Performance studies - The Language of Performing Arts .

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Performance studies - The Language of Performing Arts .

When I initially decided to embark on the Performing Studies course I knew that it would involve studying the three different disciplines, Dance, Drama and Music. However I presumed that they would be taught separately. Although we began by learning about each area individually they were soon combined in order for us to create our own mini project. The aim of the mini project was to demonstrate our new found knowledge and ability in relation to Performance Studies.

In drama our theme revolved around 'The Fall of the House of Usher' by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). We also studied Stanislavski’s system as he was our chosen practitioner for drama. Stanislavski invented “method acting” if an actor uses Stanislavski system they would tune into a past emotion experience to represent a naturalist effect on stage. We began by reading the story, we then brain stormed ideas, picked and allocated characters. My character was a normal young girl of about 17 who was staying in a house with her friends, but was scared of being alone. I chose to be this character because I thought I could relate to her and was able to express her emotions, as I was of a similar age and same gender. I attempted to remember particular emotions I had felt when first going away without my family. I then used these feels and emotions and incorporated them into our piece. We started an improvisation, rehearsed over it and then selected the bits that worked and rejected the pieces that didn’t. We chose to perform our piece in silence, we didn’t want to use dialogue but rather focus on our body language, our proxemics, our relationship to other characters on stage and expression. Relationship is a key word we also use in dance; it means how each character acts with the others on stage, is they work alone or together and how they do this e.g. unison. We believed that the silence would give our piece more individuality, create tension, and un-nerve the audience as this was a concept they would not be particularly familiar with.  An example of an expression we used was shocked. This was shown through a startled expression characterised by wide eyes and an open mouth. We rehearsed over this but then we decided that performing our piece in complete silence didn’t work as well as we had hoped, as it didn’t get the eerie story line across to the audience. We decided to use some lines from our stimulus. The lines were taken directly from the text, an example we used was “come you shall sit and listen I will read.” We liked this idea and decided to develop it further. We also used sound effects in our piece such as scraping and knocking; these effects were unsettling and helped to create tension. We came up with a tableau for our piece where we all got into a freeze to show our expressions in the piece. Tableau is used by Boal where he uses the human body as a tool of representing feelings, ideas, and relationships. Once we had a basic structure for our performance we started to work on characterisation and physicality, we thought about the gestures we would use and how this would help us build a realistic character. Gesture is another word we use in dance. This means a movement with no weight behind it. These gestures included contraction of the body and defence actions which indicated that my character was scared and trying to defend her self from danger. Expression was vital in our piece particularly sections when my character had to show she was afraid. My character was scared because she didn’t like being alone in the house with only two people of the same age and no one else to protect them.

Our performance was quite frightening; it came across like this because of the tension and atmosphere created. We intended to create unease throughout the piece and I felt this was achieved

In dance our theme was 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Our chosen practitioner for dance was Christopher Bruce and we began our first lesson by watching ‘Swan Song,’ which was one of his works. We looked at the five key words, motif - a movement that is repeated and developed throughout the dance, space - size of space, levels and directions, action - travelling, turns, jumps and body shapes, dynamics - weight, time and flow. Dynamics is a word we have used in music. However in music it means the volume of the music. How loud or quiet a piece of music is. Relationship - the relationship between the characters if they do it in unison or cannon, group work or alone. Unison and Cannon can also be used in music. It means whether we sing together or over lapping one after another. We then analysed Bruce’s work in relation to these key terms, which were in direct reference to Laban's table of movement. In our group we had to make a short dance based on parts one and two of 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. We first thought of some ideas then thought of the relationship there would be between us. We decided the mariner would be centre stage dominating the space and other characters, and that the sailors and albatross would be placed around him.  We then observed that the relationship between the mariner and the sailors broke down during piece due to the mariner killing the albatross. Our piece began on the ship and as a group we began to move like waves in the sea. The albatross then arrived; we used extended arms to represent wings and elevation to convey flight. The albatross then gets killed and to end we carried the dead bird over to the mariner and placed it as a burden, ending in stillness. We wanted our performance to keep relating back to the poem, so we took each part and made movements for it. As mentioned above we began by representing the sea using movements that were dynamic and unpredictable.  We also used flowing movements and turned on a low level from one side of the stage to the other.  Two group members would move across upstage, while another two would travel across in an opposite direction downstage to show the changing in the waves. As the storm arrived our slow movements intensified.  We used a stronger dynamic to show a build up in the waves. For the clearing of the storm we used our hands, which covered our eyes. I thought this gesture represented the fog through which the sailors could not see, however when albatross arrives the fog clears. We liked this movement and decided to use this as our Motif, developing and repeating it throughout the dance. Our dance ended with a lifting action to represent the dead albatross. All the sailors held the albatross in their arms and walked over in unison to the mariner who was still centre stage and placed the albatross on his back, this was a burden on the mariner. Within our dance we also used drama because we thought about characterisation and dramatised it. We took on roles and had to think about emotion, so we didn’t all look dead and dull, we then had individual characters.

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In music we learned and performed 'and all stations to' by John Paynter. He used a pulse, using words split the beat into interesting rhythms which is contrapuntal. This then added an ostinato which added dynamics to the piece. The piece began as a cannon creating a texture. We then looked at 'China Coffee Cup' by Peter Greenham our other practitioner. We read through 'China Coffee Cup' then in smaller groups we had to improvise our own piece of music, this then took us on to a piece by Mark Anthony Turnage, we listened to his opera about breakfast called ...

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