First of all we took part in an exercise called 'Shoal of fish' in which small groups would walk together in close proximity and move as if one entity, much like a shoal of fish. We played of this exercise and we watched the opening to the Rent Movie in which the song 'Rent' plays.
We began by devising a movement piece inspired by the opening song in the Rent movie. The feel of the song and what was on screen felt rebellious and angry, something that as a class we felt should be kept in our own opening song. We separated into small groups and began individually devising a movement piece inspired by the opening we watched as well as the idea of a New York street. As a group, we acted as a gang, prowling the streets. I suggested we use quick and angry movement used to seem intimidating. We developed a short set of movements that started slow and got faster to represent a mugging, starting slow then quick movements to express the attack. The class was then brought back together and we began to mix the individual movement pieces of each group into one class sized performance that we could use for the opening song of our performance of Rent.
Each group went into the performance space in a certain order but this left some of the stage feeling empty when groups moved in a pack so we decided to have multiple groups go on at a time, over lapping each other. This gave the whole thing a much busier fell, like that of the busy streets of New York. The piece also fitted the story and narrative of the song as one character (Collins) gets mugged in the opening scene. We felt the violent, gang like performances that many groups had chosen fitted very well. Yet the full class piece felt hectic and had a lack of cohesiveness. So we rehearsed a few more times, improving the timing of when groups should go on to the stage and when they should come off for best effect. We also made sure that groups interacted with each other to make the whole thing feel more like one piece of dance. For example, some groups would act standoffish and intimidating toward each other, like rival gangs, this helped improve the cohesiveness of the piece. I felt that we portrayed the rough, urban attitude that we planned to show in the opening scene we devised, though to improve for next lesson I would say that more practice is needed to get timing with the music and to get some movements in unison. I would also suggest that we add more dance like elements to the piece, such as working with levels and dynamics to make the piece more interesting but still keep its urban, street feel.
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