Porphyria's Lover Chair Duet

We continued with our chair duets however this time, we had to change them a little bit so that they could tell part of the story, 'Porphyria's Lover'. We at first had to just remember our performances from a week ago. Once remembered, we had to add little changes to our performance to tell part of the story. Two lines to be exact.  The lines we chose were 'In one long yellow string I wound, three times her little throat around'. To incorporate this into the duet, my partner waved his hand above my head as I lay in his lap to represent him grabbing the hair. He also spoke the first line as he did so. Then I sat up, moved his hand of my shoulder to my other, then back and then back to his lap. This was to signify the wrapping of the hair three times. At the end of the lesson, he performed all at once and each got up, in our groups and partners, to watch the other groups perform. Then we would sit back down and continue our looped performance. The only problem was my partner couldn't focus again when we sat back down. He then made a small mistake and rather than just move on, he decided to chat to me about it. Then rather than keeping a straight face, he decided to keep smiling at me and not perform properly. Considering it is a chair duet, we both need to be focused and he really let me down.

Continuing With Shift, Round and Through

Today, we had to continue with the shift, round and through work. At the start of the lesson, we had a small warm up by doing the quad exercise for 10 minutes. I like the quad exercise even though it is a lot of work. It is a good way to teach how to be independent in work because you have to be able to do your own movements when it's your turn. After that we continues with the same work as last time. Due to more people being in the class this time and have a few people away ill, some of the groups had to change. Our group however didn't have to change so we were able to get on with our work from the start. Because of this, we were also able to use the same choreography as the last lesson giving our group more practice time because we didn't need to use the time to make a new performance piece. After rehearsing it a few more times, we decided to always look in a certain direction each. In our group, we made it so that we always looked at the same person all the way though it. This began giving the piece a small story. Then other groups when performing experimented with different speeds and performing it over a different song. This too gave the performances a small story to follow.

Shift, Round and Through

Today to start our lesson, we did an exercise of literal exercise. This was called the quad exercise. we had to stand in lines of 4 people and bounce on the spot to the beat. Next we had it arranged to that every 7th beat, we would turn and face the back of the room. Then on the 7th beat again, we would turn to face the front of the room all while still bouncing. Then we had to be able to do it in turn to the beat so the person at the start of the rows will turn then stop, then the 2nd and so on. After that, we repeated all of before but each time we did it, we removed 2 beats meaning that each turn, the twist came earlier and earlier. This gave us good rhythm practice which is helpful in performances to keep the pace. It was also quite fun to do but also tiring.

Next in the lesson, we were trying to practice doing the shift, round and through activity. To shift around people you could easily step around them. What would be better to do though is shift your partner to the side and step forward. Then you have both stepped around them and included a shift. To go through somebody seemed easy but we were told not to just go between our partners legs. This meant all we could do it go under their arms. Although this seemed quite basic, it was challenging to do something different. We managed to twist under our partners arms or because I ended with a group of 3, have someone pull you under the arms of someone else. When we were working on our piece, we got told to include a lift. This was a good way to perform a shift. The way that we were told to do it was to have a person clench their arm over another person. when the other person stands up straight, the person will be held in the air as their arm will be hooked on their partners shoulder when clenched.

At the end of the lesson my group performed and we were told to speed up the pace every time we finished a sequence. By the end of the lesson we had performed it many times at a great speed which improved the way we worked because we didn't have to think about our movements, we just did them as a force of habit after having performed it many times before. Each movement also looked well as there were no gaps in between each movement due to the increased pace.

Chair Duets

We had to make basic duets on chairs the way that frantic assembly has done them. Our task was to make a few movements to each other in partners while remaining to stay seated. This was to music but didn’t necessarily need to have rhythm. At first it was a little strange doing this work as there was initially no story to tell. All we had to do was to create movement that could repeat itself in a loop without having to stop. It started quite strangely as we had to move our partner's hands as well as our own and having to get really close together made it whole thing awkward.

Another thing that made this strange was how there was originally no emotion to it. As there was no story, there was no emotion until we changed a few things later in the lesson. We started by doing some basic movements and it was a little uncomfortable doing so as it involved sitting close to one another and using each other for the movement. After a while though, I got used to it.

Late in the lesson we learned that slowing the performance or speeding it up can have an effect on what it looks like to the audience. Eye contact with one another also did the same thing. With this knowledge, we then decided to try different things with our piece until we each found a position that is both practical and comfortable for us to use in the cycle of movements. I ended up looking away from my partner the whole time. As for the tempo, we decided to slow our piece down a little because it looked to wooden otherwise.

Finally in the lesson we learned to make some of the movement look more realistic by adding a few shrugs of the shoulder and more realistic looking falls rather than just leaning forward in the chair. This made our performance look more naturalistic even though it was all in a slow pace. For a finishing touch to our piece, we decided to make some of the movement faster than others. The pace was mostly slow with the falls from the chair faster to show it is actually a fall forward and not just a lean forward. The music used for the performance was a slow piano which made the piece look like a romance scene however when the song was changed to a rock song, the performance looked like it was a forced relationship. The perspective can change the outcome of a story to the audience even though there wasn’t really a story there for our performance.

In the next lesson, I tried to direct a performance rather than be in one. This was the most strange of all of it because I was unable to act out what I wanted to happen. Instead I was telling people what to do but I was unable to tell if it was uncomfortable for them as I wasn’t acting it out. They too felt strange because it wasn’t their ideas being used even though it was their performance. If anything it was awkward.