beat to it which got the girls in the mood to dance.

After they had performed, there were a few solo performances and a dancing duet from a few of the BTEC girls. As I was getting ready for my next number upstairs, I didn’t get to hear them perform, however I asked a few of the parents and audience members and they said that they were amazing and wanted to watch them again which was a great comment. There was also a sax solo from Alfie (year 11 music student). We invited Alfie to perform in our show as we had seen him perform in assemblies and thought that he had a great talent.

It got to the last two songs before the interval and Jack Norris mentioned to the audience that we had made our costumes ourselves for our ‘We Will Rock You’ numbers in our costume construction lessons. Whilst he was doing so we prepared ourselves to get on stage for our first song of the ‘WWRY’ numbers, ‘Don’t stop me now’. There was a slight glitch at the beginning of this number as the curtains didn’t open in time and so it was messy and we didn’t know what to do, however we kept calm and carried on with the song as if nothing had happened which was good.

Here is a picture of us BTEC girls on stage at the beginning of ‘Somebody to love’. This song went really well and I was pleased with it apart from one thing which was the music, it was far too quiet and we couldn’t hear it. I felt sorry for Chloe Stockman as she was worried that she was out of time as she couldn’t hear the music either. Personally, I felt that I had performed it better than I ever did in rehearsals; maybe it was all part of the nerves on stage. This song closed the first half of the show and it was time to reflect on how the show has gone so far, obviously whilst changing into our Chicago costumes ready to open the second act.

To open the second half, we performed ‘All That Jazz’ from Chicago. I was excited about performing this dance as it was also one of my favourite dances of the whole show. In the middle of the song, the track skipped a bit therefore we missed out a few beats and had less time to get our chairs ready to put on stage, but as before with the curtain situation, we just carried on, stayed in character and pretended as if nothing wrong had happened as we wanted to be professional about it. I think that the performance looked amazing, especially as our timing was very good as the moves were specific. This made me confident throughout the whole dance.

There were a few more solo performances after our Chicago performance, including Myriam Maley who performed my GCSE contemporary dance. Once again she was outstanding; I wish I could dance as well as she can. Luckily as it was my solo after her, I could watch it from the side of the stage.

For my solo I sung ‘Crazy for you’ by Adele. Not many people have heard this song and as I am a huge fan of Adele I decided to sing one of her songs and ‘Crazy for you’ was my favourite to sing at home. As I am attending singing lessons at the moment I asked my teacher to help me with anything that I could improve on and with my breathing as it has many long notes in it. I found her lesson very beneficial as it made me more confident on my song and helped me master the long notes. I enjoyed my performance very much and even made some of my teachers and my Nan cry, (hopefully in a good way).

There were more duos and solos after me from the BTEC girls and some GCSE drama students. Then it was time to go on stage again to perform ‘Popular’ from Wicked with Alice Norris. This was the song that I was looking forward to the most as it was a cheeky, funny song that we made our own. Originally ‘Popular’ was sung by just one person, however we decided to turn it into a duo and give popular advice to the audience instead of a girl which is what it originally was. This was a lot of fun as it got the audience involved which made them enjoy it more.

I stayed in my outfit from ‘popular’ for the final song of the show which was ‘Use somebody’ and we had Jack Dent play the guitar for us. This was a very emotional song to sing as it was the last song we would sing together as a group. However we all managed to not cry throughout the song, until the end when we gave Miss Hearne and Miss Dolan their thank you presents. We were given lovely flowers at the end too which was really nice and thoughtful!

Overall, I thought that the show went amazingly well! All the acts were brilliant and we got fantastic feedback from the audience. All the hard work and stress all paid off and I’m immensely proud of all the BTEC girls, they also worked very, very hard organising the show, and without them I wouldn’t have enjoyed school anywhere near as much as I have. I am so glad I chose BTEC performing arts for my GCSE as it has literally been the best two years of my school life. We are all so close and I think that’s why the show went as well as it did. I am also so thankful for Miss Dolan and Miss Hearne for their time, help, support and hard work that they have given us. We wouldn’t have been able to even think about organising a show on our own without them as they have turned us independent and confident with whatever we do.

