From thinking back to our first lesson and seeing the confused and intrigued faces of the class. We have come a far way when looking at the assesment pieces.

I Believe the module taught me and opened up my mind so much more to the choroegraphic possibilities and i really do feel that every little part of choreography and performance is important. Although the audience consideration maybe obvious, I have never had to deal with this kind of mind set with previous modules and i didn't realise how much the audience are almost like sheep and rely on guidance and direction from the moment they enter the building.

'When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.'
Stephen Sondheim
American composer and lyricist

Also the use of collaboration has definitely has made me aware of the importantance of making work as a group becuase every person approaches ideas and tasks differently. From the dispute within the class a few weeks ago i think everyone would agree that working in a group was great oppourtunity to work in depth on longer project and explore different elements of staging because as the saying goes two heads are better then one.
'I think it is in collaboration that the nature of art is revealed.'
Steve lacy
Saxophonist

Another important factor from this module is creating to your own constraint because I felt I didnt have to try and create a piece but keep the idea of experimenting and exploration with lighting and choreography. With all of this put together i feel that my group made a piece and with a feeling of great satisfaction. It also fascinated me by having a constraint/ problem the more and more creativity comes from the group and how we can take the problem further.

With regards to Assessment 3 my group really explored many possible options and there is a part of me that wishes we had more studio time in the theatre to explore the choreographic and the performative with our lighting states and explore the lights in many different possiblilties. But unfourtunately there is only one theatre and many groups who proabaly would have liked that little bit longer. however, with this in mind it makes you become very cut throat with your choreography and make every single thing that is visible by the audience important. So, on the other hand it made us focus on the task and not get to wrapped up in the less important things.

The most challenging task the we as a group came up against was selecting an appropiate soundtrack to assist our choreography. We finally found a piece that we felt disnt distract or undermine our choreography. however, ironically there seem to be a problem with my laptop and copying cd's and therefore skipped during the final performance and was stopped halfway through, luckily enough due to the nature of the score it was hardly noticable and the performance carried on as normal.......PHEW!

Overall, I thorughly enjoyed this module and hope to take many things from this and take this into my dissertation and my carrer after university. I liked all the works that I watched and made with other people and hope to work like this again at some point again.

Well done to everyone and thank you all for an amazing experience.

from talking with simon during the creative process we discovered that the lighting we choose to use is mostly used amongst commercial rock/pop concerts in large venues. With this in mind I found my self thinking of the scenarios in which these styles are seen and how they effect the performative and create a situation on the audience. We as a group had no intention to recreate any of these and werent trying to achieve the same effect these situations can.

However, from researching i found the dominance of this style is in media, nature and photography and made me chreographically think of movement creating snapshots and burst of colour and photgraphic like tableau on the audiences mind. This wasn't the forepoint of our choreography but deffinitely gave us different mediums and tasks to work around and also let us explore different ways and styles of moving.

The more I was aware of this, even with Lorna saying as soon as she saw the boom of light coming up she wanted to see a large Jazz ensemble. I was aware of colour and atmosphere and once again re-investigated back to what we wanted to the audience to see. this is why we choose the colour of flesh would be the best placed in the idea of what we would like our piece to look like and only wearing only black so the audience would not be distracted from the movement and lights.

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Here are a Couple of photographs taken during the tech/dress run (thanks to simon). I choose a couple of photos which to me match the idea and thoughts that I have expressed on this blog. This way you can see the process to final piece.

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Here are some scans of notes that have been made before , during and after rehearsals. These may not make sense and maybe unclear but I feel that they demonstrates my groups progressions and thought process from our initial idea to the final Assesment.

These scans have been become a great way to re-evaluate ideas, movement and what our group wants to acheive. Notes are great to refer to in rehearsal and becuase we can see what our thoughts were at the time of each rehearsal and also eliminates the possibility of forgetting our intention.

More will be on the way as preparation for the assesment takes shape.

