Cinderella the Ballet

A few weeks ago I went see the Ballet at The Colisuem. The Birmingham Royal Ballet put on the performance of Cinderella. I was really looking forward to seeing it because I myself am a ballet dancer and ballet really interests me. I thought it would be a great experience to watch it so I could see what sort of things I would have to do if I want to go into the dance industry.

In the ballet there were 3 acts and 2 intervals. I found this unusual and I had never been to a show like this before. It did break it down a lot which meant the acts weren’t too long.

The dancing was amazing and I wouldn’t be able to criticise much. The only part I could was when a group of girls danced together and every now and then they would go slightly out of time but I would only notice that because I am a dancer myself. I really enjoyed the duet between Cinderella and Prince Charming. Everything was perfect and you couldn’t fault a thing.

The costumes really stood out on stage even though we were so far back. You could still see all the details. My favourite part of costumes was definitely the glass slippers. They were a pair of pointe shoes covered in diamantes. They really sparkled on the stage.

         

Evaluation – Bhangra

BEFORE OUR PERFORMANCE IN 'CABARET'

In BTEC Performing Arts we have started our unit C14 in January. In this unit we studied Bhangra dancing. I was looking forward to trying this out because it's very different and I've never done anything like it before. In our first lesson we learnt the basic steps and had a go at putting some of them together to make a routine. We had to think about the things Miss Dolan had put up on the board.

                                            

• Hands and Gestures
• Isolations
• Story Telling
• Dancing in Unison
• Lots of facing each other

After making up our Bhangra routines we put a Western style to it to make it different. I found this a bit difficult because I don't do street dance and this was a bit like that. I found it a challenge but after I got into it I found it easier. We all worked together to put together the dance and teach everyone. We thought of Bhangra moves and thought about how we could put a western twist to them. This took time but in the end we finished it.

In this two hour lesson we were also shown a video of Hrithik Roshan. I liked this dance by Hrithik Roshan because it was very original and had a western twist to it but also has very traditional Bhangra dancing in it. It made the dance look modern and a bit different the traditional Bhangra. It was a party and a celebration so all the moves were very big and over the top. It was also an upbeat dance to reflect the mood of the party. The western twist made the dance original but it also looked very good with the traditional Bhangra. The dance was also telling a story because you can see a connection between Hrithik Roshan and the girl watching. This is telling us that they like each other and he is trying to impress her. In our Bhangra dance we decided that we were going to put a western twist to our Bhangra. This meant twisting our Bhangra moves and making them more street like. This made it our own but also made it easier for us because we know street dance a lot better than we do Bhangra.

At first when we were making up our Bhangra dances we weren’t really putting a story to it. Bhangra is all about telling a story through dance so we had to get the hang of this. To get us into the idea of telling a story though dance Miss Dolan taught us a contemporary dance telling the story of a girl who had been abused. Miss Dolan had research into it therefore she had a better understanding of the theme so she could now choreograph her dance thinking of the story. After doing this we all had a much better understanding and were able to put a story to our Bhangra dances.  

In our next lesson we were separated into two groups and had to come up with a stimulus for the Bhangra dance we were going to choreograph. We had the chose between

·         Love

·         Passion

·         Forbidden Love

·         Chase

·         Family

·         Disapproval

I was in a group with Myriam, Shannon, Shauna, Louise and Danielle. We all decided that we were going to the theme of forbidden love and base it on Romeo and Juliet. We all sat down and decided on scenes and the music we were going to use. We then went home and all created a story board of our dance piece. This made it easier for us to start choreographing our different scenes. We created our piece adding lifts, cannons and unison dancing. We knew that we were going to have to perform this in Cabaret so we had to make sure it was polished and perfect for our performance. We had to make sure all our timings were right and our moves were slick and tidy. We had to make a few small changes but we managed to have a polished Bhangra dance ready to perform to a live audience.

Our live performance went really well and we were all really pleased with it. We got back really positive feedback from the audience saying they really enjoyed it. We borrowed scarfs from Miss Butt so we had a costume to wear to make it look better. We also wore make up to reflect the culture of the type of dance. This made it look so much better on stage.

Overall I have really enjoyed doing Bhangra. It was a challenge but this meant we could experiment more and make it our own. If I had the chance I would definitely do Bhangra again and recommend other people to try it out.