Caitlin Bell choreography

Our teacher emailed each group in depth feedback to help us improve our choreography. We spent this lesson responding to the feedback. Here was the feedback given by our teacher: •The moments where we all join in at different times could look smoother and more natural. •Check that everyone is doing the motif with the same intention and no individuality. •Work on tidying up the movement so that everybody can stay together in the group. •Think about using facial expressions in the PTSD section and how our bodies can show the emotion. •More exaggeration of movements so that the people at the back of the theatre can see the same as the people at the front. •Try to keep the spontaneity when joining in with other dancers as we are pre-empting the unison section. We should almost delay our step as if our bodies are trying to catch up with the movement. •Check the timing at the end because it wasn’t clear whether it was cannon or unison. •Add more drama after the gunshot at the end. •An idea w...

For our choreography, we had two main inspirations to help us produce movement. These were Young Men by BalletBoyz and Sutra by Sidilarbi. We watched YouTube videos of these two performances which we found very helpful and gave us many ideas for our own choreography. The first thing we watched was Young Men by BalletBoyz. The main part that stood out to me was the emotion that each dancer had. It felt haunting. Immediately, we knew that this is how we wanted the audience to react to our piece. This is why we have sections such as PTSD and chaos to emphasise the horrors of war. The choreography content in Young Men was very chaotic. There is lots of explosive movements to create power. We created a section specifically about going into war and were influenced by the movements that BalletBoyz used. We have included big leaps, drops to the floor, contact work in household groups and lots of strong unison to resemble the intensity of war. This piece focuses on the negative aspects of war a...

In this lesson we were given the whole time to carry on with our choreography. We decided to keep going in order through the sections. Last lesson we almost completed the coming together section. We finished this off today and then choreographed the entire countdown section into the beginning of the war and chaos section.  As a group, we decided we wanted to use sticks as props in our piece. The inspiration to use sticks came from 'Sutra' by Sidilarbi and this piece of work gave us a starting point to how we wanted to incorporate the sticks. We looked in detail at the Shaolin Monks doing their combat training and how they perform their combat drills. The sticks could be used to represent many objects in our choreography. For example, in the coming together section, they are representing guns. Later on, the sticks could be used to show a fence, barbed wire and possibly a stretcher. The sticks can also be used for sound effects to add extra dynamics and impact. Towards the end of...

In this lesson, we had the whole session to work on our choreography. We began by sitting down together and finalising our music for each section. This was really helpful as we could then begin choreographing each section. Below is the list of music we’ve chosen and why. Section 1: a 120 beats per minute metronome for our march. The average soldiers march is 120bpm and we want to create a realistic effect. This is especially important because it’s the first thing the audience will see and we need it to be powerful. Section 2: Vivaldi, The Four Seasons. This is our coming together section so we needed something more uplifting where we can show the personality and fun side of each solider. This will show contrast from the robotic section before. Section 3: 1976 by Hans Zimmer. This is the countdown section so the music needed to be intense as we are about to head into war. Once again this will show contrast from the light and happy section before. Section 4: Halo Theme. This is our chaos...

In this lesson, we started creating longer pieces of choreography. We did this by choosing one of our motifs, the marching motif, and deciding to use it in the very first section of our piece. A motif is a small phrase that can be repeated and developed throughout the choreography. We then developed the motif and created just under a minute of choreography which is shown in the video below. We also incorporated our gestures from the previous lesson. For example, we do a soldiers salute in cannon. At this point, we don’t have music for this section, however we have ideas on how fast we would like the counts to be. A typical soldiers march is 120 beats per minute (bpm) so we decided to look for a similar metronome sound. After this, we began to look for music to use in one of our other sections called PTSD. We listened to a variety of music from Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Max Richter and songs from dramatic movies. Each member of our group will come up with a small phrase which we will ...

In this lesson, we were given a task to come up with gestures. A gesture is a small movement that is recognisable to anyone. For example, covering your mouth with your hand shows that the person is feeling shocked. Each group member individually came up with a gesture that linked to a specific section of our choreography. My gesture was from the fear and panic section. After we’d created our own gesture, we showed the group and together we developed each gesture in different ways. This was helpful because we can still use the gesture multiple times in our choreography but each time it will be slightly different with the developments. The video below shows each gesture and how it was developed. Our teacher then showed us a book by Kate Flatt called “Choreography: Creating and Developing Dance for Performance”. We looked in detail on page 158 about “establishing a world for the audience to enter” (Flatt, 2020). Kate Flatt talks about how we should begin the piece, how boldly or gently we...