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Since the lecture concerning sound, I found that I have approached the use of sound and choreography differently.
These are just some notes and experiences that I am aware of from then until now;

Firstly, the demonstration with laura dancing the solo to vast amount of audio varieties fascinated me just by the groups reaction. we as a group went from amusement and comedy to irritating and unexpected even though the Choreography never changed (except sometimes laura matched the timing of the music) our reaction was rollercoaster of emotive and visual reactions. Sound is a very powerful source and how we relate to it as dancers, audiences and people is a very complex thing. Here is some questions I started asking myself and how I experience music/sound.

Is sound more then just a audible sensory experience?

When i was younger I had a complete fascination with Walt Disney's Fantastia, I used to watch this over and over again. I remember there is section where someone (It might be Walt Disney) speaks about the idea behind Fantasia and he was questioning the notion that music can not be seen, it was this convention that disney wanted to try to create a visual musical effect, so music could be seen. (Does this effect my Choreography now?)

How do I as a choreographer create my desired effect with sound?

My personal experiences of sound and dance is very different to others. My personality, training, teaching, knowledge and location of my upbringing varies much more differently to each and every person around me.

In regards to AS3, How can We as a choreographic collective agree or share the same audible vision with our choreography if our experiences of sound is different?

Does one of us have to sacrifice our artistry or intent for the sake of others? Maybe these questions do not have answers and the possiblities of these different voices are apart of the process in making a piece work.

However, my group are finding it increasingly difficult to decide on what is perfect for our piece. We feel that that the noise that is present in the space will really effect the audiences reaction and experience (as it should). But, what is the next step? how do we find something appropiate within the time constraints? If we perform with absence of pre-recorded sound, will the sound of bodies moving, audience breathing the world outside the theatre distract our audience away from our choreographic intention?

Only time and exploration will tell ....

I am so thrilled to approach sound and movement in a new a refreshing way which is very different to my previous methods. I hope that this will not just prepare for the module assesment, but the final year of this course and my career beyond university

Since receiving the assesment 3 task me and my group discussed what interested us and where did we see our group evolving in the making of the performance.

We noticed we had interest in watching and being watched and improvised around this task and discovered a rich variety of material.

After making material together and a variety of discussions we were interested in using a camera and a television and filming the dance live from a different angle. So the audiences vision was able to see the same dance and experience the choreography in a variety of views and also giving the audience two important decisions whteher to watch the dance live or via a media form and experience the dance live but restricted with just a small screen. However, although this idea was exciting and enjoyable we found that the complexities and problems with lighting and visibility outweighed the enjoyment and clarity of the piece so unfourtunately we scrapped that idea.

However, from experimenting with this medium and idea of audience vision this lead to the idea of audience viewing point and by complete chance i was wathing kelly and alison perform the movement from the side. The side lighting in the theatre was on for another group and i saw the movement with this lighting style and i felt it was perfect and was just visually stunning to watch the movemnt. Sometimes the movement was blurred and was filled with countinity and at other points the sharp and crisp outline of the silouette was so vivid to the point that each indivdual wisp of hair could be seen. As we discussed this with the group we found that vision was still at the forepoint of our choreographic intention although the physical setting was much different. from this prevailing idea of vision i found how light can be very powerful and can either guide an audience or intrude the pathway of sight. I was also curious about how conventionally the lighting in a performance usually makes movemnt more visible and focus the audience attentiuon to a particular dancer or movement. However, with the lighting idea of our dance we discovered that we were 'going against the grain'. By obscuring light the dance was visible instead of the otherway around, we also noticed that depth changed the quality of the movement and how it is experienced by the audience. With the dancer being closer to the light the movement became less visible once again going against the conventions of lighting.

Now we had a clear idea and intention of what we were trying to achieve where to locate the audience. what is best location for the experience? what location would show the power of light without creating a uncomfortable intrusion to the aduiences eye? and where can the audience be when seeing the light face on and from an angle? We as a group discussed the down stage right because that way the audience won't have to be moved far and also that way the audience can see the first 2 side lights face on and see the following four side lights from a different angle that way the audience can experince both lighting and dance from different angle making them aware of the power of light and that the body is not being lit but obstructing/ obscuring the lights pathway.

