week 5

I cant believe we have been on this course for over a month now! It has gone too quickly.
The whole of this week had been taken up of little activities that miss dolan has given us to do. For example we started a task called 'Get in the box'. We had to get in pairs or threes and make up some kind of DV8 dance. However on a sheet there was a list of things that we have to include like lean on someone with no hands, lift onto someones back ETC... we have been working on this task all of the week so far.
On Friday 8th October we had to do out presentations/essays. I done an essay but we had to read a little bit out from it, which wasn't to bad. Here is a copy of my whole essay but its only a draft and have to rewrite some of it to make it much better!


DV8 Research Project

Introduction

DV8 is Physical Theatre. It stands for Dance and Video. Only dancing and acting are performed. DV8 has been argued over whether it is contemporary or physical theatre, some people say it is contemporary but a rather unique form of it and some say it is physical theatre because there not much dancing involved however others say that it’s a mixture of both. I agree with the people of think it’s a mixture of both because there is a lot of dancing in it and sometimes there is contemporary involved and there also is acting involved. Therefore I agree with the last statement.
Lloyd Newson

DV8 was created by a man named Lloyd Newson who was born in 1957. He created DV8 in 1986. He is a practitioner who isn’t bothered to have extreme and shocking subjects in his piece of work. Lloyd Newson used to work in Extemporary Dance Theatre from 1981 to 1985 but then he chose to leave it and move onto concentrating on his own choreographic ideas. His birth place was in Australia and he wanted DV8 dance to be all about people’s emotions. He also wanted DV8 to have a great effect on the audience when watching a performance. Lloyd Newson came up with the idea of DV8 because he was starting to become concerned that dancing at this moment is not getting a message across to the real world, so he chose to direct and choreograph productions to change this.
This is a photograph of Lloyd Newson. 
Social Context.

DV8 work is a very daring project. So anyone who chooses to do DV8 as a carrier has to be committed to take risks. The whole social Context is about dividing down the boundaries of dance and theatre. The Incentive for DV8 is to show their artistic skills. An example of incentive would be that the company always have to come up with new and creative ideas. The company's reputation awaits on the consistent over viewing of the relationships of men and women in our culture.
Some examples of some of the DV8 productions are:
Just for Show
The Cost of Living
Enter Achilles
How DV8 is supposed to be

DV8 is supposed to be a flowing piece of dance all the way through the performance. Therefore it is never interrupted by anything. Lloyd Newson wanted it to be all about going with the flow and what feels natural. It shouldn’t feel like your forcing your way through. The whole piece of dance is very interactive and loose. He wanted the dance to actually mean something and links to the theme at that time.
Enter Achilles

Lloyd Newson Choreographed a DV8 film called 'Enter Achilles'. Most of the film is set in a pub and is about a group of men who try to show their feelings in different ways. There are many different scenarios in the film and the men all try to get over their own problems and solve them. An example of a problem that one of them men have is where he feels feminine and tries to let his feelings out but all the other men don’t like it and take the Mick out of him. I found this film very effective. I think Lloyd Newson got his message across about wanting to mean something and have an effect. So he didn’t want it to just be something pretty and fun to watch, he wanted people to feel what’s going on and see the emotions created. For example he tried to get the point across that men do actually need to let their emotions out and say how they feel. Lloyd Newson partly made this film so men could watch it and maybe then they will question their own masculinity. It is a very extreme film and bits of it are quite serious, Newson uses physical movement like fighting because he knows that men seem to feel comfortable with that kind of contact.
This is a photograph of some of the men from Enter Achilles. 
Martha Graham

She was born on May 11th 1894 and died April 1st 1991 at age 96. She was an American Dancer Choreographer and started dancing at age 22. This led her into dancing and choreographing for over seventy years! Martha Graham also received many awards and a few of them are:
Kennedy Centre Honours which she received in 1979
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976
National Medal of Arts in 1985
These are just a few of them.
Whilst she was finding a way to express herself freely as well as honestly, she started a place called the Martha Graham Dance Company. This is one of the oldest dance company’s there is in America.
Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham was born in 1919 and died just a year ago (2009). He had his first professional dance and theatre training at the Cornish School in Seattle. He was also a pupil at Martha Graham’s dance company from 1939 to 1945. He also received lots of awards, for example he received the National Medal of Arts in 1990, the Macarthur Fellowship in 1985, the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award in 2009 and Japan’s Premium Imperial in 2005.
Isadora Duncan

She was born in 1978 and died in 1927. Her mother gave her a great love for dance, theatre, Shakespeare and reading. At a very young age of just 6 years old, she danced for money and taught other lots of other children to dance. When she was a bit older
She opened a dancing school in Moscow and the government made a promise that they will provide her with schoolroom. But the promise was broken as soon as the built the school the government would not provide her with anything so she couldn’t run the dancing school any longer.
Themes

Lloyd Newson had created many films that tell a different story each time. I am going to explain about a couple of them and explain what he’s trying to get across.

Enter Achilles was a very passionate film. It was all about men hiding their true feelings. He shows how they can let it out in different ways. The men in the film all cover their feelings up by fighting, looking out the window at girls, drinking ECT…

Another film is called ‘The cost of living’. He made this film so get the message across about how much we spend to survive. There’s a dancer in the film with no legs and dance’s around with just his arms and the rest of his body. It is performed cleverly just like the rest of all of Lloyd Newson’s films.
Conclusion

I think that DV8 it a very unusual and unique style of dancing. Personally I really enjoy watching it and trying it out myself. From all of my research that I have done for this project, I now know Lloyd Newson’s background, some of the DV8 productions and how DV8 is supposed to be performed. I think it’s great that Lloyd Newson came up with this idea and am glad that we have been set this project as it had been a very interesting piece of work to do.