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.