I also find it fun and interesting from researching the terms obscure and vision that we are making the lights more paramount in the dance then the movement. From my point of view the bodies are more of demonstration of power of light and the pathways and strength that light has. In preparation for the assesment over the next rehearsals I hope our group keeps the curiousity and experimentation strong in our choreography and hope this will keep are ideas of vision and obscurity strong in the final performance.

These are just a few pictures that i have come across from limen. That have started me thinking about what i would like to do or things i would like to experiment with in preparation for the modules final piece. I am Intrigued by the shape and color of the light (look at the floor in the pictures) and the matching or contrats with the shapes and colours of the dancer positions and costumes.

Just a little something that I am thinking about?

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Last night I attended the world Premier of McGregor's new work 'Limen', The set was grand and forever changing with the different use of light. Tatsuo Miyajima (set designer) described his design for the piece as;

'The Light always appears with darkness.
the light means Life, and darkness means Death.
With Wayne McGregor's new work, limen,
I throw numbers of Light and Darkness onto his performance.
The numbers, which keep counting, represent Time,
and symbolize Life itself.
Thise lights are projected onto performers, and reflect from them.
It will yield a dynamic space of Life and Death.'
(Royal Ballet programme, 37, 2009)

These are just some notes and descriptions of what i saw and how the dancers where located in the space;

The opening scene displayed a screen at the front of the stage that was lit electric blue, with several numbers moving around, appearing, disvolving whilst dancers appeared from nowhere from the floor, the side some were still and others were manic.

After which the screen lifted up with a stark stage setting with just dark blue/ black square projected on to the stage floor which confined the dancers to this space, colour rectangles of light gradually framed the square which created a new pathway of colour and light for the dancers. This was then followed by five strips of colour from upstage to down stage which assigned dancers a new space for which they performed.

this lead to a black backscreen being placed in the background with eclispe like spotlight on the stage floor, locating the space for very tactile and sensitive duet.

The piece ends with with small bright beems of led blue lights which light up in random order and has the light become more clear and the stage space becomes more dark what is presented in front of you are tiny numbers each flickering and changing as one by one each dancer meets the wall till eventually all dancers and hidden against the backdrop invisible and all we are left with is a wall of numbers and lights.

The piece was amazing i strongly recommend you see it, if you get a chance. This was possibly one of the best pieces i have seen. Even if it is not your cup of tea the lighting definitely inspired me and question the form of light and the choreographic, realizing how very much they are instrinically linked. They not only does light display the movement at its best visibilty (or obscure) it can evoke emotion and themes. light can expose relationships and create a sense of illusion. Also If the royal ballet are taking such dramatic and vast changes from the conventional use of lighting it shows that lighting needs to be taken more as choreography as opposed to just another element of production design. Also I felt experiencing it in live form had a far more dramatic effect on me.

'I am designing an EXPERIENCE for the viewer that may stimulate their visual sense, their acoustic sense, their kinaesthetic sense, individually or all at the same time; it may move them emotionally or challenge them intellectually, and all of these are valuable and legitmate layers of meaning, of making sense.'
Wayne McGregor in Royal Ballet programme, 39, 2009.

Crichton-Miller, Emma (2009) Agon/Sphinx/Limen Royal Ballet Programme, 4th November 2009. London

At first I felt this task was daunting. There were so many elements to consider and with both my partners absent from fridays session I become very aware of the time constraint. therefore trying organise rehearsals and meetings whilst filling in bick and lorna was stressful. However, this aided the creative process because the way i passed on the message they intepretated the lesson in a different way from there imagination and not from the tasks we performed in class.

