UNIT 5/6 EVALUATION

23/03/2016

On the 17th of March myself, my performing arts class and the actors went on a trip to IPSWITCH to perform our Greek Theatre, Music/Dance Collaboration piece, and  Musical theatre piece.

Greek Theatre Piece: I felt that this piece was really confusing to do as we hadn't rehearsed it in a while so I forgot some of the movements and I personally didn't feel comfortable at all to perform it in front of the Ipswich students. What I found that was most hard was adapting to the stage as it was much more smaller to our college. It was more harder to move about in and we didn't have much time to rehearse the piece as the students where waiting. I felt that the very first performance of the Greek Theatre piece back in my college was much better. I remember making more mistakes in the most recent one we done and know that it could have been better if we actually had more time to rehearse and sort out the spacing.

Music/Dance Collaboration: I was more confident performing this rather than the Greek Theatre performance because this was made more recently and we rehearsed this quite a lot. I felt that I could have been more confident, but it was the spacing that made me slightly panic because there was no backstage bit to run off and on of which made the dance in my eyes look more messy because that wasn't how we rehearsed it. Because there was a lot of people on stage, it looked really cramped because the theatre back at my college is more wide. I thought it was weird performing it live with the  music video version in the background because it was confusing me a lot, especially the first performance of it  back at college. I got distracted sometimes but I learnt my lesson then and was able to have a performance face on and take myself more seriously.

Musical Theatre Piece: This was probably one of my favourite performances to do. From the very first  time when we started this assessment piece, myself and my group found it really hard to choose a song to work on and so we wasted quite a lot of time on that. We had one week left till the actual first performance of it which was back at college and we still didn't know what to do and so there was a lot of disagreements. I finally came up with an idea that we all finally agreed on and we started to stay behind to get this straight and ready for the performance day. We chose to sing Billionaire by Bruno Mars and set it in the 1970's so we was all hipsters and there was a little acting piece in the beginning. We was all feeling happy and confident and after performing it at college, we couldn't wait to perform it at ipswitch. We got such good feed back from the college students and they said how they really liked it. Me, Panashe and Tashan was all confident on stage and our voices where projected so the audience could hear us. The only thing that was annoying was that we didn't have enough time to change our costumes into our hippy clothes.

Preparation For Specialist Study and UNIT 7

11/05/2016

Today we got put into pairs and had to take turns to interview each other about the progression that we think we made from the start of the year to now.
Esther was interviewing  me. Below is the sheet of questions she was asking me and notes she was taking.


The following questions and answers will be from the picture above but in a more clear and detailed way.


 1. What performing arts skills did you have on starting the course? 

At the very start of this course the only skills I had was Acting and Singing, I learnt these skills from an acting school that I attended from the age of 11 and I was involved in there musical theatre productions that they done. Every Saturday, we would have 1 hour of singing, 1 hour of acting and 1 hour of dance- this was mainly simple choreography movements and little warm ups.
In Secondary school I also done drama but didn't take it as a GCSE. I took music as a GCSE and had to write and make my own music and perform in front of my whole school.
I took singing lessons also in school for a while to mainly focus on my articulation.

Give yourself a number from 1-10 for each of your singing___6/10____ dance___3/10____ acting___7/10____ and performance___6/10____ skills at the beginning of the course.

2. What skills have you improved, developed  or gained over the past 2 terms? 

I have developed a lot of new things since the start of the two terms. Mainly to do with my dance classes. I have learnt to make my movements more like images in my head and don't be afraid to make them bigger. Also, in ballet I have learnt a load of technical skills like how to point you feet properly, how to breath while dancing because I use to breathing the singing way and a load of ballet key terms and movements like First and Second position, Glissee, Devon ect.

Even in jazz I was struggling at first because all these dance movements where out of my comfort zone but i learnt that I just need to not care and get on with it and with doing that my movement memory started getting better and I started to see a change in myself and confidence. 

Even my articulation in acting and singing.

I also have improved so much on my enlinghment and working with my core muscles more when holding positions.

Give yourself a number from 1-10 for each of your singing___8/10____ dance___5/10____ acting___8/10____ and performance___8/10___ skills now

3. Where do you think you have best demonstrated these?

I feel that I have best demonstrated these skills in mostly my contemporary class only because I have longer hours there so it gives me a chance to go over and correct my mistakes. This is were I improved my enlinement and core muscles as well ballet class has too. Contemporary is more of flowed dances and this is what made me start making my movements bigger and detailed because I started to put images in my head while making them. I was much more focused in the second term and I will continue to be focused in all my lessons. 

In Ballet, I feel that my flexibility has got much better, my core muscles which help me to stand upright and hold positions like First Arabesque. I can also point my feet properly and I know I pointing it properly when I get a cramp. 

In Jazz, my confidence skills have grew a lot since the first term, I have better timing and from doing the workouts I feel that I have better core strength.

In Acting, the first term wasn't so good as I wasn't in most of my classes but coming towards the second year, I had ''turned a corner'' so my teacher says and I feel that I have to. My articulation in much better and I actually can feel and understand the character that I am playing when giving a script, monologue or duologue ect. I figured that I like working on duologues most and turning Ann Franks speech into a duologue was fun because everyone came up with these different, creative ideas.

In singing, I feel that Philip has helped me realise more about what warm ups to do and how to basically how to improve on my voice by telling me what warm ups to do on a daily basis and this has actually helped me a lot. I also learnt that you can't always pick the song that you want to do and so you have to just get on with it because that is what it is like in the real world.

4. What do you consider to be your strongest skills and which need most improvement? 

STROGEST SKILLS: 

• Working as a team
• My articulation in acting and singing
• Confidence
• Dance- Enlinement
• More organised 
• Singing-Interacting with audience and using more emotion

NEED IMPROVING:

• Working more on my balance
• Need to stop getting frustrated when getting something wrong- be more patient.
• Work even more on my core muscles 
• Don't be afraid to make bigger movements 
• Don't get distracted when performing in front of the class

5. Are there any other skills you would like to work on/ gain/ improve? ( e.g production skills etc) 

I need to mainly get my dance skills up to at least an 8/10 rather than a 5/10. I will do this by attending all my classes and even staying behind after college. I will be 100% focused and won't talk to anyone during class unless I have to work with someone. I know that I need to also push myself that little bit more.

6. Has anything changed in terms of your ambitions for a future career or study since you began the course? 

Yes, it has. I actually started this course to improve my acting, singing and dancing. It has made me realise that I would rather be more on screen then on stage. However, I still would love to be on stage doing musicals when I am older, but I just need to attend outside classes and more training after I finish this course.

7. What skills do you need to achieve your future goals and how will you do this?

By the end of this course, I hope to get all of my skills up to a 9/10, not so much dance because that isn't what I major in, but I can only try. I just need to make sure I take all my classes seriously and have 100% concentration. I need to believe in myself because sometimes I think that I can't do it when all it is, is my mind saying I can't.




Below is a link of my presentation talking about my skills since the start of the course to now and proposal for unit 7.

https://prezi.com/sqapwzixjenl/edit/#1_24309637

Ballet

25/02/2016

Today in ballet, I learnt a new step called 'pas de basque'. 

A 'pas de basque' is a ballet step in three beats transferring weight on one foot to another.

There are two moves you can involve in this step and that is:

i) Glissee - this means to slide or glide on the floor

ii) Sauté- this means a little jump 

We are now working on the Romeo and Juliet dance. We have been put into partners of who plays the women part and who plays the man part. We haven't got very far yet but I am enjoying this dance a lot because as well as trying to learn the dance and use the correct technical steps in the right way, you have to also put in character which I find fun.