It's Show Time!

On friday night we did our performance evening of 'Dance That Means Something'. It was a really sucuessful evening with 78 people in the audience. The evening was filmed by Miss Shipp and Racheal Davis and photographs were taken by Ross Hudson. We also wrote a questionaire for our audience to fill in to give us feedback on the night. This will all be used as evidenced to go into our folders. I'm am going to write up an evalution of the night which i will upload to my blog at a later date. I really enjoyed the night and I know the audience did for whom I've spoken to. We have only been doing btec  for 11 weeks so our dances were not perfect and it was only a working progess. We had to invited guests to dance to pad out the show. I invited my brother along to do some ballet but he asked me to do it with him. We performed a duet we had performed earlier in a show. We did a presentation to explain DV8. This gave the audience a much clearer understanding of the theme. I don't think they would have understood if we hadn't of done the presentation. Pictures will be uploaded soon.

Panto!

This weekend I went down to Southend for the weekend with my family. During the weekend we went to see the local pantomime. This year they were doing Peter Pan with Bradley Walsh playing Smee.

They had changed the story a bit to make in more model but it worked really well. The actors playing the main parts looked very young and inexperienced. Some of them messed up their lines and it seemed like they were taking their parts too serious. The girl who played Tinkerbell had an amazing singing voice and sung the best song through out the play. The main dancers in it were also not the best. They were very out of time and didn't seem too bothered. I really liked the flying scenes becuase they actually flew on the stage and over the audience. Bradley Walsh was really funny it in and he made the audience laugh most of the time he was on the stage. He did mess up his lines a few times but it didn't matter becuase he made a joke out of it. It was the opening show so I can understand why a few times it didn't run that smoothy.

T4 Stars 2010

On the 21st of November I and three friends went up to London to see T4 Stars. We travelled up to Earls Court in the mornng and has to join a que standing around for 2 hours. We got let into the arena at 11 o'clock but the show didn't start until 2 o'clock. There was loads to do outside if you weren't waiting in the main arena for the performances to start. You could go and visit the T4 studio and have the chance to enter a competition to become the new T4 presenter. There were modelling competitions going on and a make over bus you could go and have a make over in. There was also a celebrity disco going on where you could go get closer to the stars. We got there just as The Wanted came up. Everyone got really excited and were pushing to the front. The show in the main arena was amazing! There were loads of stars performing such as, The Saturdays, Ellie Goulding, Olly Murs, JLS, Pixie Lott, Jason Deraulo, N Dubz, Tinie Tempah, Professor Green, Example, Roll Deep, Alexandra Burke, Devlin, The Wanted, The Script and many more. The Inbetweeners, Gok Wan and Tom Dailey made appearences on the stage between performances. It was an excellent but tiring day and I would definitly go again!

My work in Costume Design

'Dance That Means Something'

At the moment we are putting together an evening of dance thats going to be held on the 10th December. In class we have been putting together dances to perform on the night. We have invited guests to perform as well. There will also be a gallery up of all our work we have been doing in costume design. This night will give us a chance to show our friends and family what we have been working on.

Me and Shannon are performing our DV8 style dance. Shannon has mixed two very differnt types of music together so make it a bit different. We still need to do a lot of work on it to perfect it. I've also invited my brother along to dance a duet with me. We will then perform all our group dances we have done. I'm looking forward to the night and hopefully friends and family will enjoy watching it.

In our costume design lessons we have been working hard putting together boards of our work and starting to make our first costumes. We are starting to make our Will We Rock You style skirts. We are using denim and tartan to create the look and decorating them with safety pins and chains to make it look more rocky. Hopfully I will get mine finished before our performance so it can be put in the gallery for everyone to see.
(I have pictures on my phone but still need to upload them.)

Final DV8 Essay

I gave in my first draft of my DV8 Essay and I got a pass. Miss Dolan gave me loads of feedback and told me what to improve on. This is my final essay with all the improvments.

