Category: Uncategorised

Body conditioning and Dance with Karma 11th September

Today’s body conditioning was used as a warm up to ensure our joints were nice and mobile before doing any damage, this is good as it ensured we were following safe practice and also helped towards our health. 

We then went on to practice and improve the Dancin fool piece we are learning for Paris, this piece is a challenge as it is a fast piece however it is fun and a good piece, plus I love challenges. To improve this piece, I can work on being a bit less sassy and improve my alignment on certain parts, in particular the ‘Now you’re talking’ this is important as it need to be snappy and sharp to have maximum effect. 

We then started to learn the hand jive, this was good as it was fast hand work and made us be switched on and in time, whilst on the topic of being in time in this piece it is easy to tell if you’re not as there is a lot of slapping noises being made. To improve I can clean up my foot work and rehearse the hand work. 

 

Acting with Shanaz 10th September

In today’s session we started off by recapping the different levels of status and tension just to warm us up this was good as it let us see what we had remembered from the week before. We then as a class discussed the improv extract we had been given to read, In the extract I had found one part in particular very interesting… At one point he stated that ‘One person will be convinced that they are coming across as one thing but in reality, they are coming across as the other’ this is good as it shows us that drama is down to perception and that is why characterisation is so important as this allows the director and playwright to give the audience the show that they want. To improve my understanding on this I could read the whole book, my target is to check the LRC for a copy and then read it. 

We then looked at stock characters, by this I mean Architypes and stereotypes, these are the foundations for all characters in tv and theatre, this exercise was good as again it built up on our characterisation. My target is to research the stock characters.  

Acting with Shanaz 3rd September:

The focus in today’s session was Lecoqs 7 levels of tension and the 10 levels of status. 

After our warm up we began to walk around the space as the number got higher or lower in the Lecoq exercise the tension we had to reflect the number higher number higher tension. I found this enjoyable and informative as it helped me understand ways to shows tension or the lack thereof, like eyes speed and facial expressions. We then did the ten levels of status and in this exercise 10 was above everybody else and 1 was like a peasant. This exercise was good as it allowed us to see how different status levels interacted with each other and it was difficult I thought to distinguish between 4 5 and 6. 

I learnt that the slightest adjustments can make a huge difference in how you come across. I will use this in the future and apply it to any characters that I come to play both 7 and 10 levels. 

I will set myself the target to improve being able to distinguish between 4 5 and 6