Santa's Comming!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!

My Quote For The Day

"Imagination is more important than knowledge"- Albert Einstein

Tuesday-Solo Score

I am currently sitting in ICE and thought id just update my progress in the lead up to our assessment on Thurs. Today I have managed to finish my documents that are required to back up my solo. These are a reflection and a visual score of my piece. Doing this has helped me understand even more just what my body goes through when I explore my score.




I have also managed to work practically on my piece taking the gathering momentum idea and pushing it to the limit. I found I became out of control of my movements and in doing so contributed well with the scroe title of "Controlled Chaos". I think I have taken risks today in exploring letting go and just going with the flow. My score is shaping up nicely but I still need to look at exploring all levels open to me for thurs. This will be looked at tomorrow in preparation for Thurs.




2 Days To Go.................

Monday-Solo Score

Ok so it's 4 days til our solo piece assessment. So I have decided to do a day by day blogging to see the final days of this out and the progress made.

Today I revisited certain moves etc that I could remember from last thurs and began to play about with facing different ways throughout. the feedback given to me was that explore with the different facings. orignially I didnt really think about this because im so used to facing just one way. To make my piece stronger I faced different ways in practise today to explore how the audience will see my piece from different views.

I also focussed on the Flinging action a little bit more with my legs. My arms I feel are working better than my legs with the quality because there is more variety and I feel that lies witht the shoulder joint having more room to move than the knee joint.




3 days to go........................

A Womans Work

Hey! right this dance was performed by Charlie and Robbie on the English version of " So You Think You Can Dance". this routine is actually amazing and has pulled on my heart strings just a little. Its a major inspiration to me so I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. What gets me is the pure emotion of the dancers and if you mute the song the eeire sense of silence makes it even more powerful. Get your tissues ready...

My Solo Score

Ok, so for part of our first year will are to create a solo piece and it is actually being looked at next thurs! im a little nervous, but hey ho just thought id share what my score involves to start with;




My Solo Score= Flinging of the arms and legs using levels with gathering momentum




I decided to use "Flinging" as my background focuses on control and balance, I thought this would be a nice change but challenging at the same time. With this I have found it difficult to let go and throw myself round the space almost just to see what being a little bit less careful with placing my movements.




Using my arms and legs helps me focus more on the Appendage Skeleton. playing around with the use of support and gesture with the legs as normally as a human we dont gesture with the legs only the arms. Plus I feel the body parts suit the quality I have chosen. It allows me to push to the limits of the quality and to really play with loss of control but still making it look pleasant to watch.




For next week I need to be looking more at the "gathering momentum" part of my score. I do not feel i have totally taken risks with this area so when I am in the studio next I will fully commit to gathering momentum with all of my body that starts with my legs and arms. The Skinner Releasing techniques I have been learning will help to get me ready for full usage with the joints and muscles to fully explore. In particular the shoulder joint will help me with the flinging motion and the techniques I have been involved with will aid this.

A Little Poem That I Love

I've Known about this poem for a long time now and being a Dance student this would be a great Stimulas to start off with for a solo or duet piece. It's just a shame the author is unknown.





The Don’t Quit Poem
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow–
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor’s cup,
And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out–
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit–
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.
- Author unknown

Jumping

Here is a short phrase that focuses on working through the feet when jumping.




Things to look for:
Make sure heels touch the floor every time you land. This will depend on how long the achilles are. It differs in everybody.
Don't rasie the head, the highest part of the body should be the crown.
The arms must swing naturally, if not tension can form in the shoulders and across the breast bone.
Knees must not roll in on the landing of each jump.
Do not sickle the foot on the rise.
Work through the whole foot before going onto demi-point.
Must not lean forwards in order to get up onto demi-point.
Always breathe! it relaxes the body and gets rid of tension.

So here are some videos of the phrase. Currently i am working on letting my arms swing naturally when i am jumping in first position to relax the upper half of my body.