DV8 Dance
Alice Norris, 10G
BTEC Performing Arts

Introduction to DV8
DV8 Physical Theatre has been running since 1986 and was formed and is still run by Lloyd Newson.  They have put together 16 pieces that have toured internationally and have produced 4 award winning films for television. The company is funded by the Arts Council England, are a group who invest and develop in artistic experiences that enrich lives. Their overall aim is to develop, promote and invest in the arts in England. The Artsadmin also funds them, this organisation,  producers, supports and promotes contemporary artists. They offer free advice and bursaries. DV8 has also been supported by The British Council they are the International Cultural Relations Body which means they work across countries and cultures. They allow different countries and cultures to work together and share ideas. DV8 is a member of the ITC and Dance UK.

DV8 StyleDV8 style is a mixture of theatre and dance. They want to put across their ideas and feelings through dance. DV8 are a company who don’t dance for money or profit they just want to get their message across to people. They put a lot of thought and effort into creating their projects. DV8 produce pieces that aren’t technically perfect but they want to make sure they meaning gets across to the audience so they can understand. DV8 put their performance onto video because they want as many people as possible to see their performance with a message. The dance company have a reputation for thinking outside the box and taking risks to produce pieces of dance that look at the roles of men and women in society. They don’t mind challenging the traditional way of dance and what it should be like. They don’t really use counts and set steps, it appears that their pieces are very natural, flowing and not choreographed. The company don’t have set dancers, they bring in different dancers for different pieces so they always have fresh faces that suit the roles in the piece. At the moment the DV8 website has information about open auditions and for this project which is about censorship and religion they want males and females dancers with Middle East or South Asian backgrounds. Censorship and Religion can sometimes stop a person from being who they want to be and expressing themselves sometimes verbally and physically.

Lloyd NewsonLloyd Newson was born in Australia and studied psychology at university but this made him start thinking about how people can express themselves through dance. He travelled over to London and was able to get a scholarship to the London Contemporary Dance School. After that he danced and choreographed with a few different companies in different countries. He then decided to form his own company which was DV8. He believes in his work so much because of the way it tells stories so he knew it would work well on film. He was proved correct because films of his work have won many awards. You can’t put his work into a category because it’s so original and doesn’t come under anything like ballet or even really contemporary. Lloyd Newson says classical ballet is like “flower arrangement” he says it looks very pretty but he wants his dance to make people think about what the story his dance is about.
 

Inspirations

Martha GrahamThe Martha Graham Dance Company comes from America and was founded in 1926 by Martha Graham. It’s a contemporary dance company and dance school where people travel from all over the world to study. Her works are so famous and have been performed by many successful dancers such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, Liza Minnelli and Rudolf Nureyev. Martha Graham is one of the most important creative influences in contemporary dance in the last century. You can understand why she was such a good inspiration for Lloyd Newson. He likes to be creative with his work and be different. She was the founder and creator of contemporary dance and the inspiration for many contemporary dancers and groups. Her work is different and pushes the boundaries which is exactly what Lloyd Newson does in his dances. Lloyd Newson has taken his ideas a lot further and where as Martha Graham had a set dance company, he changes his dancers depending on which piece he is doing.

Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was born in America in 1877. She started teaching when she was 5 and she would get all the girls in the neighbourhood together and taught them to sway side to side to look like waves. She was very unusual for a woman of her time, she encouraged people to dance in their own style. She said “The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the human body. The dancer will not belong to any nation but to all humanity.” I think this quote would have inspired Lloyd Newson because his work is all about letting your body flow and go in natural directions. It’s all about feeling the music and expressing it through your body. Isadora is said to be the creator of modern dance. She wasn’t afraid to take risks and break boundaries, which is what Lloyd Newson does with his work. 

Merce CunninghamMerce Cunningham danced in Martha Graham’s Dance Company from 1939 to 1945. He formed his own dance company in 1953. His work has been performed by many international ballet companies and has been used in several films. He’s won lots of awards for his work. Merce’s dance company include dancers, musicians and artists. The company created a computer software called DanceForms. It’s a software where you can sketch out a dance and see it come to live in a 3D image. Lloyd Newson might of been inspired by this because it’s a new thing and they taken a risk which he likes to do. His style was ballet and contemporary. Merce Cunningham says it’s all about the dancer expressing them self through the dance and not the choreography by someone else. It’s all about individual expressing them self through dance. This is a quote from Merce Cunningham – “If a dancer dances – which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance or remembering in his body someone else’s dance – but if the dancer dances everything is there... Our ecstasy in dance comes from the possible gift of freedom, the exhilarating moment that this exposing of the bare energy can give us. What is meant is not license, but freedom..”  If Newson read this he would probably agree and he may think it’s something that he’s even said. 

