Gold Arts Award, Part A: Dance & Drama Showcase Part 2

Having started the initial steps of planning the dance choreography for the Habs Dance Company, 3 months into the process, I am now able to explain the first few steps of the journey.

Gold Arts Award, Part A: Dance & Drama Showcase Part 2

Three dances, 26 dancers and a range of talents. This year me and my co dance captain have decided to use a wide range of songs in order to bring out everybody's best dance moves. The first song is 'look what you made me do' by Taylor Swift. The music allows us to create quite heavy-handed and sharp movements as well as use a lot of cannon and different type of movements to highlight some groups and some people. There are challenges with this song, as the face expressions are hard to accomplish and the movements can be quite fast paced. However, with a strong beat, it is quite easy to keep in time, ensuring a hopefully immaculate dance when it is well-rehearsed.

The second track is 'personal jesus', and with this we chose to test the limits and include some daring lifts, such as lift people only to allow them to fall again and catching jumping people. This track allows us to practice teamwork, making it challenging at the initial stages, but again with practice, should look amazing!

The final song is 'dangerous woman' by Ariana Grande, and this is a lot slower and more rhythmic dance, requiring a lot more contemporary movements and flexibility. It is for that reason that when choreographing it, I had to separate the company into two groups, those who were able to perform the first half and those who were more talented with less demanding movements. Then I created a second part which everybody could hopefully do. The challenge with this dance is the timing, since there are no strong beats, it is hard to ensure that everybody is in time. Secondly, for the second part, it is very difficult to practice the dance if people are missing from rehearsal. Therefore, although what will hopefully be a beautiful dance, is quite hard to practice with people missing rehearsals.

With only a few weeks to go until the show, I am hoping that this dance will be perfectly ready come February, and for my part, I still have yet to organise the costumes

Header Image Credit: Dance rehearsals

2 Comments

  • Bee Snellen

    On 6 January 2019, 12:13 Bee Snellen Voice Team commented:

    Hi Anya! Would you mind adding a short biography and an image to your profile? We'd love to know more about you!

    I'm very curious to see what the end result will be! It sounds like you are trying different styles. I'm intrigued! Will we get another update before February?

  • Lou Wallace

    On 16 January 2019, 16:36 Lou Wallace commented:

    Anya - this is looking great so far and I am really looking forward to seeing the work at the Dance and Drama Showcase. Hope you have got lots of video and maybe some cool pics too?

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