Musical Theatre evaluation of monologue

My monologue was called 'The divorce'

We were all given a monologue each to annotate and learn as homework as we were not allowed to rehearse it in school. My monologue was performed and filmed in the normal performing arts room. Here is the link to watch it. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yW6-zGVkg8&feature=player_embedded
You can also find it on the KLS performing arts blog.

My monologue was about a girl who has just found out that her parents are getting a divorce. When I read through the monologue and annotated it, I found that the character calls her dad 'daddy' so I thought that I should make my character a daddy's girl and then make it obvious when I'm not happy with him by raising my voice and not letting him confort me. To make my performance more believable, I imagined that my parents were stood at the front left and right of the room, that way I could make it seem like I'm talking to them. Pretending that my mum and dad have just told me they have got a divorce made me get with my emotions more so I could act more upset and angry. Therefore by the end of my performance I was throwing my chair across the room.

I felt that my drama piece went well and I enjoyed rehearsing it on my own and making it 100% mine.
If I were to improve anything it would be that I carried on my anger at the end to make it more powerful.

All That Jazz Cabaret performance

On the 15th May we performed All that jazz from Chicago at Cabaret as part of Assignment 4. See the performance on the KLS performing arts blog! We rehearsed the dance one final time and videoed it, then videoed our thoughts on our rehearsal and what we thought we could improve on in our performance after watching it back. You will find those three videos on the KLS performing arts blog.

Rehearsal link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlnNqvdp48o&feature=player_embedded&noredirect=1

Evaluation on rehearsal link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xE3Tt7iBK9w#!

Performance at cabaret link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YsyC3IDKThA

When I watched the video of our performance, I saw weaknesses, strengths but as a whole I thought the performance went really well. Before the show we all agreed on costumes, make-up and hair and smiles! We thought that to be able to get into character, looking like a showgirl and smiling like one would get us into the fosse performing mood. When watching a performance based on fosse jazz style, I like to see subtle movements such as hand gestures exactly in time with each other, this makes this subtle movement look amazing, therefore I was really hoping that our subtle choreography looked amazing on stage.

I watched the video once through and thought that it looked great on stage and was successful throughout, I then watched it a second time and picked out a few things I think we could have improved on. The first one being that the positioning of arms could have been better; this is because to me, they looked too floppy at times in the dance. To improve this for our performance for the end of year show, I will make sure to note that arms need to be more controlled and in time with each other. Another thing I noticed was space awareness, the stage is small but some dancers were dancing in the curtain and I found it hard to see them and they didn't look like they had enough room, therefore next time I would make sure that all the dancers are in an appropriate space on stage where they can be seen and not have any health and safety hazards around them. I also noticed that there were a few mistakes, however the dancers that made the small mistakes carried on and didn't let it ruin their concentration or performance. I think that the sassy feel to the dance made us all nervous for the show as there were many people watching us but we knew that nerves before a show is normal and we should just get on with it and show off our fosse style.

Personally, to improve for next time I would make more effort with my arms as I thought that they could have been better for example, with the fosse walks, they could have been bigger. I wasn't very comfortable with the sassy style of dance that we were doing at first, but as I knew it was all part of the show and all the girls were doing it with me; I didn't feel self-conscious dancing.

The strengths of the performance in particular were the timings of the movements and the whole look of the performance. For example the leotards, fish net tights, hot pants and jazz shoes, these outfits were plain black but went really well with our characters and made us look like jazz dancers. Our hair was off our face and we had stage make-up on, and as we are all girls, we love putting stage make-up on so it was a good build up to the performance. Personally I think that the more I went over specific movements, the better they looked for the show, I noticed this by looking at the difference between the rehearsal video and the cabaret performance video.

Above is us girls, after our performance at Cabaret.

We were going to sing to the song All that jazz too but we decided not to as we wanted to really focus on our fosse jazz style of dance. This meant that our dancing was better than it would have been if we sung as controlling our movements in the fosse style whilst singing is actually quite hard. I am happy that we didn't sing as I was then able to stay fully in character without worrying I may make a mistake when singing a solo line.

