Achievement Standard 3.4: Perform a group dance (4 Credits)

Activity One: Choreographic Intention

Choreographer's Intention:

Taane is the choreographer of the dance work ‘Manawa’. Manawa translates to breath, heart, patience and tolerance. Each of these things correlate to Taane’s main inspiration for the dancework, which was his mother. In the later stages of his mother’s life she got very sick, therefore Taane became her full time caregiver. During this time Taane became very close with her, in which she told him all of the family secrets that no one else knew.  A lot of the feeling and emotion in this dancework was derived from his mother. The use of breath was heavily emphasised on, through movements and also for timing. Taane does not use counts in his danceworks, therefore we had to take extra care in timing by using breath and feeling the timing of the other dancers . The music used for the dancework has elements of breath and Taane speaking. Taane was inspired by the birds around his house when creating the dance piece, therefore he recorded the birds and this was incorporated into the music also. He also incorporated this into other aspects of the dancework, such as the ‘flocking’ section, which is further explained below.

Ideas/ Feelings That I Brought to the Dance:

To make sure our own ideas and feelings were incorporated into the dance, Taane got us look through our texts and emails to gather small word phrases. We were told to focus on the feelings these phrases gave us. We then took these feelings and created this word phrase into a small dance phrase, which was then combined with others students’ phrases. The messages that I gathered from my texts and emails contained emotion that was ‘serious’, ‘sad’ and ‘neutral’. I conveyed this in the dancework through both my own section of choreographed movements and also through my facials. Due to the emotions I chose being serious, sad and neutral, this meant that it was more important to express my emotion through the movements rather than facials. ‘Serious’ facials is more just an element that will add to the effect, rather than being the main focus.         

    Description of each section:

The first section of the dance is the ‘box’ section. To learn this section we were placed in a square formation and were told to choose a way to travel across the the stage, in pairs. This section heavily focuses on using peripheral vision and ‘feeling’ when both our partner and the other dancers are going to move. It was important we got this correct, as there are no counts used and the music did not maintain a beat. It also focuses on awareness of spacing, which was important that I maintained my distance between each of the dancers in the box, because this created the frame for the entire dance. The second section of the dance was the 1st group performing their combined choreographed dance phrase, derived from the texts and emails. During this section I maintained my eye focus away from the dancers in the centre, and ensured I kept a strong posture and remained still. This ensured that the focus was completely on the dancers dancing in the middle. The next segment of the dance was Taane’s choreography. To learn this section Taane stood at the front of the class and taught it to us section by section. Taane would use words to relate the movements to an action. For example, one movement we had to place our hands on the side of our legs. To help us remember this movement Taane would say “Hands in pockets”. For another movement we had to swipe our arm in front of us and Taane would say “Slice” to help us remember that it is fast and sharp. Taane continued going over the movements from the start to help us remember them. To convey the intention that Taane intended I made sure to use the dynamics, by performing the fast movements fast and the slow movements slow. I also made sure to perform the strong movements strong and the soft movements soft, as this is what will portray the emotion that Taane is intending. The next section of the dance was the ‘lotus’ section. To learn this section we were placed in groups of 4 and had to again use ‘feeling’ to know when to move. One dancer would begin by doing a movement, in which the other dancers would then mirror this, then another dancer would take over and do another movement which linked onto the first movement. This was then all created into a phrase. In this section we used contrast by starting slow, then increasingly getting faster, then back to slow again. The next section of the dance was the ‘flocking’ section. This section focused on the words: spine, snake, flocking and wings. We had to take these words and make a movement or small phrase using these words. Taane showed us an example of wings, in which we were all placed in a line from shortest to tallest and the shortest person had to make themselves as low as possible and the tallest person as high as possible. We then had to use canon by making our arms into ‘bird wings’ starting from the front and moving to the back. We used this idea that Taane gave us to create the other phrases spine, snake and flocking. For ‘spine’ we cannoned putting our heads up, then back down, placed again from tallest, descending to shortest. For ‘snake’ we formed ourselves into a curved snake shape across the floor and used breath to create the cannoned movement. Lastly, for ‘flocking’ we were told to use a similar movement as the ‘lotus’ section, in which one person would move and the next person would follow. We were to travel in a ‘flock’ (closely clumped travelling all together). The last section of the dance was my groups combined choreography, that was derived from the texts and emails. This section was taught by each of the students showing each other our own small phrase we created from our texts and emails. We then combined each of our phrases to make them flow and make sense.

How I Enhanced the Ideas:

To ensure I was able to convey Taane’s intention of ‘breath’ I did the following for each of the sections:

1. Box- Kept my focus straight ahead, used my peripheral vision to know when to go. Used sense of breath from my partner to know when to stand up, sit down etc. Made sure to keep even spacing between each of the dancers so that the correct ‘box’ shape was maintained. Used different levels by using both walking and rolling across the ‘box’. The dynamics for this section began slow and steady, then became increasingly faster, creating a smaller gap in the time between the first group sitting down and the second group standing up.
2. 1st Group Choreography- Kept my eye focus straight ahead, made sure to not watch the dancers in the centre, maintained a strong tall posture.
3. Taane’s Choreography- Made sure to contrast between strong and smooth movements, as well as fast and slow, as Taane intended. Made it clear that my eye focus was straight ahead, so all focus from the audience is directed to the movements, not being distracted by my head looking around.
4. Lotus- As this is a slower, smoother section,which focuses on knowing the feeling when to move, my eye focus follows my movements (eg my eyes follow my hand), as we did not need to look at each other to know when to go. We used different levels by beginning standing then moving to the floor and back up to standing.
5. Flocking- For a lot of this section, my head is down, as we wanted the main focus to be on the movements. For example, we wanted the snake movement to really focus on breath, therefore each of the dancers kept their head down and focus at the floor, as it would be too distracting to the audience if our head was up and would take away from the movement and the intention of breath.
6. 2nd Group Choreography- For my group’s choreography I kept my focus straight ahead for the entire section, except for the part when I was facing Bethany, in which we decided looking at each other would be the best to show the relationship between us.