Alice In Wonderland - My New Choreography Project Research

Alice in Wonderland

Ballet Choreography for ages 4 to 17

Resources - youtube, iTunes, Google, Film, Album, Story

Ideas and research so far:

Above Image - an old style picture, bright colourful, attracting young audiences. Based on the original Walt Disney animations and characters. It features Alice, Rabbit, a bread butterfly and other strange woodland characters.

Image Below - my favourite image, a stylised busy and beautiful image of a make believe world.

Very detailed design, with depth and colour. Highlighting themes of flowers and wonder.

Below, a remixed track from Alice that's very unique and a bit different. As I am more jazz based dancer in my training, I would like a section of my choreography to have more of a jazz/ballet style in there to a less classical piece of music such as this.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is a novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym by Lewis Carroll . It is about the story of a girl who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world inhabited by strange and wonderful creatures.

Positive No?

Ok, I'm getting a bit hooked on this tag cloudyness, who started this!? I love it 

Lucy's Tag Cloud On This Blog To Date

Links of Interest My Motivation

Exercise

Whenever I seem to be putting off a job that needs to be done, the best thing I can do before forcing myself to do it; is exercise. I have recently moved and joined a gym not far from me. I procrastinate occasionally, but after a session at the gym, nine times out of ten there's no stopping me, I usually come home and want to sort out everything in my life at once. Exercise motivates, inspires and makes me more determined.

Before my days of the gym I would write out a plan of everything that needed to be completed that day, during the course of the day energy and enthusiasm hits a low and I personally find it hard to pull myself out of it. Reflecting back, I needed something that could give me a change of setting, some fresh air and get me thinking. Exercise was the perfect solution. I planned to join, and have done so now and tried out my new process of "hitting an energy and motivation low = gym/exercise".

On this idea I have included some links of interest, which gave mine and might give your exercise routines a fresh touch.

Here is a link to Bikram Yoga. You may or may not have heard of it, but it's an hour and a half of yoga in sauna conditions. It is a unique series of 26 Hatha Yoga positions. The sequence maximises oxygenation and detoxification of the body. It great for the mind, health, as well increasing strength and flexibility.

Bikram Yoga London - UK's first and original studios - Home

See above images also.

Here is a link to a biology paper discussing the idea of exercising making you happy due to endorphins being released. It has been debated that exercise releases endorphins, boosts self-esteem, confidence and self-image. I believe it does.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f02/web1/sfrayne.html

Exercise just isn't the same unless you have the right tunes. I always take my iPod with me to the gym, despite the fact they usually have a sound system (blaring trance and other rubbish). I like to listen to my music, as it makes my work out more enjoyable because I like what I'm listening to and it keeps me going when I want to give up. Here's a site to get the latest workout noise from.

http://www.gymfitnesswarehouse.co.uk/cat84/cardio.html

Tied Apart Choreography

This is a rehearsal shot of one of my choreographies Tied Apart. This was the first time I could create a piece of dance about absolutely anything I wanted. You may have seen they have a thick black ribbon entwined into their position. The ribbon symbolised many ideas within the theme of abuse and neglect.

I used the track below by State Radio. I went to a gig of theirs in London a few year ago and got their album. I loved this song and it inspired me to create this choreography.

What Can I Learn From This? Please help if you can!

I've just graduated and without a relevant agent for the jobs I actually want, I am scouring the net searching for audition after audition, applying and waiting to hear. To get an actual response and getting to the audition stage is a small miracle in itself. In normal job terms it's just the interview part. So I got one through Spotlight, which I recently went to. I came fully prepared, did everything that needed to be done, got down to the last round and am now waiting to hear. So that was my experience. However today my success was rained upon when I was out with friends and one mentioned the certain company I had recently auditioned for is blacklisted and that she was told she should stay away. The second part of my "concrete experience".

Reflecting on this situation later today, I was firstly very upset, because just when I think things are starting to look up in the start of my career, everything falls down again and I'm back to square one. On one hand I might find out that I haven't got the job so this isn't even an issue, but what if it turns out I have? What should I do? Has anyone else been in this situation? I'm sure within this industry much of this "blacklisting" goes on, and I am only just beginning to get to grips with it. Since reading Alan's post of quotes from previous students of this course, they've already helped me look at this situation differently; rather than get upset; what can I learn from this?

So the concluding part and learning from my experience i.e abstract conceptualisation, I am not actually very sure. It might be possible some of you have come across this dilemma, and I would be grateful to hear what you did in this situation. Then I can go on to the "active experimentation" part of my cycle and try out what I've learnt! Thanks in advance!

21st October Update

Since I posted the above I checked with Equity to find out if the company was ok and they are. In conclusion, if this problem were to occur again, straight away I would contact equity. I have learnt from this experience to not always take seriously what "friends" say and how to deal with this situation in future. So, that's the abstract conceptualisation done. I shall wait to continue to the next part of the cycle.

My Choreography Radar

This is a video from a show we did last year. I choreographed a street jazz number for ages 9 to 15 to the Britney song Radar. This is two separate classes merged together, so I actually taught the dance to them separately as their two classes until the week before when we actually pieced the dance together. They have one 45 minute class a week, including a warm up, technique and then dance rehearsal, so I think they did pretty well considering.

My challenges with the choreography included the wide age range of dancers and not having them rehearsing together, but we got there in the end. Unfortunately the lighting ruined the beginning and end of the dance, so you can't actually see what they're doing, but you get the idea. If you scroll across the youtube screen at the bottom, I also choreographed Fame for the whole school, including ballet, street jazz, jazz and singers. That was fun!