Overall, even though the performance wasn't perfect, it was still well perceived by the audience that were watching us and this made us more confident with our fosse dancing therefore hopefully we won't be so nervous for when we perform it in the end of year show. We haven't yet decided whether to sing in our end of year show but whether we do or not will be recorded in my final show rehearsal logs.

Singing lessons

For 5 weeks now I have been having singing lessons with my cousin who has been to university and drama school to study performing arts musical theatre. She is currently working on my weaknesses with me so that I can improve my vocal ability. She has taught me about scales and different techniques and how to use thick folds and thin folds and what they are. She also told me that I am a soprano.

At the moment Kellie (my cousin) is helping me with my solo that I am going to do at our end of year show for btec performing arts. We are currently looking at options and trying out songs. So far we have worked on 'Popular' from the Westend musical Wicked. We chose this because it is cheeky and fun and drama is uncluded, also I love the musical Wicked so it ticked all the boxes. The other song that we have worked on is 'Home' from The Whiz. So far both of them are going really well, I've worked on Popular more and have started to add drama to it and I am really enjoying it. I have become more confident when singing than I was and I am working on diction and opening my mouth cos I don't do either when I sing at the moment.

I did a little bit of research on the two musicals too so that I am familiar with what I'm singing about and what the shows are about.

Wicked
Wicked tells the incredible untold story of an unlikely but profound friendship between two girls who first meet as sorcery students at Shiz University: the blonde and very popular Glinda and a misunderstood green girl, Elphaba.

Following an encounter with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship reaches crossroads and their lives take very different paths. Glinda's unflinching desire for popularity sees her seduced by power with Elphaba;s determination to remain true to herself, and to those around her, will have unexpected and shocking consequences for her future. Their extraordinary adventures in Oz will ultimately see them fullfil their destinies as Glinda The Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.

The Whiz
In this version of the classic story, based on the smash Broadway musical, Dorothy is a shy 24-year-old Harlem kindergarten teacher who is brought by a snowstorm to the mysterious land of Oz, a sprawling, decaying and dangerous megalopolis that resembles the physical charateristics of New York City. This retelling of the tale includes various urban settings, extreme sadness and melancholy and features themes of rising above one's background and the expectations of others.
I will upload a video soon of me singing Popular at school. This will be part of my evidence for Auditioning for Musical Theatre too.

Street dance classes (Friday class and Monday class)

On a Fridays I teach twelve 9-11 year olds street dance in Chipperfield in a dance studio. On Mondays I also teach seven 11-13 year olds street dance in Bovingdon. I love teaching both classes and we are both working towards some very exciting shows. Firstly I will talk about the Monday clas, then I will talk about the Friday class.

I have been teaching classes for 9 weeks now on a Monday and we have already done so much! At the moment we are working towards performing at the btec performing arts variety show. I have mixed a few soundtracks up for the routine and so far the dance is amazing. I choreographed the first 30 seconds and then I split the 7 into a group of 3 and a group of 4 and they had the chance to choreograph their own piece of dance for 15 seconds each. Then I have choreographed the last bit for them.

The girls are amazing, they have done street dancing before too so therefore I found it easier choreographing a dance that they will find exciting and not boring. I found it easier because I don't have to hold back on the challenging moves as they are capable of learning them. To make sure that I am not going to fast I go over the moves quite a few times before I let them dance it to music, that way it is in their head and they won't forget it hopefully. I've used two upbeat songs for the music, this is so that it is lively and will get the audience excited about the dance and ther girls find it up to date and gets them in the mood to dance.

I used different formations for the dance, this way it doesn't get boring, it gives more opportunities to do something different and imaginative in the dance and all the dancers have a chance to be at the front or middle. I am going to give the girls a questionnaire to do after the performance to see how they are finding the classes so I can see what I could improve about the classes for the next term. After the variety performance I also hope that they can perform on the Chipperfield common during half term for the Jubilee celebration party. I need to ask the owner of Blackwells in Chipperfield if this is possible too. I will video the performance and put it up on this blog and evaluate it too. I will also get some pictures of the rehearsal process. I will obviously ask the parents permission to do this.

