Jazz / Lyrical Dance

Week One

On the very first lesson that we focused on our Jazz / Lyrical piece, we all sat down to listen to the music we would be dancing to and figuring out who we would all be going into groups with. We knew we wanted some lifts in the dance and I am the only boy in the group so I was chosen to be with Grace so I could lift her. The point of the dance was mirroring but as me and Grace were the main part of the dance we were aloud contact. We then started to work out how much counts of 8 each group will get for their own choreography. When we knew, me and Grace began to choreograph our part with help from our dance teacher when it came to practicing the first parts of lifting. When we finished our choreography, we showed the other groups and then we began to piece all of choreographies from the other groups into one big dance. It was messy as this was our fist time doing it but it was only going to get better in the long run. I think from this week I need to work on my lifts with Grace outside of the lesson so that when it comes to our lessons there will be a obvious change in ability.

Week Two

In our second week of the Jazz / Lyrical dance, me and Grace worked alone with some help from our dance teacher on new ways to lift and how we can overcome this. So we knew we wanted Grace to jump into my arms, so we got a chair and she stood on it and simply just launched herself at me and I had to catch her. This went well for a while but it started to get tiring and we knew we could possibly mess this up in the final performance, so we scrapped that specific jump. But we knew we still wanted the jump into my arms. We started to run through the dance with the other groups again to try perfect it and decided to work on the other lift at a later date. From this week I need to work on timing with Grace, as our part of the dance needs to be slowed down and needs to be with the beat of the music.

Week Three

This week we learnt a new choreography but was with the whole group, not in our little groups. We started by walking around the space once the last little groups choreography was finished and we had to walk into a space to get ready for the dance break. This was choreographed by our dance teacher this time, not us as a class. Dance isn't my strongest part of Performing Arts but I felt as if this dance break went very well and I could actually keep up for once. This week I'm going to work on the dance break with the group outside of our lesson and in our free time.

Week Four

This week we began to try some other lifts we wanted to do, still trying to do a left where I can catch Grace. While all the other groups worked on there pieces even more, me, Grace and our dance teacher went into another dance space to work on this lift. We figured out we wanted Grace to be sitting down on the floor and I would have to pull her and catch her within my arms. There was some stepping stones over the way but in the end we got the piece that we wanted, but it obviously wasn't perfected yet. We then went through the dance again with the whole group, now including the new lift from me and Grace. We decided that we weren't all going to walk around the space before the dance break and instead now we were going to get into a X shape and have a build up to the dance break. Later in the lesson, we worked on a new part that we wanted after the dance break, this was us getting back into the X shape and now when the music changes we were going to do a shaking motion showing the effect of the dance and emotions. This week I will be working with Grace more on the lift so we can perfect it more before the next lesson when we run through this dance many more times.

Week Five

This week we changed our minds as a whole group and decided not to get back into the X shape straight away after the dance break and to just repeat the beginning part that we choreographed with our mini groups, mine being Grace. We decided on this because it works with the lyrics as it says "Keeps on repeating". But once we had done this part we then went back into the X and repeated the movements Kacie and Lola had choreographed in their piece as it repeated the lyrics that they had danced to in their choreography. Once this part was done we decided we wanted to get into a semi-circle and have me and Grace in the middle repeating the very first movement we had in the whole dance which was us hugging, while the rest of the group were surrounding us shaking. At the end of the lesson, our dance teacher gave us feedback (as shown in the second video) for us to work on and let us know what was going good in the dance so far, so that we can look back on this to remind ourselves what we need to do to make the dance perfect for next weeks lesson. This week I am going to work on perfecting the dance break in my own time as there was a part within the dance that was hard for me to get and to keep up with, so I need to perfect this by next lesson.

Week Six

There wasn't many changes with the dance this week other than we now had changed the direction we were facing for the dance to the way we will be performing, so we could get the hang of this. The only other thing we had changed was some little things in the X we do before going into the dance break, instead of us clapping our hands we now have some selected people to quickly jump up to the beat of the music then suddenly jump back down ready for the dance break. This week I am going to continue to just work on the whole dance in my own time as the actual performance for this dance isn't too far away now.

Week Seven

This week nothing changed, we just went over the dance multiple times as the performance was inching closer. One thing we did do this week though was find some fabric to go with what we wanted to wear which was all black with long black sleeves.

Week Eight

In this lesson we wore our costumes and made sure everything was cleared up for the show the next day. I made sure that mine and Graces lift was secure and that we were definitely comfortable with it and making sure I wasn't going to drop her.