Choreographic Journal- Arrival and Departure

Week 1- (week commencing 16th November 2015)

During this week, both 1st and 2nd year dance students worked alongside our lecturer (Lucy Palmer), to begin producing short phrases of movement (contemporary based) to incorporate within our piece for our show. As students, we were to work around the concept of arrival and depature from various perspectives. With this, our movement very much reflected arriving in to, and departing from the space on stage.

Within our first six hours of rehearsals, we had learnt one phrase, which had represented movements of arriving and departing through movement with our bodies.

Week 2- (week commencing 23rd November 2015)

Within this week of rehearsal period we continued to learn more phrases for the piece. At this stage of the rehearsal process, all students were put into sections chosen by our choreographer. At the ending of the week, all phrases were taught and learnt, and the overall piece was completed. We were to now focus on transitions, formations and perfecting the given material.

Additionally, two second year students, (Sam Parry and Tilly Geddes) were given the opportunity to have their own section of music in our piece, whereby they had to create choreography and teach the material to the class. During this process, Tilly held auditions to choose students to be in specific sections of her piece. The genre of dance is primarily Hip Hop based but does possess aspects of Contemporary.

Week 3- (week commencing 30th November 2015)

For the majority of the rehearsal days we were able to practice on stage, in the theatre. At this stage, all of the movement was thoroughly rehearsed. As a dance company, we focused on travelling across the space, being attentive for our cues to enter the space and transitioning from the various sections in the dance. Amongst this, a discussion was held in regards to costume, whereby Lucy instructed us to wear burgundy and black clothing.

A dress rehearsal took place on Thursday 3rd December, and there was a sharing of performances amongst Level 3 and HND students of each other's pieces.

Week 4- (week commencing 7th December 2015)

This week was a very busy week as this was performance week. All of the Level 3 dance students attended rehearsals in the Endeavour Theatre on Monday. During this rehearsal session our choreographer director, instructed us to perform the piece from beginning to end. The purpose of this was to correct and work through errors in regards to formation, cues and positioning on stage. Once these aspects of the piece were corrected, we continued to run through the piece to familiarise ourselves with the space on the theatre stage. 

On Tuesday (8th December) a technical reharsal took place, whereby Lucy selected the lighting for the piece and once this was complete, we then had another proper run through, with music and the lighting. In addition to this, the students that were partaking in Ed's piece, also had a technical rehearsal in the morning.

On Wednesday (9th December), all students were to attend the dress rehearsal that was to take place with both Level 3 and HND students in the theatre. We did a dress reharsal in the running order of what the show would be in the evening performance. This was also a sharing amongst all dance students. Later in the afternoon, we then prepared ourselves for the evening show, and all students took part in a short warm up before going on stage to perform.

We did not have any additional reharsals on Thursday (10th December), however we were able to rehearse in the studio in our free time. We prepared ourselves for the evening show, and this again included a 10 minute warm up, with all students participating.