For the Friday classes I have also taught the children many things do with street dance and it is going really well. As the children are younger than the other class that I do, I have to restrict what we do as the 8 year olds would find certain moves too difficult for them. So far I have noticed that I have to take things slowly with them as they take longer to learn a dance or a dance trick. There has been a issue that I've started to notice though however, I have noticed that the 11 year olds are more advanced that the younger ones and I'm finding that it is hard to teach them all the same thing as the older ones will find it too easy if i make the move suitable for the younger ones, but the younger ones, find it too hard if I make the move suitable for the older ones. Therefore I decided to create a questionnaire for them to fill in so that I can see what they think about the classes.

I have picked 4 feedbacks that I got from the questionnaire, each one is anonymous and I picked one for each age from 8-11.

1) How old are you?   8
2) Are you enjoying the street dance class?   yes, definately
3) Have you danced street dance style before?   yes
4) Would you like the classes to be easier or harder?    harder!
5) Is the pace of the teaching too fast, too slow or just right?   just right
6) Have you learnt more than two tricks from this class?     yes!
7) Have you learnt to be confident when dancing?    yeah!
8) Do you enjoy making up some of the dances we do?   (she ticked the box Yes, I like the amount of choreographing we do ourselves
9) Is there anything you would like to be included in the classes that aren't included already?  no!
10) If you could improve one thing about the classes, what would it be?  nothing i think it's already a brilliant street dance class

1) How old are you?  9
2) Are you enjoying the street dance class?  definately
3) Have you danced street dance style before?  yes
4) Would you like to classes to be easier or harder?  harder
5) Is the pace of the teaching too fast, too slow or just right?  too fast but only a bit
6) Have you learnt more than two tricks from this class?  yes
7) Have you learnt how to be confident when dancing?  yes
8) Do you enjoy making up some of the dances we do?  (this person ticked the box Yes, I'd like to get involved more)
9) Is there anything you would like to be included in the classes that aren't included already?  no
10) If you could improve one thing about the classes, what would it be?  to go over the moves and dances more

1) How old are you?  10
2) Are you enjoying the street dance class?  yes
3) Have you danced street dance style before?  no
4) Would you like to classes to be easier or harder?  a tiny bit harder
5) Is the pace of the teaching too fast, too slow or just right?  just right
6) Have you learnt more than two tricks from this class?  yes
7) Have you learnt how to be confident when dancing?  yes
8) Do you enjoy making up some of the dances we do?  (this person ticked Yes, I like the amount of choreographing we do ourselves)
9) Is there anything you would like to be included in the classes that aren't included already?  maybe
10) If you could improve one thing about the classes, what would it be?  maybe for the older people to go in a different class or group

1) How old are you?  11
2) Are you enjoying the street dance class?  yes
3) Have you danced street dance style before?  no
4) Would you like to classes to be easier or harder?  harder
5) Is the pace of the teaching too fast, too slow or just right?  just right
6) Have you learnt more than two tricks from this class?  yes
7) Have you learnt how to be confident when dancing?  yes
8) Do you enjoy making up some of the dances we do? (this person ticked Yes, I like the amount of choreographing we do ourselves)
9) Is there anything you would like to be included in the classes that aren't included already?  maybe
10) If you could improve one thing about the classes, what would it be?  maybe for the older people to go in another group

From all the questionnaires and especially these 4, I can see what needs to be improved for when we come back after Easter holidays. It is easy to see that the older people would like to be in a different group to the younger people. I could tell that this was an issue as I can see the younger students holding the older ones back a bit. Therefore to ensure that this issue is delt with, after half term I will do a second class on a Friday which will mean that the older students will be in a different class the younger ones, because not only is it about age, it's about ability and I can see that the older students are more advanced and I can see the real difference between the 8 year olds and the 11 year olds. I've spoken to the older students and I've told them the conclusion that I've come to and they are happy about this. This has also made me more confident that all the students will be happy about this and they won't worry about holding each other back.

I also noticed that from the questionnaire, that the students would like the classes to be harder, this will happen as I haven't finished choreographing their dance for the performance on the common. I will make it harder but will go over it slower so that they all understand. For when I devide the class up into two classes the level of difficulty will change for both. The older group will be harder and the younger group will only be a little harder, this is because I have see how they dance and not all of them manage to get the hard moves, it takes them 2-3 weeks to manage and by then it's time to move on, which is why it has been hard to teach the classes lately.

