Jazz Evaluation

Overall I really enjoyed the Jazz section of BTEC Performing Arts. It is a style that I have never really taken much part in and I enjoyed exploring further. One of my favourite musicals is Chicago so I really enjoyed doing the style that is key in this musical.

We first started by exploring the different types of the style 'jazz'. It is a very diverse genre. We look at lyrical jazz, street jazz and rock n roll jazz. These are all individual styles but have an element of jazz in them. We did this by splitting into groups and each choreographing a dance to the set style we were given. My group was given lyrical jazz and we all enjoyed choreographing this dance. We are all strong at lyrical but we had to use the jazz style in this as well. This meant remembering to be slick and using loads of sharp movements such as with your hands and head.

Our end product turned out really well showing the clear difference between lyrical jazz, just jazz and just lyrical. We still used elegant movements but then went through the whole dance adding hand and head movements to fit the criteria. Our end product showed a strong lyrical jazz piece of choreography.

We then went on to teach each of our group the choreography we had made up. By doing this it gave us a better understanding of how jazz can be interpreted in many different ways.  It clearly showed the differences in the styles but how they all have an element of jazz in them.  We all enjoyed this because it gave us a chance to explore styles that we have never done before.  I particularly enjoyed doing rock n roll as this is a style I have never done before.  I didn't find this style particularly easy but when I got into it I found it easier and it became more of a routine than just steps. 

My favourite part of the jazz assignment was doing our Chicago dance.  We created this piece to perform in our school's annual Cabaret show.  This dance was extremely Fosse inspired and ticked all the boxes of being a pure jazz piece.  The choreography was made up of sharp, slick movements.  While rehearsing the piece we didn't realise how slick out movements needed to be until we watched ourselves back. This showed us that every little movement had to be perfect and in place.  If one slight hand movement wasn't in time or in place it affected the whole dance. 

In our final rehearsal we went through every tiny little thing we could to make it spot on.  We recorded ourselves and watched ourselves back, then went over each part to perfect the parts that needed improving.  We had a group discussion to go through all the things we needed to do for the evening performance.

Overall we gave a fantastic performance with lots of positive feedback from the audience.  The Fosse style was obvious as Mr Lewis mentioned this when talking to Mrs Norris after the performance.  The performance started on a difficult note because there was a slight mix up with the music meaning that we were left on stage with the wrong music playing.  We all stayed in character waiting for our right music to come on. 

I made a slight mistake at the beginning of the performance but I was able to cover this up and carry on to give a good performance.  Apart from this mistake I feel I gave a good, slick performance showing off everything I have learnt about jazz in Btec Performing Arts.

Watching back the performance I feel we all gave a strong performance in real Fosse style.  I think some of the most simple moves we did were some of the most effective, such as sharp hand flicks in the air.  I am really looking forward to repeating the performance in our end of year show where we will have improved it further.