Unit 13 and 14 Progress, Development, Oppurtunities

 Progress:

A physical skill I feel I can achieve reasonably well is my flexibility. This can be seen in my Kathak performance when performing a sequence of movements that include stretching my arms and legs out in a diagonal position as far as they can go. The photo/video clip shows that I successfully carried out this skill to ensure that I was hitting the Kathak dance criteria. The pose, when flexing the arms and legs out, was carried out successfully and seamlessly without struggle or pain. At the start of the  year, I struggled with flexibility in my hamstrings and my arms. Since then, I have focused on stretching exercises after I go to the gym, which really helped me achieve a more flexible body.

 

 

 

Another performance skill I believe that I have made progress with is my posture and alignment. At the beginning of the year, when rehearsing for SIX! I watched many videos back and it is very clear that I did not have the correct posture and alignment for performing some of the dances. Since then, I set targets for myself to focus on my posture and alignment to see which dance styles require which alignment. I challenged myself to really focus on how I need my alignment to be, particularly in Kathak. I wanted to make sure that I was really focusing on my posture to pull this off effectively. Below, you can see two photos. One is of me before targeting my posture and alignment and one is after.

 

Another physical I feel I have made progress in is with my strength. At the start of the year, my core strength wasn’t as good as I would have liked it to be. I identified this weakness and set myself targets to have a much stronger core as well as arm muscles, because I wanted to be able to hold a plank without feeling weak or looking like I have skinny weak arms. As an avid gym go-er, I decided to incorporate more strength exercises into my gym routine. -At first, they started off easy and gradually increased in intensity and weight. I feel like this has made a positive impact on my strength and it means that I am able to do much more with this. An example of my strength before setting myself targets can be seen in Rob’s jazz warm up routine, since then I have worked on increasing my strength. This can be seen in a video taken from a workshop with Danielle Gardiner, where we practiced handstands. In this video, you can see that I am able to hold my own weight even after only a few months of doing these exercises.

 

Another exercise I feel that I have progressed in is my coordination, particularly hand eye coordination. At the start of the year, we learnt a dance break for SIX that involved lots of coordination to pull it off effectively. I struggled with this at first, so I decided to keep rehearsing until I could pull it off seamlessly. I also completed coordination exercises to help myself improve and excel. A more recent video shows me performing the Kathak style of dance, this style of dance relies on hand- eye coordination to help move the story further along.

 

 Development:

 

A physical skill that I feel like I still need to focus on is my extension. This is because I feel that I could push myself to achieve more extended legs in exercises, such as the handstand exercise. In this exercise we worked with Danielle Gardiner and we attempted easy handstands. I felt that my strength was good in this, but would have liked to be able to extend my legs more in this exercise, as they’re a little bit bent. I feel that I could improve my extension by researching and completing exercises that target extension directly.

 

A physical skill that I feel like I still need to work on is my stamina. At the start of the year, I was feeling extremely out of breath and dizzy when rehearsing full out. Although my stamina has improved since the start of the year, I would still like to improve it even more to ensure that I can perform to the best of my ability. In a video below, you can see a short clip of how tired I was getting. To improve this skill further, I am going to be incorporating cardio into my gym routine to help improve my stamina. Running on the treadmill will help me because I will be able to gradually push myself to go a little bit further.

 

A performance skill I would still like to develop is my expression. I feel that in my performances I look like I’m really grumpy and don’t want to be there- which actually couldn’t be further from the truth. But because, everyone is playing their character role, their expressions are exaggerated which also makes my face stand out (not in a good way). I remember Rob telling me that I need to characterize my performance more and make sure that I am playing a character even if I don’t have a main role. I used to feel silly by exaggerating my facial expressions, until I realized that if I don’t exaggerate my facial features, I would be the one person who looks silly. I am going to improve this skill by diving deeper into what the dance is about and how my character would be feeling.

 

Another skill I would like to improve is dynamics. When completing an exercise in Danielle Gardiner’s workshop- we were told to improvise and choreograph our own section. I feel that this performance could have included more dynamic skills to ensure that the audience was interested and amazed. Another performance that I feel that I could have added more dynamic skills into is my Kathak storytelling group piece. I feel that we could have used more levels and more sounds into this piece to make it look more interesting. When I am next choreographing a piece, I am going to consider how I can make this performance more dynamic.

 

 

A skill that I feel that I still need to work on is musicality. Whilst I feel that I have improved with my musicality to some extent, I would still like to improve my musicality and really feel the music when I am dancing. At the start of the year in the dance break choreographed by Rob in SIX and I felt like I really didn’t look good when dancing and I felt like I looked really out of place. I’m going to improve this skill by attempting different styles of dance and find which dance style I feel more comfortable doing.

 

Oppurtunities:

Completing a range of public performances has helped me build my confidence, more confident in dancing and my characterization when dancing. This has helped me feel less insecure and in performances like SIX!, A Dolls House- Contemporary Devised Piece and The Spotlight Performance.

 

Analyzing my own dance performance has made me more critical on myself but in a positive way. I can now identify what I am doing well and what I need to work on and steps that I will take in order to improve and achieve them. As a result, this helped me differentiate between my strengths and weakness and allowed me to analyse my dancing one step at a time.

 

This course has also helped me figure out what my preferred styles are and has allowed me to explore new dance styles Well rounded as a performer, develop my own style and figured out styles that I do well and enjoy. It has also taught me how to focus on the main physical skills and how to achieve them in a safe manner.

 

Receiving feedback from my teachers and peers has helped me understand what I need to focus on. Feedback at first can be overwhelming and scary especially when you’re in such a practical based course. But, after a while the criticism is actually more help than harm. After getting feedback, I have focused on important things that was either spoken back to be or written down. I really appreciate peer feedback because everyone just wants to see each other achieve and no one means it in a malicious way.