I have also had to make alternations to the soundtrack as although there isn't any swearing in them, I feel that an 8 year old would prefer to dance to a more upbeat and popular song rather than a song they haven't heard of and is not familiar with, this task will be fine as I don't find mixing soundtracks difficult.

I am looking forward to the near future and what these classes can do for me and my experience as a teacher, as well as the children's experience as a street dancer. I hope to give both classes more opportunities too so that they have something to look forward to, E.g performing at shows. I will make the improvements to my classes as soon as possible but for obvious reasons I can't change everything all at once, it will be a gradual process. I have learnt a lot from the questionnaires and it has helped me evaluate myself and my classes.

Rock Challenge 2012

On 22nd February, my school showcased our rock challenge performance at Stevenage. We weren't competing on the night because we are Premier Team and we are competing with other Premier schools at Portsmouth in June. I have been involved with rock challenge this year in 3 different ways. The first one being that I am helping out with costumes and I designed and then made a costume for one of the fairies for Titania's dance. I also helped construct Titania's costume. Another way of being involved is that I helped choreograph the street dance routine for Oberons army and I helped the students in that dance learn and practice it. The final way of being involved is that I am also performing in the production. As I am a street dancer I am in the Oberon's army dance which is the only dance in the performance that is street style, I will also be in the last scene too when the dancers all come on stage together for the last dance.

 Here is a picture of everyone dancing together in the main hall in the morning.

As rock challenge video everyone's performance, we got a DVD of our performance so that we could see what needed to be improved and what went well, just basically what it looked like. The performing arts students and Miss Dolan went through what we thought needed to be improved so that it is ready for Portsmouth. When I saw myself dance I noticed that although I was in time, my arm at one point was at a different angle to those around me therefore when we rehearse we will be strict on angles of arms and legs so that we look in unison because as we are representing an army, everything needs to be inline in the dance. I also noticed that when I put Puck's magic fingers on behind one of the tree formations it can be seen, therefore I decided that I would put them on offstage so that nothing is untidy or gives anything away. Looking at the other dancers I noted a few things that could be improved dance wise and space wise that can be rehearsed after Easter holidays.

When I was at Stevenage it was a good atmosphere and I felt like our school had something to show when we did our rehearsal on stage because we are a Premier team and had to show the other schools why we deserve to be a Premier team. The rehearsal went great for me therefore I didn't have any nerves for the actual performance. As I have a role of being a choreographer I was helping other dancers in my dance with their confidence and moves incase they wanted to go over anything, this also reasured me that I knew what I was doing and so did my peers in my dance. When it got to the actualy performance, I started on the wrong leg therefore my arm was wrong and my confidence was brought down imediately. I picked up the rest of the dance as this only happened when we were marching forward into our formation. To ensure that this doesn't happen again I will make sure that we are all marching before the set opens for us to march forward, therefore it won't happen to me again and it will prevent it from happening to any of the other students in my dance. Thankfully you couldn't see my fault on the camera as there was smoke and fairies in front of us as we were marching forward.

As part of our b-tec course we have to construct a costume that is made well and good to perform in. As rock challenge is a big part of school (Kings Langley) our teachers thought it would be a great idea for us to make some of the costumes for the performance, which will be performed in both February and June/July. Our theme is A Midsummer Night's Dream and we have been asked to construct the costume for the fairy scene. We were all very happy when given this costume task as we can make them really pretty, girly and big so that they wil impress everyone when the fairies dance on stage.

Here is a picture of the main character from the army scene and main character from the fairy scene. Students constructed these for the show.

 Here is a picture of a group of characters, their costumes were made by students too.

I cannot wait until we get to Portsmouth, it will be so good if we manage to take on board all the improvements that we need to make and I'm sure I'll be more nervous as it will be for the real thing and when I'm nervous I tend to try harder and do better.