Works

The Cost of LivingThe Cost of Living is a piece of physical theatre. It was made for channel 4, it’s a thirty five minute piece and it’s won many awards such as The Rose d’Or and The Time Out Live Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance. It’s about two disillusioned street performers called Eddie and David. David is a dancer with no legs but it shows that anyone can dance and move gracefully no matter what they are like. Lloyd Newson challenges peoples opinions and people can generally think that disabled people can’t join in with what normal people do. It’s unusual to see disabled people dancing with able people. In many activities disabled people have their own category but DV8s style of dance they mix the two together.  It’s a very physical piece and it shows Eddie and David meeting other people and seeing their reactions.

Enter AchillesThis forty five minute piece was made for the BBC in 1996. It’s also won several awards including a Emmy. It’s set in a typical English pub and all the men have pints of beer in their hands. At first it appears that all the men are being manly and showing off in front of each other but things start to change. As soon as any of the men show any emotion or their feminine side the other men start to pick on them and they do something after to regain their manly hood. It’s shows how difficult it is for men to show their vulnerability. Many people think men should be tough and not show their emotions but they are human as well, so why shouldn’t they be aloud? This makes us think about our prejudices, we as individuals need to think for ourselves and not go along with what the majority of people think.

Strange FishIt’s a fifty minute video made for the BBC in 1992. It’s also won some international  awards like the Prix Italia Special Prize  . It’s about people searching to find someone to love and someone or something to believe in. It shows how people find it hard if they think they don’t belong and how people are afraid of being alone. This is a very physical piece and pushes the boundaries of dance including humour and religious issues. Because some people are insecure and don’t believe in themselves they find something or someone else to believe in. Which means their not actually being themselves which is worse because they are never going to be secure with themselves. The characters in this piece are over exaggerated which means that to start with it can cause people to laugh. The seriousness of the message comes through to the audience.
 

The theme throughout most of DV8s pieces is about making people think about things that happen in everyday life and the way we think things should be done.    
     

Legally Blonde

This week i went up to london to watch the West End production of Legally Blonde. I didn't really know what to expect becuase I'd never seen the film and I didn't have a clue what the story line was! Everyone who had seen it told me it was amazing and that I'd love it. They were right, I loved every minute of it! I was gutted because Elle Woods is normally played by Sheridan Smith but we had her understudy. It would have been great to see Sheridan because she really inspires me and i think shes a brillant actress.

 My favourite part of the play was when Elle Woods sang the song 'So Much Better'. I loved it so much I'm going to ask my singing teacher if i could learn how to sing it well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWFQ1h7tAQA

 One of Elle's costumes was amazing! It was her cheerleading costume but it was pink and full of glitter and sparkles. The cheerleading scene was so good! They all just burst in into the law school and it was really effective. Not one part of the show did I get bored becuase the whole way through it was energtic and always something going on. Jill Halfpenny played the part of Paulette Buonufonte and i thought she definitly had the best voice out of everyone. She such a good actress, you really believed her character.
 

I've fallen in love with the musical Legally Blonde and it would be a dream come true if i ever got to play the part of Elle Woods!

Heartbeat Dance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vz41UzvRaA
This is our heartbeat in progress!

DV8 Essay

This is my first draft of my DV8 Essay!

DV8 Dance
Alice Norris, 10G
BTEC Performing Arts

Introduction to DV8DV8 Physical Theatre has been running since 1986 and was formed and is still run by Lloyd Newson.  They have put together 16 pieces that have toured internationally and have produced 4 award winning films for television. The company is funded by the Arts Council England, they are also associated with the Artsadmin. DV8 has also been supported by The British Council. DV8 is a member of the ITC and Dance UK.
DV8 StyleDV8 style is a mixture of theatre and dance. They want to put across their ideas and feelings through dance. DV8 are a company who don’t dance for money or profit they just want to get their message across to people. They put a lot of thought and effort into creating their projects. DV8 produce pieces that aren’t technically perfect but they want to make sure they meaning gets across to the audience so they can understand. DV8 put they performance onto video because they want as many people as possible to see they piece with a message. The dance company have a reputation for thinking outside the box and taking risks to produce pieces of dance that look at the roles of men and women in society. They don’t mind challenging the traditional way of dance and what it should be like. The company don’t have set dancers, they bring in different dancers for different pieces so they always have fresh faces that suit the roles in the piece. At the moment the DV8 website has information about open auditions and for this project which is about censorship and religion they want males and females dancers with Middle East or South Asian backgrounds.  

