Festival Project Journal

This ended up being a very short rehearsal as both year groups ended up having  1-1s during the rehearsal time we had booked out, so I spent the time with Emily on her solo parts we made in rehearsal 1. We developed the phrase, drawing out the contractions and softness and adding an extra turn to add weightlessness. I then asked her to keep repeating the phrase, starting to speed up but still moving with her breath to maintain contractions, almost like her heart rate is increasing and breathing is becoming more panicked, subsequently making the movement more frantic; this is something I want to play with in the emotional climax of the work, but I'm not sure which dancer or who's material I want to use yet. I'm leaning towards both cyclical phrases being repeated at consistent and erratic speeds/tempos, but only one of them working themselves to exhaustion, probably Tilly in terms of the sharp and linear nature of her movement style. Video of Emily's Phrase after further...

Tech Requirement F orm   Dance City , Newcastle - [Fuzion Festival]     Please complete th is form and return it by 28/03/2024 :   ( info is subject to change , tech rider will be sent out at a later date )      Choreographer   Kate Ovington   Email Address   Bh99yk@student.sunderland.ac.uk   Performance space (e.g. theatre, studio space)   Theatre   Number of performers    2   Names of Dancers    Emily Armstrong, Tilly Jobson   Name of work    TBD   Duration of piece    10-12 minutes     Brief description (Include any props/set e.g. Backdrop and wings)   Contemporary dance work in theatre, brick backdrop , wings.   Sound information (preferred format eg.MP3/WAV/AIFF)   Sound TBD, no silence, most likely 3 tracks playing one after another.   Lighting information/ tech specials (e.g. spotlights, back diagonal special & Haze)  ...

With my second rehearsal, I wanted to start exploring contact in more depth as it will be an integral factor in the relationship between the dancers and their psychological journey throughout the piece. I want to get the dancers used to working in tandem and relating to each other. Within movement quality I want to explore the factor of sharing weight and pressure and what it means for the dancers to move as one unit, and subsequently, what happens when that unit is split. This rehearsal served as a time to experiment with some floorwork and contact improvisation for myself to get a choreographic visual as to what the specific two dancers' relationship manifests itself as through movement. We started the session with improvisation, the dancers starting back-to-back and myself prompting them to move as one, listening to each other's needs and inviting movement derivative from the breath. There was a prompting of melting, communication, indulgence in intentions, letting movements...

As part of the festival, I am working in the marketing department on the promo and copy team. Especially with my initial inspiration for my contribution stemming from a type of photography, I wanted to document the photos I took throughout the festival process in this learning journal as it's definitely pushed me to use photography as practice research later on in my creation process.

We started off this rehearsal by going through the creative idea for the piece whilst warming up, and a few of my structural ideas. This gave the dancers a bit of an idea of what we're working towards, but I didn't want to overwhelm them with information so this session was focused on self-perception. The tasks in this session were designed to explore how the dancers think of themselves and then how they think about each other; this explored ideas surrounding elements of the self that only an individual can perceive about themselves, and then elements that only other people can see about them.  I started out by having them write down five words each about how they perceive their own movement quality as a dancer. I then set them a solo task of creating a cyclical phrase with a movement representing each quality, offering the thought of it being somewhat gestural and easily repeatable.   Tilly Self-Perception: Emily Self-Perception: I then asked them each to share their mov...