GCSE Dance

In a few weeks I am doing my dance exam for GCSE. In one of my dances I choreographed a piece that shows how women are represented in the world today. I did this based on a poem by Edwina Matthews.

As soon as I read this poem I knew straight away that I liked the idea of power coming from within and even if you are not physically strong, a strong mind is often just as good.  I decided I wanted to focus on a Woman’s fight for equality in an often male dominated environment. 

I took Beyonce’s message from her video and song of ‘If I were a boy’ and thought about the way in which a woman working in the environment like the police force would need to be strong willed as well as strong minded to succeed and hold power over her male counterparts. 

As it is a dance, I still kept the idea of travelling towards an end point on the stage, but wanted to use the space from the floor upwards to symbolise that as a woman, you have to learn to grow upwards from a low opinion from others, and I liked the idea of my dancer reaching for the sky, symbolising there are no limits when you have power and strength.  This also tied in nicely to the dynamics of the dance, utilising a mixture of soft and strong dynamics, I concentrated on a word bank of ‘flowing’, ‘strong’, ‘aggressive’ and ‘graceful’ to help me realise the sense of development of my dancer. 

There are 3 sections to my dance; section 1 is about celebrating the femininity of my dancer and I chose to choreograph a contemporary piece of dance that was fluid and effortless in its execution.  Section 2 is about the starting point of feeling as if my dancer has something to prove above and beyond being just a woman and how her strength and power come from more than just her body.  To help with this I decided that I wasn’t going to dance my piece, but instead I started to choreograph for a dancer within my group who is a very strong gymnast as well as a contemporary dancer.  This allowed me to really play around with the strength and power of the piece within the dynamics. Section 3 is about utilising that strength and power and showing a dramatic change within the pace of the piece, demonstrating that women can still be beautiful and yet strong whilst remaining graceful. 

The main change I made throughout my choreographic process was mainly to do with my dancer.  I wanted to dance my own choreography but I realised pretty soon into the initial stages of rehearsal that I needed to see my piece as a story and that meant having the right dancer for the part, like a professional dance company director would have.  I needed a strong contemporary dancer with a gymnastic flair, which then allowed me to really present my idea of a powerful woman within a male dominated world.

Beyoncé is a very powerful woman and so her song appeared to fit perfectly with what I wanted to achieve with my message. The music allowed me to experiment with pace and momentum.  Although it is constant in speed throughout, there are moments within the lyrics and control of the voice where she gradually gets louder. 

Costume construction - A Midsummer Night's Dream

As part of our b-tec course we have to construct a costume that is made well and good to perform in. As rock challenge is a big part of school (Kings Langley) our teachers thought it would be a great idea for us to make some of the costumes for the performance, which will be performed in both February and June/July.

Our theme is A Midsummer Night's Dream and we have been asked to construct the costume for the fairy scene. We were all very happy when given this costume task as we can make them really pretty, girly and big so that they wil impress everyone when the fairies dance on stage.

I have made a costume for one of Titania's fairies. I have used elastic and netting to form the basic skirt. I have adsded strips of satin pieces in a range of different colours which fit the theme and go with the liatard and tights. The colours I used are light pink, purple, light turquoise and shimmery purple. I used these colours because they compliment each other and will stand out on stage. These colours also fit in with the scene and theme. For decoration, I have added a pink rose which I made by a step-by-step process. I also used this process for making the leaves that will go on the skirt. I have also added a rose and two leaves on the liatard. This is to make it stand out more and look beautiful with the scene.

I have ensured that the costume is made well and fits correctly. It will have lights underneath to add effect. I will also help to make the main character costumes such as Titania, cobweb, mustardseed and peaseblossom.

Costume for cobweb

costume for Titania

Adrian Mole

At the moment for PQA I am doing a drama project. My group (14-17 yr olds) are doing a play called Adrian Mole. I read through our script at the end of September and it is so funny! This made me very excited for what the show is going to be like knowing how great the actors are in my group!

Gabriel Oakley is playing Adrian Mole and he plays it brilliantly! Seriously couldn't have asked for a better actor to play this role! He has a posh voice and is all geeky and the whole time you just feel sorry for Adrian as he always gets picked on and everything is always going wrong for him and Gabe plays this well! To add more fun to this, I get to play Adrian's mum Pauline Mole who picks on Adrian and has an affair with the man next door, so dramatic! The characters in the play are great and the actors playing them are perfect, which is what probably makes this play so funny!