Lloyd NewsonLloyd Newson was born in Australia and studied psychology at university but this made him start thinking about how people can express themselves through dance. He travelled over to London and was able to get a scholarship to the London Contemporary Dance School. After that he danced and choreographed with a few different companies in different countries. He then decided to form his own company which was DV8. He believes in his work so much because of the way it tells stories so he knew it would work well on film. He was proved correct because films of his work have won many awards. You can’t put his work into a category because it’s so original and doesn’t come under anything like ballet or even really contemporary. Lloyd Newson says classical ballet is like “flower arrangement” he says it looks very pretty but he wants his dance to make people think about what the story his dance is about.
 
Inspirations
Martha GrahamThe Martha Graham Dance Company comes from America and was founded in 1926 by Martha Graham. It’s a contemporary dance company and dance school where people travel from all over the world to study. Her works are so famous and have been performed by many successful dancers such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, Liza Minnelli and Rudolf Nureyev. Martha Graham is one of the most important creative influences in contemporary dance in the last century. You can understand why she was such a good inspiration for Lloyd Newson. Lloyd Newson has taken his ideas a lot further and where as Martha Graham had a set dance company, he changes his dancers depending on which piece he is doing.

Isadora DuncanIsadora Duncan was born in America in 1877. She started teaching when she was 5 and she would get all the girls in the neighbourhood together and taught them to sway side to side to look like waves. She was very unusual for a woman of her time, she encouraged people to dance in their own style. She said “The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the human body. The dancer will not belong to any nation but to all humanity.” I think this quote would have inspired Lloyd Newson because his work is all about letting your body flow and go in natural directions. It’s all about feeling the music and expressing it through your body. Isadora is said to be the creator of modern dance. She wasn’t afraid to take risks and break boundaries, which is what Lloyd Newson does with his work.        

Merce CunninghamMerce Cunningham danced in Martha Graham’s Dance Company from 1939 to 1945. He formed his own dance company in 1953. His work has been performed by many international ballet companies and has been used in several films. He’s won lots of awards for his work. Merce’s dance company include dancers, musicians and artists. The company created a computer software called DanceForms. It’s a software where you can sketch out a dance and see it come to live in a 3D image. Lloyd Newson might of been inspired by this because it’s a new thing and they taken a risk which he likes to do. His style was ballet and contemporary.     

Works
The Cost of LivingThe Cost of Living is a piece of physical theatre. It was made for channel 4, it’s a thirty five minute piece and it’s won many awards such as The Rose d’Or and The Time Out Live Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance. It’s about two disillusion street performers called Eddie and David. David is a dancer with no legs but it shows that anyone can dance and move gracefully no matter what they are like. It’s a very physical piece and it shows Eddie and David meeting other people and seeing their reactions.

Enter AchillesThis forty five minute piece was made for the BBC in 1996. It’s also won several awards including a Emmy. It’s set in a typical English pub and all the men have pints of beer in their hands. At first it appears that all the men are being manly and showing off in front of each other but things start to change. As soon as any of the men show any emotion or their feminine side the other men start to pick on them and they do something after to regain their manly hood. It’s shows how difficult it is for men to show their vulnerability.

Strange FishIt’s a fifty minute video made for the BBC in 1992. It’s also won some awards. It’s about people searching to find someone to love and someone or something to believe in. It shows how people find it hard if they think they don’t belong and how people are afraid of being alone. This is a very physical piece and pushes the boundaries of dance including humour and religious issues.    

