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!

Her Majesty's Theatre

At PQA (Pauline Quirk Academy), we do end of term projects; I have already done a big project such as a film premier which highlighted what we do in film and television classes. Last term we did a musical theatre project which we performed at Her Majesty's Theatre! This was great experience and a lot of fun.

The whole of the academy were involved but we did separate performances and then a finale at the end together. We also shared the night with 3 other PQA academy's from different locations.

We had prepared for our performances for over 9 weeks and I choreographed the whole finale scene which meant that I worked for the afternoon academy as well as I had to teach the afternoon academy the same routines. This was hard work but a lot of fun as I got to know a few more people from the afternoon and it was good experience to be able to teach two whole academy's my choreography.

I also got involved with the media side of the performance too as I edited the music and put it all together for our performance. I learned how to do this in a B-TEC Performing Arts lesson and I was able to do it again at home. I personally didn't find it challenging as I knew the basics and so it was fairly easy as I knew timings etc.

The performances that I was in were from Legally Blonde the musical and Rent. Only my age group were involved in these. (14-17yr olds) It was just the girls that were involved in the legally blonde song and as a group we were involved in a song from Rent.

In the legally blonde song I played the bossy girl who told everyone what to do. We did the song OMG. In the song we are all excited because we think that El is about to get engaged which means we acted very stereotypical girly Americans. This was my favourite performance to do as I got to be with my friends, wear pink and sing solo in front of loads of people in the audience, which Pauline Quirk herself was in.

The other performance was called Rent and it was the complete opposite to Legally Blonde because we were poor and scruffy and negative. It was a very powerful performance and I enjoyed performing it as we all had loads of energy and therefore the outcome was brilliant.

I had a good night performing at Her Majesty's Theatre and I won't forget it! Great experience for me and I loved every second of it.