The play is basically about this boy called Adrian and his life. He has no siblings, a mum and dad who both say they love each other but actually they don't as the mum gets up to no good. Adrian has a mate called Nigel who hasn't found his personality yet, and he fancies a posh girl called Pandora. He also gets bullied and has a crazy nan. Above all this is drama, comedy and a clever story with more characters involved. We are doing the show in two weeks time on Sunday the 15th. It is going to be so enjoyable to do and I cannot wait to do it! I will get it videod and I will put it up on this blog.

B Street

My mum and I have decided to run a street dance class on Friday's at 4 which I am very excited about! The reason for this is because I'd love to get more experience out of teaching and working with children. To be able to do this whilst doing something I love is a bonus. I've also been offered a job as a teacher teaching street dance on a Monday by Lisa Millar who is a professional in the performing arts industry.

I've already run my taster class and ended up with 12 students attending which is the maximum that I'm allowed for health and safety reasons which is amazing! If I get more requests from people though I may think about running a second class after the 4pm one. So far I have 5 year 3's wanting to do a street class therefore I am thinking about doing a younger, easier class. I aimed the class at 9-12 year olds because from experience from PQA, I have found that that age group respond well and are very eager to do dance classes, especialy street dance.

Sounds embarrassing doing it with my mum but she's in charge of paperwork and all the boring stuff and I do the fun bit! Although she does talk me through everything as it's no experience for me if I don't know what's happening and how its happening etc. I get involved with the advertising and organising too so that my mum doesn't feel like she is doing it all by herself.

The best part is the venue! It's local, has mirrors!!! and is a dance studio! When I saw the room I was so chuffed as it is perfect! I am not used to having mirrors or a dance studio at all when dancing or teaching which is why this is great for me. I am deeply looking forward to the future and what experience this will give me - and how great for my CV too!

Jazz

Recently in performing arts lessons we've been working on our Jazz assignment. First we got an introduction to what we need to do to be able to achieve the grade that we want. Jazz dance is a range of different dance styles. There are many different interpritations of jazz dance, there is no specific rules to jazz dance. With this it set us up to work on our tasks in groups for our practical and independently on our written work. We split up into 3 groups; Lyrical Jazz, Hip Hop Jazz and Rock n Roll Jazz. In each group we choreographed a routine in that style of dance and then we were told that we were to teach it to the rest of the groups and it would be videod for evidence which our teacher Miss Dolan did for us.

Me, Shannon and Chloe Stockman taught the rest of our class our Hip Hop Jazz routine. We choreographed a section each and then tied it all together. We chose the song Deuces by Chris Brown to dance the routine to. This is because the song had a flow rhythm to it and so does the dance. As the rest of the class are not major street dancers, we choreographed the dance to suit them and made it more lyrical. This meant that it wasn't too alien to them but there were still jazz and hip hop elements in it which is what we were aiming for from the beginning of the choreography stage.

We introduced ourselves to the camera in our group and began teaching, which started with Chloe teaching her section. Even though Chloe was teaching this section it didn't mean that Shannon and I couldn't help others if they had questions. Shannon taught the second sections of the dance and I taught the 3rd and final section. Our dance consisted of flow movements and then ended in sharp beats which fit well with the music. It took about 45 minutes to teach the whole dance and make sure that everyone was clear on what to do. It was good experience for us to teach the group our dance, however we were used to it from teaching routines at rock challenge and previous dances that we've done in b-tec.

Here is the link to the video evidence of me teaching the hip hop jazz section. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTegibkJS6c&feature=player_embedded#!

Kelly, Myriam and Alice taught us the lyrical jazz routine that they had choreographed. Their dance was to the song Beautiful by Christina Agularia. Each movement was flowy but then in parts of the movements there was snappy and sharp elements. It didn't take long to learn the routine as the girls made it clear when they taught the group the dance. The song fit in well with the choreography and it was a really nice dance to learn!

