Fourth Lesson

Firstly, we all learnt how to waltz with a partner. I was with Isabella because we are similar heights and Mrs.Niven was teaching up where to put our feet and how to use different movements. After doing this by ourselves and with partners, we all went down to the dance studio again and practised. After a while we came up with a beginning to our promenade piece. There would be a horseshoe with some of us and all of the audience, with a few couples dancing in the centre. All of the boys both in the centre dancing, and in the horseshoe would leave to one side, to give the idea that they were leaving for war. We then all learnt the song 'Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag' by Spike Jones (1942) that goes:

Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile

While you've a Lucifer to light your fag

Smile boys that’s the style

What’s the use of worrying

It never was worthwhile

Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.

After the boys have left. All the girls are left dancing by themselves in the middle, whilst the remaining girls in the audience join them. Isabella then starts singing the first line of the song and everybody else then joins in. it was a productive lesson, and I can tell we will get a lot done now we have the beginning to our piece.

Third lesson..

In the third lesson, our class went down to one of the dance studios and watched everybody’s solo pieces. They were all so good and really showed people had put effort into them. I think personally that the pieces with two people in were a bit better, purely based on the connection that they had with each others. For example, Elouise & Pakize and Ben and Ella's really stood out for me. The reason being that they had obviously worked so hard, their choreography was amazing, and you could see the connection. but personally, I think the one that stood out the most for me was Ursula’s, as it really pushed the boundaries and spun the whole stimulus of 'world war 1' on its head by involving mental health into it. She used different props and put real effort into it.  Our whole lesson was taken up watching everybody’s but it was definitely worth it.

Second Lesson

In the second lesson, we watched the other class's groups perform what they had rehearsed the week before. They all got into little lines, made up of about 4 or 5 people and performed a synchronised piece about movement and physicality. There was no dialogue and we were told that it was all based on the queue to get the rations. I really like the levels in the other class's pieces as it was easy to see what was going on. We then split back into our own groups and got into groups of about and did this ourselves. Me, Ben, Tyler and Claudia were all in a group and came up with the concept of having different classes and different ages in the line. Tyler and Ben were business men, who looked down on Claudia, quite an older women and then there was me, who was a child. The piece was very much timed and every movement had to be over exaggerated. We did a piece that had a lot of movement in it; including me jumping over Claudia’s back! After we all went outside and put our groups in one big line in the basketball pitch. We performed it once or twice adding in a tap to the hand, as if it was our ration book. We did it to some music, which I really think gave it a bit more. at the end of the lesson, we were told that we had 10 minutes to prepare a solo piece that we would be doing next week, based not only on world war one but on movement as well. I came up with the idea of being a women pretending to be a man so she could participate in war. Over the week I practised it, to Rihanna’s song 'Fading' I did this, so that it also had a modern element to it, as it was quite a modern idea.