DV8 Workshops

This week in our practical lessons we started experiments with DV8's style of dance. DV8's style is very different and its all about interacting with other people and going with the flow. When choregraphing you have to think about not choregraphing and letting your body just go in a natural flow. I think its very hard to do becuase I'm so used to choregraphing and putting things together rather then letting my body flow naturally. My favourite lesson was when I was in a group of 4 with Chloe, Shauna and Chloe. We put together a piece that flowed together very well and we let our bodies go where was most natural. We ended up with a piece where we were rolling over eachother and all linking together and moving together. I took a couple of times to get in right but when we did it looked very affective.

Must Be The Music!

Last week I went to watch the finals of Must Be The Music at Wembley Arena. I thought it was amazing! I went with my Mum, my friend Charlotte and my brother and his friend. The whole arena was filled and the atmosphere was so good. The judging panel was Dizzee Rascal, Jamie Cunning, Sharleen Spiteri and it was presented by Fearne Cotton. A live performance was given by all the judges and my favourite was definitely Dizzee Rascal when he sang ‘Bonkers’. The crowd was going mad and everyone was jumping up and down. Sharleen’s performance was really good as well and all the crowd were on their feet for her.  

All the acts that got into the final were really good but none of them really stood out as amazing to me. The girl that won had a lovely singing voice and her songs were really good but my favourite was the band ‘The Pictures’. In was such a good night and I’d definitely go and see a live TV show again.

Heartbeat

This week in our practical lessons this week we developed our Heartbeat dance. We had to put a story and emotion in to it. We had to keep Miss Dolans dance but we could add our own bits into it. I was in a group with Myriam and Kelly and we had the idea of doing a broken family with the parents arguing and the child not knowing what to do. It fitted quite well with Miss Dolans dance as we could change some of the directs of the moves to some friction between the two parents and the child being caught up in the middle. Myriam was the child and Me and Kelly were the parents. When there were strong sharp movements me and Kelly turned to each other to saw we were getting angry and Myriam stood in the middle. Some of the moves we changed the direction so me and Kelly were going opposit ways and Myriam didn't know which way to go. It worked well but we still need to improve it and make it flow more.

At the beginning of the week we watched a DVD by DV8 Dance. I thought it was amazing the way it was put together and the way they put the story across but yet again a bit strange. I think it was very clever the way they thought of all the ideas and put it together and created this piece. It was about men and how they don't show their emotions much and when they do other men don't accept them. It was set in a pub and they were all drinking beer and then they went outside and a football was introduced all these things are associated with men. I think it will be fun to try and do DV8 style dancing, it's different and be a good experience.

This week we started our mood boards in costume design. We had a A3 piece of paper and we started cutting out pictures from magazines that fitted our colour scheme. My colours are Red, Black and Gold.

Our First Practical Lessons!

This week we had our first practical lessons, i really enjoyed them both. We learnt a comtempory dance to heartbeat. I love comtempory dance because I love ballet and have been doing it for years but its like ballet with a twist so it different and you can really experament with your moves. I really enjoyed learning the dance and i found it easy to pick up. i liked the sharp confusing move we did in the middle.
With Miss Hearn in costume design we were experimenting with colours. We were making colour charts and seeing hows many different shades we could get out of one colour. We did this using water colours.  

Induction week to BTEC Performing Arts

I have really enjoyed our induction week to BTEC Performing Arts. I think i'm going to really enjoy this course.


Monday 6th September-  This was our first lesson of BTEC Performing Arts and Miss Dolan just talked us through the course and what we will be doing over the next two years. We got given our handbook and handouts we needed to put in our folders. We meet everyone who was taking the course and its a nice group of girls some i know very well but others i don't so it will be nice getting to know them and working together.


Tuesday 7th September- On tuesday we had a double lesson but one was for costume design. In this lesson we met Miss Hearn and she talked us through the costume part of the course. i think this is the part i'm going to find most challenging becuase i'm not the best at designing and making. We talked about what colours we wanted to use for our historical costumes and i choose, red, black and gold. We got our first bit of homework and got to ask any questions about the course. In the second lesson we were in a computer room and we created our blogs.


Wednesday 8th September- In this lesson we went down to the media room and learnt how to mix sound tracks together. I was in a group with Myriam, Danielle and Ellie. We didn't do it very well but you need a lot of practise and time to make it perfect. It was fun doing it and i would definitly like to try and do it again.