Chloe G, Ellie, Laura-Anne, Louise and Shauna taught us the rock n roll jazz routine that they had choreographed. It was fun and full of energy which is why it took longer to learn as the room started to become very hot as we were constantly putting energy into the fast movements that was in the routine. The dance reminded me a little bit of hairspray which is why it was my favourite to learn even though it was the hardest to learn.

I've enjoyed doing this jazz practical because I got to dance the different dance styles that are involved with jazz which is something different.

Christmas concert

On the 7th December, our performing arts group performed at our school's christmas concert. We were told about 2 weeks before that we would be performing and we had to be quick in thinking of what we wanted to do. We performed in MSH has got talent a while ago and we decided doing this number again in the christmas concert would be the best option. However we did change things to make it look more effective on such a small stage.

This time we had 3 main singers which was me, Kelly and Chloe Stockman. Kelly and Chloe shared one stationary microphone on one side of the stage and I used the other stationary mic on the other side of the stage. The reason we didn't stand in the middle and sing was because the stage was too small therefore it would be easier to use the mic's at the side to give the dancers more room. It was a tight squeeze when us 3 joined in for the dance bit in the middle of the song but we managed! Laura-Anne also had a head mic and sung on stage whilst dancing which im sure was hard work so hats off to her!

We turned up to school with our hair and make up done and went to the drama studio to get ready for our performance which meant warming up our voices and our muscles for the dance. We practiced our song about 3 times but we had to be quiet and mark it through as the drama studio is above the corridor that leads to the hall and stage area. We were the last act on before the interval therefore we were not rushing around as much as we would be if we were the first act on. We got called down and were all nervous to go on stage. We then got on stage in our opening positions, the music started and everyones energy was up and performing to our best. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed performing that song again as it is energetic and lively which is what we all wanted and im hoping what the audience wanted to see too!

MSH's Got talent

On Sunday 2nd of October we went to Watersmeet theatre in Rickmansworth to take part in a competition to raise money for Mount Vernon Hospital. At the beginning of September we started to work on a dance that was upbeat and energetic for this and we did a spider diagram on the board to make it clear on what choices we had. In the end we all came to an agreement to perform a dance to 'You can't stop the beat' which is from the musical Hairspray. The reason we chose this was because it was fun, familiar and energetic.

In classes when we were rehearsing, the five singers (me, Kelly, Alice, Laura-Anne and Chloe) focussed on our breathing through-out the dance as it was a hard song to sing and to do a high energetic dance at the same time! Therefore we decided as a group that the singers didn't bounce around so much whilst singing and that we just did the arm movements but with the bounce of a hip too so that we didn't look stiff. The reason we didn't have the whole group singing was so that the dancing could be done properly and full out with tons of energy, however to make this possible and less hard for the dancers, we decided that they didn't have to sing. This meant that there were different levels of energy in the performance which we made sure was clear by setting ourselves in to a formation.

On the 2nd we met at the theatre at 2:30pm for a technical and sound check run through on stage. The five singers were given professional £2000 head mic's to use which we were very excited about as this made us feel professional and lucky too but on the other hand we were scared of breaking them!

After our run through we went out for lunch as a whole group and then came back to the theatre to watch a few more of the acts which would be performing on the show too. We then remembered that we are girls and needed time to make sure our hair was big and our make-up was perfect so off to the dressing room we went.

For our outfits we all had different colour vest tops on and had white skirts on with skin coloured tights. We then began to put our stage make up on and we curled our hair and put loads of hairspray in it to help make our hair as big as possible. We all helped each other do this.

We were the 5th act to go on in the show and we were happy with this. We put loads of energy in to the performance, personally I think that it was the best performance that we've done of doing that song and from the loud breathing sounds behind me at the end I could tell that everyone was out of breathe! One of the judges was a dancer and she loved our performance and complimented us which made us all relieved, however the other two men were not so nice but we have plenty of support from each other and our teachers, family and friends which helped us keep our heads high! I enjoyed this event and as it was for a good cause I was thrilled that we could be involved!

This picture above is of us all including our teacher Miss Dolan before going on stage.

This picture is of us when we were on stage. What a happy bunch!