Choreography Programme Notes.

For the costumes, I chose black trousers, a white shirt and tie for Rebecca. She also tied her hair back. The reason I chose this costume for her was so that the audience would recognise that she is dancing the part of a male. This could make the storyline clearer for the people watching. My costume was a black skirt, a white t-shirt and my hair down. This was to show the audience that I am a female character in the dance. We both wore black and white. This was so that our outfits matched and would look better on stage. And also because the two colours represent opposite moods and feelings.

The main dynamic of my dance was relatively slow and contemporary. This is because this style and speed fitted the music the dance was to. I also think that slow dances can more easily show emotions of the dancer. I chose a contemporary style so that the audience can find it easier to relate to the situation. If I had choreographed it in a historic style for example, the audience would find it more difficult to understand and relate to the story line, as society has changed a lot since the olden days.

I chose not to use a contrasting dynamic as I did not feel it would have been relevant to the story, nor would it have fitted into it.

I used a couple of chorographical devices whilst making up the dance. The ones I used were improvisation and chance. These helped as they gave me more ideas for movements within the dance. I listened to the music and then improvised a dance to it. I recorded the moves I thought would look good and had a go at putting them into my dance. For the chance method, my partner and I rolled a dice with different moves for each number. Whatever number the dice landed on, we used that movement in the next part of the dance. We repeated this method a few times with different movements and positions for different numbers. The movements we chose included lifts, leaps, turns and rolls.

My movements related to my theme to try and show what was happening between the couple. As my theme was 'relationships' I used a lot of contact work. We used quite quick and happy movements to represent that the characters were a happy couple. And then we used movements to show signs of distress and unhappiness. In the beginning of the dance we did a lot of the same moves at the same time, this was to show that the couple did everything together and were happy. These included leaps and turns, which are fairly bouncy movements to show happiness. As the dance went on, Rebecca (the male character) faced away from me more and there was less contact from her to me. This was to show that she was hiding some from me and was feeling guilty. There is also a part where she pushes my hand away to show that she wasn't interested. When Rebecca runs off stage I use my motif to show that I am begging for her to come back. I then use movements to show that I am upset such as sitting with my head on my knees.

I think my dance went quite well when we performed it. Nothing went wrong, apart from that I forgot a movement at the end of dance, which I improvised at the time. There was a part that I decided I didn't like, when me and Rebecca spun past each other. Although I am keeping that move in my dance as I feel it is relevant to the storyline.

I feel that I could improve my dance by adding a contrasting dynamic or by using an ABA method. This is because I think the dance could get a bit boring as it is the same speed and style all the way through and by adding these techniques it could add a bit more interest and energy to the dance. I also think that it could be improved by changing and modifying my motif more often throughout the dance so that it is more obvious to the audience. If I were to perform this dance properly to a larger audience I would also improve the costumes by giving Rebecca a more masculine image and myself something slightly more comfortable to dance in.

Kerri - Anne Pattison