First Rehearsal;
We worked hard and completely fair. We decided that each of us would come up with ideas for lighting, location, audience's experience/perspective. we decided to chose our own methods to generate and create movement from the task words such as; idiosyncratic, complex, experimental/ devolped and solo. I adopted a method from Trisha Brown which consists of two boxes on top of each other with each point being a letter and the dancer adopts these boxes as their kinesphere. Bick was curious by simons use of limbs (from friday's session) and used that idea and used two parts of the body and seeing the connecton between the two throughout the body. Lorna adapted her approach by watching me and Bick and picking up on habits and little 'ticks' that we do all the time with out knowing ( this resulted in a very funny mention of my hand and my crotch, but was still apart of the creative process). After these methods we came to group decision that Lorna was going to be the person who would be lighting so she watched our movement/creative process and was thinking of options with all our lighting ideas in preparation for friday.

We gave each others movement methods and choreographed and after me and bick flipped a coin to see who was going to be the 'Performer' we then merged the two together. after this we filmed the solo a few times and picked out moments that we liked and disliked from both the sensation on my body and the visual aesthetic not forgetting the task ether. after this improvised for the camera from the idea of my solo, bicks solo and lorna's 'habit' comments and did the same again by cropping/ selecting and expanding on specific moments. I found the use of using a camera a beneficial factor because certains movements that we felt were integral to the piece was not lost by over rehearsal and complacency. This is also allowed us to try and hold on to the idea of idiosyncratic and keep the clarity of the complex.

Additionally. by this point both Bick and Lorna were watching the piece that we had created and thinking of angles for the audience and the angle of the light and thinking of shadows, depth, closeness, obscurity and time of when things should happen regarding both movement and light choices. Not only was excited by this sense of totality and collaboration we seemed very confident for our reasons and realised that we all started to notice that we liked the same things (personally to me it seemed we all had a fair go and now we hit our middle but yet very creative ground).

So after a couple of rehearsals in one day we decided to give what we already had a rest come up with more finalised ideas from what we have seen and felt for friday and tie them together on friday rhearsal with the lights.

Friday's seesion and exam;

After grouping together again but this time with the light we posistioned the light we had considered, and we we all pleased with the shadows, and location and found that the light being low was a useful and good because it adds to the elements such as obscurity and other spreviusoly mentioned. however, lorna felt that being behind light was not maybe the best location for the audience so one at time we looked at the body in space and found out the view from the lighting box was far mnore interesting. however, we could only have so many audience members due to the size (also we did not like the idea of lorna being surrounded whilst she operrated the lights, in may have been interesting but that was not our intention for this assesment). Thus, we chose the best possible location down stage right underneath the lighting box and we still felt that was the most appropiate and best location for the piece. We chose the distance and location because the lighting and shadows showed more then what we anticipated and felt thaey hasd to be seen by the audience whether it was for the floor work or the close work.

After talking we considered the idea of introducing bick in to the final assesment because there was three of us and liked questiong the idea of 'solo' study with two members, using lighting and size as a tool of of what can (or can not) be seen and the idea of using the same material with our own quirks and use of idiosyncratic i.e the touching of surafces of the body, the tummy , scratching of the ankles. Also, using the tinest finger gesture which would look rather similar from far away but up close were different ( I was tracing a triangle and bick was tracing a circle, was this noticable? ) On top of this when rehearsing with bick i noticed that my shadow towered over hers which allowed both me and her with lorna tweaking posistions and angles to make the shadows more effective and dynamic to the movement and the audience.

Overall, I found this Assesment and stressful but enjoyable one and I only wished we had more time to develop and play with this. My group and I were meticulous in understanding the task, What The words meant and combining these two and seeing how this can be developed through the consideration for choreography and the choreographic. I feel that the piece was successful and was done to our best and once again I loved the experience of working new people. Plus, attacking a task with someone else different is exciting because each individual brings there own idea and experiences from the past and present and together you make something new (something i personally feel that would not have been created if i had done this on my own).

Altthough i want write more, I am very aware of the length and maybe edit this at later date.
so stay tuned....

Just a few scans in preparation for AS2

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