Journal 1
Today we learnt about the use of speed of a character and about Labon´s theory of dance. The theory states that all dances are categorized as weight, time and space. However today we only worked on time. We would walk around the stage keeping a 2 meter distance from everyone else and increase or decrease our speed. We also learnt about our leveling center. The leveling center is the point where every character leads from like the nose or the chest. As we were walking around the stage we would have to also try to lead with these centers. However we have to be careful about using leading centers as it can stereotype different characters like an old man. Now for our homework we have to find a teacher and try to find their leading center.
Journal 2
We got a very special treat today at class since a Broadway musical dancer and choreographer was going to come visit us and teach us a little about dance. I was very surprised and grateful that the American embassy had arranged all this for us. But first we worked a bit more on labon´s theory of dance. We now had to add the concept of weight into our speed. However when people think about being heavy they usually also think about going slower. This was not the case as we had to try to go fast but still act as if we were heavy. When our Broadway dancer/choreographer came I became very excited as I have never had an actual serious dance class. We had to start by learning the moves we had to do for our final piece which included but are not limited to the grapevine, the pony, turning grape vine and the chase. I thought our teacher was very good at dance and also at choreography. As this is the first time I have done dance I think I didn’t do that bad except for at the turns as I messed up 3 times before I finally got good at it and succeeded. I think this was a very fun class with something new and I how we get more pleasant surprises like this one.
Journal 3
today in class we worked on labon´s theory once more. we perfected all parts of the dance and used it in an actual peice. we had to pretend that there was a fire and we were fire men. however some parts where hard to act out useing only a few methods.
journal 4
Today we had a introduction to stage fighting. I was very exited and could not wait to learn something new. I have never done stage fighting and the only experiance I had was from movies such as fight club and kill Bill. We started learning how to do the simple punch however it was harder then it looked. We nevedr actually in any part of the practice were any where near to actually hitting the victim. Infact the victim was the one that usualy `hurt´ them selves. we then learnt how to kick and strangle. Finaly we we finaly we had to write a comeplete skit. Our skit is about 3 really dumb jocks who fight over a girl. I hope we do something as fun as this again.
journal 5
Today we worked on stage fighting once more. We had to perfect our skit so we could present it to the class. We were the last ones to present our skits so we watched the other people present theres first. My favourite was definatly the one with the crazy football hooligans because of the sheer realism of it. when you stage fight its good to have a bit of skill in real fighting like judo or tai kwon do. the unit on stage fighting will help us with out unit on mime. we learnt that mime is very much like ballet. So we had to learn the foot positions.
journal 6
Today we worked on mime. First we looked at the origin and types of mime. we learnt that mime originated from the french word mimos and that it is one of the oldest types of acting. i also learnt that when people picture mime with the white faces and the box moves and such they think of french mime which is more modern. We learnt about italian mime in the form of commedia del arte and asian mime aswell. We watched a dvd with the different hand movements, stances and foot positions. Then we practised them. We then worked on short skits using mime. I thought mine was good but the best was robbies in my opinion. i thought this was a very fun class.
journal 7
we have started our unit on improv. We started working on telephone calls. Since we were 3 people we had to be 2 parents. Jose and I went had to call Robbie about his college. We stayed on the topic of phone talking by sitting in a circle and all talking in a circle and all talking in a whisper or talking louder. Then we went on the on the bus and had to pretend that we were on the london night bus with a bunch of funky odd people. I was a drunk and a jamaican stoner. This part was my favourite part of the class. I really like improv because you can do anything you want.
journal 8
today we watched a bunch of projects.