Artist: Abbie H

This second video focuses on my feet and articulation of the feet when I am jumping and landing. Sometimes I do tend to sickly my feet when i rise which needs a bit of work. Also when i do jump i work through the feet so much I tend to flick out my feet when in the air. I do this more in first position. I also let my heels snek off the floor in this video which i didn't know I did until I watched this video back. This is something else I need to work on.

The Axial Skeleton- Particular Attention To The Spine

I have recently  learnt about the Axial Skeleton paying attention to the Spine, this diagram shows just exactly what the Spine is made up of. Many people think the spine is near to the surface of the skin becasue you can feel it, however the Spine is actually much deeper in the center of the body. As you can see the spine is split up into 5 different sections. At the minute I don't really know that much about the 5 sections so further research will help with this.

In the session today we were required to move only through our Axial Skeleton. This at first was hard for me as I found it restrictly to move. The images below show the different ways the spine can bend. I found these positions through experimenting and being open and curious. I feel if you dont have an open mind you will never truly get the full experience and feelings that is intened. These images were part of my movement sequence involving the spine and videos of this will follow shortly. Enjoy
Artists: Abbie H

 Image 1: Bending the Spine Backwards, Requires core stability. The upper spine for me does not bend as much as the base of my spine. this would suggest there is less space between the Vertebrae in the Thoracic curve.

 Image 2: This image shows how the pelvis and the head and come together. To do this this makes the Spine curve over into a C shape. This positions relaxes the spine and is actually a good stretch to strech out the Spine after a class.

Image 3: Here the spine is twisting. This is also a position that isn't exactly comfy to be in so movements that flow into one another has a better effect. for me I found it hard to rotate in the spine without involving the pelvis too much to get a better twist.

Image 4: The final shows that the spine can move sideways. This is very restrictling I thought because you can only go one way or the other.This again works better when moving into one image to another such as falling and spiraling down onto the floor.

Bits And Bobs From My Journal

My Journal is a way for me to document everything I am doing during my time at Coventry University. it is also a space for me to create and develop ideas that can be turned into dance pieces. This is an image from my Journal and this was created shortly after an experiment with using and exploring my arms within a space. Also with this experiement I was working in close proxemity to other dancers and the circles in the drawing represent each dancer. once my drawing was complete I felt very much that the experience was almost like gliding along with each other and made me think of a flock of birds. this could possibly become a stimuli in the future.

Sculpting in Pairs

So myself and Steph decided to play around with sculpting in pairs, we improvised these images and when we felt at rest in a certain place an image was taken. It was hard for me to lay at rest and stay still as I wanted to keep moving and exploring. from these images I would like to explore more of a higher level image, however the floor does offer good support and you don't work against gravity.


Artists: Steph D, Abbie H

Phrase 1

This is our first phrase, hope you like it, the idea with this is to keep the movements flowing. So no movement should just stop and then onto the next. It's a working progress :)

Artists: Abbie H, Beth W, Chelsea W

Sculpting In Groups

So heres some group images of Sculpturing playing around with levels and lines. These images are good to demonstrate our willingness to experiement as a group and as a result interesting images are created. Enjoy

Artists: Beth W, Chelsea W, Emma N, Abbie H, Steph D

How can Blogging assist and support you as a dance student and artist?

First of all a dancer needs to know how they can document, so heres a small list of how I do it:
Videos
Photos
Drawings
Writing
Interviews
Twitter/Facebook
Contacts Book
Blogging
Podcasts
Youtube
Journal

So now theres are plenty of choices to choose from, but a dancer also needs to understand why it is so important to document. Here are some of the most important reasons as to why i document:
To remember what I did for future reference
To see what areas I need to improve on
To reflect on the content itself
To see the changes and improvements through time
To teach others
To learn from others
To help communicate ideas
Relate older work to the new
To support ideas
Promote myself in the industry

To me documenting is very important as it helps me mainly to focus on getting pieces to look their best, I believe the more a dancer documents the better the outcome is as the finer details are thought of.

"To Dance Is To Be Free"