To begin the lesson we looked at the history of dance and some videos that would show us how dance has adapted over time, also Rachel explained how dance has split into two separate forms over time and we compared the two. 

This is about the time where dance split into two different categories, entertainment and conceptual. 

Entertainment:

Conceptual:

We then looked into six different videos and were told to write down what we thought of them, and that we could say anything we like even if it was that we didn't enjoy them at all. I may have deleted my little notes I wrote about them at the time, however watching them back now won't be a problem so these will be live notes whilst viewing them.

1. LXD: Matched

Reminds me of singing in the rain, entertainment dance

Choreographed beautifully

The goofy identity of the odd one out makes it more entertaining

It's like a comedic silent film

9/10

2. Fiest - 1234

Choreographed chaos

Terribly simplistic compared to one shot videos made recently, good for the time though

Feel for the camera person, one shots are not fun to film

It's like they're trying to distract from the fact that it's about 30 people in a giant warehouse

5/10

3. Yeasayer - Sunrise

It's way to obvious that they are dancing their stories/feelings

Why does it need to black and white?

I feel the leopard print was a bad choice, it's all I see

It's a bit chaotic at times

Why is it necessary to add colour in at the very end for about 3 seconds?

2/10

4. Tamara Levinson Choreography Reel

Kind of feels like tribal dance, until the singer comes in which ruins it

Beautifully shot, that lighting is fantastic

Bit of a shame no-one edited out the rope holding them up

Gets a bit chaotic towards the end

5/10

5. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker - Rosas danst Rosas

Very repetitive 

Definitely not going to watch the whole video

The placement of the dancers is good visually 

It's a good thing the camera moves and changes angles 

The dance moves are quite fast and prominent, they seem almost sharp at times

Some of the shots cut together perfectly

Like that some shots are of different body parts

4/10

6. Ellie Goulding - Guns and Horses

It's an ok beginning, just a walk in the forest with tons of smoke

She is not with them at all, different clothing and dance moves makes her seem out of place

Why is there so much smoke?

Oh and now I've seen guns and horses, let's make this a literal video

The choice of period clothing and her clothes just doesn't work at all

They should have focused on the meaning of the song and not the title of it

There are too many camera movements and changes

Honestly they would have been better with getting the dancers to dance together and focus on that

And make them dance together in a choreographed way and not messy as it is

The ending shot where they follow her round is awful

0/10

At the end of the first day we got into six groups and each came up with a concept to work on for the next day and then with the dancers on the friday. I was working with Rob, Nick and Leanna and we came up with an idea to show how dance has changed from the 1990's by using popular dancers that unite the world. It came from our collective love of the Carlton and the Apache dance from Fresh Prince of Bel Air. 

Throughout the day we also learnt to film different parts of the body and see which parts were interesting, we did a warm up task where we controlled our partners body and movement which was horrific for me as I have a variety of trust issues. 

We also learnt how to lift people in two different ways and how to make sure they were safe the entire time, it was actually quite a fun day seeing as I was quite sceptical going into it. 

On the second day we worked with the rest of the class to see how our ideas looked with people dancing, I even volunteered to be the main dancer for the first group which was interesting as it meant dancing around everyone else and trying to get into the circle they had created. 

When it got to our group we first had to teach the class the three dances we decided to focus on, these were the Carlton, the apache dance, and the Macarena. It was definitely an experience, I never thought I'd ever be teaching an entire class dance moves but it was fun, our idea however looked a bit simple so we decided we'd focus on the idea of infection of dance when the dancers were in. 

On the third day we had the dancers in and got a chance to choreograph them which was terrifying because they were really good at dancing, whereas our class the day before tried our best. When our group was up we played the dancers a series of songs and asked them to dance to them however they like, it ended up showing us that the music really does help the dance because when popular old school dance songs came on with signature dance moves the dancers did them straight away.