Latest Performing Arts Lessons

Throughout the past few weeks we have all been focusing on jazz workshops, some as a whole group and some as split up groups.

As a class we all learnt a dance to song 'All that jazz', this was fun and interesting. We each had a line to sing solo whilst dancing. This dance was a Fossy style dance which had different paces as some bits were fairly slow and others were quite up to beat and fast. This dance was all about the little movements such as the hands and fingers. Although they are fairly small parts you had to make sure the movements were perfect as this fits into the style of Fossy. We filmed this dance as well to keep a record evidence that we done it and also could watch it back to see how we done and if it needed any improvements.

Another task for this whole Jazz assignment was for us to teach a dance to the rest of the group. We were split up into three groups and three dance categories to chose from, the styles were either, Rock 'n' Roll, Street or Lyrical. I was in the group of rock 'n' roll. As a group we all worked together to choreograph a dance to the song Candy man. After we had learnt this and made sure we were confident with the moves we then were ready to teach it to the two other groups. The first group that taught us their dance was the Lyrical jazz group, I found parts of this dance quite challenging and other movements fairly easy. Overall this dance was a good dance. My group was the second group to teach; before we started we went through the dance to show the rest of the group the rhythm of the music and how it looks. I taught the first section to the dance and as a group we taught some of the basic steps and alternative steps that they could chose from of what they thought they found easier. I made sure that for some people that weren’t quite grasping a move that I would go over to them and help them until they got it. I also faced them now and again to show them from front on. Lastly was the street dance turn, personally I found that the people teaching this dance were very good as i understood the moves quicker and was able to perform this without forgetting and finding it hard. When we were teaching our dances, we made sure that it was all being filmed for evidence.

I found these workshops very enjoyable however parts of it challenging. I liked the all that jazz dance and found this fairly easy to remember. I also enjoyed the teaching part of it too. I think I could have improved my teaching part of the dance by being more confident when it was being filmed.