Dress Rehearsal





This footage was taken of Small Boat Dance Company during the dress rehearsal on Thursday 6th December 2012, before the first evening performance.

Unfortunately, this is the only full length, costumed, light copy of the piece we have. The filming of the first real performance failed and the second was only taken on a small camera which could not cope with the professional lights and therefore is of poor quality.

So enjoy!!

 

My Second Role

This was the day of our first performance and Imminent Dance Company were helping put up the projection screen for our piece

 

Just some pictures of the lighting booms at the side of the space and the lighting rig above it. I took these pictures to put in my artist journal to coincide with my second role of technical support.

 

 

 

And this is the lighting desk in the box. This controls all the light set up in the space and it was my job to control this during Imminent's performance.

Day 5- Intensive

The last intensive rehearsal all seemed a bit of a blur really, we just muddled our way though the day just doing what we needed too. I am glad we had our last rehearsal day so close the the performance because this really gave us time to polish and perfect the piece.

We started by finishing the piece off and finding the right place to end. Rather than just all stopping and creating an almost forced ending, we finished with all of the group trailing off one or two at a time until the last two dancers came to a gradual stop. I feel this was the rightful ending that our piece needed, like we had done it justice and now it was time to end. Once this became the definite end for the piece, we began to go through and clean the piece.

We went through it slowly making sure that no stone was left unturned and that each movement was done with the intention of how it was created, from how it came from out own individual thoughts about what dance means to us. I suppose when I think about it, it has been a personal experience for all of us. And like I previously said, in order to convey the piece I feel that I need to put everything in to show my true feelings about dance. And only from this can I now understand that I have lied to myself about why I do it and how it makes me feel. I cannot believe how this has changed things for me.

Anyway, we corrected any problems and got the piece looking really good. We continued to run the piece several times so that we were really comfortable with it and then we left it before it sent us mad!!

Final Costume Design

So these were all the clothes that we brought in so we could come up with a matching colour scheme in order for us to look like a unit...

 

 

 

 

 

...And this is what we came up with!!

 

So its been rather a long time since I last posted on my blog! Oops!! However, I'm going to attempt to catch up on some of the stuff that I haven't put on here that I feel is important. I am still yet to write about our Performance Project Performances!!!!! And also the things that we have started to do after Christmas too!

So here goes...

Day Four- Intensive

Today our priority was to put the sections we had created into some kind of order to create our piece. We worked quickly and efficiently to prepare as much as we could for when the other companies came to watch our sharing.

Surprisingly, we did not start with the section we had planned to. We created a new beginning made from mine and Abbie's solos. It then continued into the section we had already worked on. We continued to add a few small lifts and new sections to come to an ending. I'm not sure if this will be added on to but we have found a comfortable ending if that's what happens.

The piece hasn't been polished and perfected but our aim was to create the piece and then make final adjustments on our last day of rehearsals.

Our Sharing Video!!

Day Three- Intensive

We started with a warm up as usual and then got stuck straight in! Today was very busy indeed!!!

Using Katie's shuffle motif as the feature, we created a group section with the intention to slot it in to the final piece somewhere. Katie used her shuffling movement and Crizzel and Greta moved across the space with the awareness of their breath. Tara, Abbie and myself moved slowly towards the floor but never quite made it all the way, we repeated this three times. Here is the section we created...

After this, I worked alone for a while to create a set solo based on the idea of my free movement improvisation taken from the story board. I wanted  to keep it a true to the original idea as possible so I tried improvising and trying to remember what I had done. I was getting too lost in the movement to remember what I was doing and it was a lot harder than what I first thought. I enlisted the help of Tara to be my watcher!! She watched my improvisation and told me the movement I had done. It took a long time doing it this way but it definitely worked! I wrote notes in order to help me remember the solo. I then had to teach Abbie my solo so that she could repeat it at some point during the piece.

Once my solo was complete, Tara had to join me to create a duet. Her role was the fill the space around me. To fill the gaps I had just left and to create gaps for me to move into. We were almost dodging and weaving around each other. Again, it took a while to complete this process because we had to identically recreate the improvised movement each time. Tara took the same approach as me by writing it down. We both wrote each others movement just to keep a record.

At the same time Tara and myself were completing our task Abbie and Greta were doing the same. Abbie had learnt my solo and Greta was filling the gaps so to speak. We finished the day by filming everything we had done. It was going to be 2 weeks until we saw Marina again and this way would be able to remember what we were doing and rehearse on our own.

To Do List:

• Bring clothes for costume.
• Film skin and slow it down.
• Bring the film of me scrambling again.
• Think of ideas for programme.
• Get some practise in!!!
• Get videos on Facebook/ Youtube.