03/01/2024
Today we discussed the transferable skills we have gained from our course and how they can benefit our employers. These transferable skills include confidence, people skills, improvisation and good vocal projection, which are all used in a plethora of fields. We then began to research our two employers, The Royal Shakespeare Company and Dance United; this was to ensure we are getting the most out of our course in regards to work experience using these transferable skills.
03/01/2024
Today, we began a lesson on the styling of the practitioner Bob Fosse. After a power point detailing the unique points of Fosse’s dance style, I observed my peers choreograph a dance in the style of one of Bob Fosse’s well known numbers after we all engaged in a brief warm up. We are focusing on practitioners both in acting and dance for this project, which is why each week in Jess’ dance lessons we will focus on a new dance practitioner and their stylings.
05/01/2024
In today’s lesson we started research on our chosen acting practitioners in order to begin our essays. Unfortunately, we were interrupted by an unforeseen fire drill, which had dropped my focus and made it difficult to stay on task. In the afternoon, we all engaged in a Kahoot quiz about the life and teachings of acting practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski. This allowed me to peer deeper into Stanislavski’s background and life prior to his acting career.
10/01/2024
We started this week off by feeding back how we felt ambition hub was going and what we believed needed improving. After that had been completed, our task for ambition hub that week had commenced; this task entailed joining groups of three and adapting an excerpt from Romeo and Juliet into new and different contexts. This task helped us to modernize the play and help more people find interest in Shakespearean texts. I believe this task was achieved as I usually do not find much interest in classical texts, much less in Shakespeare in particular, but I greatly enjoyed this task and seeing the different ways in which Shakespeare could be presented and adapted to. One spin on the play was a very “Bradfordian” version of the scene in which Lord Capulet tells Juliet that she will marry Paris whether she likes it or not, the next being that same scene however adapted to fit a modern “posh” setting with wealthy, out-of-touch characters. This task was particularly engaging for me personally as it allowed me to get actively involved in something I wouldn’t usually enjoy whilst being able to see it in a new light, introducing me to a side of classical texts that was entertaining and captivating.
11/01/2024
In today’s class, we engaged in a powerpoint about Merce Cunningham: we learned of his various techniques and how to apply them. We discovered that one of his methods entailed choreographing a piece without the usage of music at all. One especially notable achievement from Cunningham was the pioneering of a form of technology that used motion capture to project a CGI animation of a dancer performing. This technology aided Cunningham in his older years and allowed for his job as a dance choreographer to become more accessible and mould around his specific accessibility needs.
12/01/2024
On this day, we focused on finishing our essays for the whole day; no other activities took place.
17/01/2024
Today, we took Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and simplified it into a storyboard in order to summarize the key points of the story for easier understanding. This assisted me in recapping the most important parts of the story.
18/01/2024
Today we took Merce Cunningham’s techniques we had learned in the previous lesson and developed them into our own choreographed piece after a brief warm up.
24/01/2024
During this ambition hub session, we watched the 1996 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet entitled “Romeo + Juliet”. I found the movie to be an accurate adaptation of a modernized retake on Romeo and Juliet.
25/01/2024
In Jess’ lesson this week, we learned about Isadora Duncan. She was a dance practitioner born in 1877 and served in the first world war as a nurse, before shortly dying in 1927 due to an incident in which her scarf was wrapped around her neck whilst driving her top-down convertible, strangling her to death. After learning about her life and stylings, we choreographed a piece using her style after a quick warm up.
26/01/2024
On Friday’s session, the two groups our class were split into received our individual scripts based on our chosen practitioners. Me and a member of my group worked together on assigning everybody their roles since it was only use and another person present so far. After we assigned everybody their roles, we got to work printing out scripts, highlighting everybody’s lines and making a few props. Once that was done, we read through our lines and came together to do a few quick run throughs sat down. After a few ran throughs sat down, we physicalized it and moved on the blocking the scene. I think we did a good job planning and blocking the scene, and with a few more practice runs, I think we will be ready for our assessment on next Friday.
31/01/2024
On this day we constructed fake newspaper pages reporting on the story of Romeo and Juliet as a part of Ambition Hub. This task allowed me to get into the mindset of someone hearing of this news for the first time, as though I lived in Verona. It also helped to summarize the plot points of the story.
01/02/2024
Today, during our dance lesson with Jess, we learned about the dance practitioner Martha Graham. After researching her life and methods, we got on with a warm up and proceeded to choreograph a dance in her style.
02/02/2024
On the final day of this week, my group rehearsed our performance of Romeo and Juliet presented in a naturalistic style, like that of the theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski. I misunderstood the task and this meant that up until about 45 minutes before our performance, we had to heavily edit the script and our blocking. Despite this setback, I think we pulled it off and did an excellent job as a group. This challenge only strengthened our skills in the long run, and thus, I am grateful for it as it only aided in my learning as opposed to if everything had gone fine, I likely wouldn’t have learned as much. This was a valuable lesson.