The Deluge Extended Cast: Leah and Faye
Photo credit: Dougie Evans. Dancers: Sarah Golding & community cast performers from The point, Eastleigh.
Today's session led by Carrie began with the recapping of material. We had previously created solos that were informed by our character’s emotions and feelings. Form these solos we worked with a partner to created conversational duets. Carrie viewed our duets and trios giving helpful and practical feedback which helped make them more exciting.
Later on we split into groups of four, our task was to create staccato movement from health and safety procedures and evacuation plans. Using phrases such as; 'exit via stairway’, ‘do not use lift’ and 'in case of emergency break glass' helped to create mini parody phrases of movement.
Initially this task seemed to be simple; however that was not the case!
Generally in choreography we tend to over think the steps and our choreographic choices in order to be 'perfect’. Starting the tasked proved this as my group were trying to over dramatise the actions needed for the phrases, when we broke the task down we realised we only needed the mechanics of movement to communicate the idea to the audience. For example instead of running to show emergency and panic all we needed to do was a running pose to communicate our emergency. After realising this method of working for this task, the movement began to flow.
The staccato phrases that we were creating would have to be performed to a steady rhythm in order for them to succeed. Slowly we went through the phrases and counted out loud every count so each member of the group knew exactly when to move. After we had mastered the timing slowly we then had to speed up for the work to be more effective. This was a challenge, everyone had to be aware and listening to the counts. A few trial and error later and our group were getting the hang of it.
Photo credit: Dougie Evans. Dancers: Carrie Whitaker & community cast performers from The point, Eastleigh
One of our dancers, Faye was injured so she had the pleasure of being able to view the work from an audience’s perspective. Being able to view the parody sketches from the outside bought a lot of amusement for Faye as the phrases were comical especially as all the movement was staccato.
Faye then came and sat in the middle of two groups, Faye’s task was to read the health and safety procedures and evacuations plans out loud. Faye did this natural manner. The dancer’s task was to keep moving on a steady, even rhythm but immediately freeze when Faye paused or stopped. This gave more humour to the rest of the class watching because the dancers had to speed up getting faster and faster whilst staying on the even count!The effect of having a visual to look at in correspondence to the text you are hearing makes the text more exciting and memorable.
This workshop gave the class a different perspective into the idea of being stuck in a safe house (storyline of The Deluge) to the one that we had originally thought about. As a whole none of the class necessarily thought about bringing relevant humour to the movement they were creating, perhaps because of the delicate situation of losing possessions, family and friends in a flood situation. This workshop bought a new way of looking at the situation to us as dancers and characters in the unusual events that are happening to us in the work, The Deluge. This makes us even more excited to keep working with Carrie and each other on this journey of creating unforgettable work.
Well done company!
Cover image by Jamie Morgans
