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.