Xfactor tour!

On the Saturday 5th March, me and a friend went to see the xfactor tour at Wembley arena! It is where most of the xfactor finalists that were on the live shows perform to many parts of England. The finalists that made it to the tour were One Direction, Matt Cardle, Aiden Grimshaw, Paige Richardson, Wagner, Rebecca Ferguson, Cher Lloyd, Katie Waissel and Mary Byrne. I was impressed with every one of them when they performed. I would say that my favourite was probably Cher Lloyd. When i watched her on television I thought she was a good singer but not amazing but when she performed live I thought she was by far the best. Her voice sounded unique and strong. My other favourite was obviously One Direction. As well as them being great entertainers, all five of them were also great singers. My favourite out of the band is Harry Styles; I think that he has the most powerful voice out of the band however i think that Zayn has the most unique voice in the band. Either way though, they are all very good! At the end Matt Cardle sand some of his best songs that were sung in the live shows like Bruno Mars: Just the way you are, Katy Perry: Firework and The Moody Blues: Nights in White satin. The last song he performed was his winner’s single which became Number 1 on the Christmas charts. I think Matt Cardle has a beautiful voice.

However not only did we get to watch the finalists perform live, an hour before the show actually started I knew someone that works with the production team that was able to get me and my friend meet and greet passes! When I got told this, I was even more excited, it was such a bonus to the night. So instead of having to be at the place at half seven we had to get there at quarter to six. We went in to get out tickets and then queued outside for about 10 minutes. We then all went inside and got a backstage stamp on our hands and went up these stairs and waited in a line in the corridor for 5 minutes. At just gone 6pm it was time when we all went into a big room and stood around the edge in an oval shape. It was good because I thought there would be able 150 people in there but there were only about 30 people. After waiting for a while, they bought out Matt Cardle first and then after he went to a few people they let Rebecca Ferguson in and so on. When Matt got to us, he seemed so nice, i have met him before in Covent gardens but he wasn’t in much of a rush as he was when i first saw him. I had a joint picture with Cher and Katie and they were both lovely too. When Aiden came, me and my friend were on either side of him and after he had the picture he told me that he loved my hair which made me happy! When Wagner came to us, he said we were both beautiful girls which was cute. The last act to come out was one direction! They were most of the reason why I was so excited. I really wanted to meet them, especially Harry Styles. When they came over, I unexpectedly felt quite calm which was good. We spoke for a bit and then got a picture, as I was about to take one for my friend the body guard told me to get in the picture so it was quicker but I said i didn’t know where to go and Harry told me to stand next to him and then put him arm around me. It was so cute! Below is a picture of me and my friend with one direction and a few of the other acts.

This is a picture of me and Aiden Grimshaw!













                 


                                                                                          

Here is me with Rebecca Ferguson who was lovely. I think she has a strange singing voice but in a good way. It is different and memorable.

This is a picture of Cher performing her first song live to the Wembley audience. She was an amazing entertainer as well as singer and I certainly think that she has the x factor and will be one of the artists that become very big in later life.

Here is a photo of Wagner dancing and singing to the audience. He was very entertaining and great fun for everyone to watch.

The whole experience of the xfactor Wembley arena tour was amazing! As well as each act being a great singer they were also brilliant entertainers. If I had the chance I would love to go again and will defiantly be looking into when any of them are doing gigs.

Cabaret!

On Friday 18th March was the evening of Cabaret. This was the night where we would be performing out Bhangra dances to an audience. I was looking forward to the whole evening of it as well as having a little bit of nerves. During the week we had been practicing our dances over and over, we even stayed in at lunch time for the extra rehearsal time. All of us wanted our dance to come across to the audience as fun but also quite professional and from the reviews we got back afterwards, we achieved just what we wanted which was great! A couple of days before the performance, A English teacher, Miss Butt, came into our lesson to watch our dance and give us feedback as she grew up knowing plenty about Bhangra dance because she is part of that culture. She said that she was very impressed with what we had choreographed and it looked very effective however we just needed to neaten it up a bit and make our hand movements stand out some more, which we did work on in the time that we had left. She also was very kind to lend us some Bhangra scarf’s which we could wear to perform in. As well as that she also helped us with some of our hair and make up on the night which looked great! The performance worked and fitted together great as we had all worked as a team over the past few weeks and studied plenty about the types of moves outside and inside school time. I had to make sure that I done it as well as I could because Miss Dolan was videoing us throughout the performance so she was able to assess us individually. I got some feedback from family and friends saying that it was a fun performance to watch, that we all looked very professional in our costumes and that it looked like we understood the theme of Bhangra dancing overall. The whole unit was great, I loved having to choreograph our own Bhangra dance and it was great that we were able to put our own style to it. The picture above and the picture below is a photo of the Performing Arts Class just before going on stage to perform.

Over all evaluation of the Bhangra Unit.

Over the past few weeks in class time we have been working on a Bhangra dance which we choreographed ourselves. We were spilt in to two groups of six and worked in them groups from then on.  In my group it was me, Kelly, Chloe stockman, Chloe green, Katie Burrows and Laura-Anne. The other group was with Alice, Myriam, Shauna, Shannon, Louise and Danielle. Both groups had to choose a story for our dance, both chose ‘Forbidden Love’ as that is one of the main themes in Bhangra dancing as well as themes like Disproval, Religions and Families. Over the first few days of working on our Bhangra dance we got told that we would be performing one of our dances in cabaret, so seen as we had been doing a lot of work on Bhangra in lessons time we all decided that we would perform that dance. Every day in our lessons from then on we had been working hard on our dances. Both groups had the idea of some western/street dancers and some more contemporary dancers however we still made sure to keep the Bhangra style to it. We chose the music ourselves and then Miss Dolan would Mix it all together for us. A couple of the songs we chose were called J’ai ho, Bhangra Nights and Challiya Challiya. My entire group dance was 2 and a half minutes. I thought that out dance was well choreographed and thought that we used up plenty of different well known and not so well known Bhangra moves/steps.

Even though we had been doing plenty of practical in lesson time, we also had been set a presentation/essay on Bhangra dancing and artists. I chose to write up an essay on in and when i handed in my first draft I received a Merit. When she gave them back to us to improve on i had to write a bit more about why I chose some of the artists/influences of Bhangra and add a case study of Hithrik who is a famous Bollywood actor, dancer and singer.

Now we have come to an end of our Bhangra unit and I really enjoyed it. I had a great interest in all the different moves there were. It wasn’t really about how had the moves were, it was about how effective you made them look. The dancing is all about emotions in the face and a important part is women’s hips when dancing. Hand movements are also a major part in Bhangra dance.