The dance routine for the Illuminate Festival was a process of completing different group and individual activities, choreographing our own parts in the freedom part of the routine, and including them in our dance. We did this one partner activity when one of us was a puppet and the other was the puppet master. We had to make up one count of eight for our partner as a puppet or a doll, and they did the same for us. Then we had to find another partner and teach them the choreography that Eva taught me. Charlotte and I were partners, and we both taught the choreography to each other and combined our dances. After we both learned it, we paired up with another group and taught the choreography to them, and they taught there’s to us as well. Then we added that to the Illuminate Festival dance. This activity helped me understand the type of choreography that we were learning and sowing at the concert. After we did this process, we did the unison triangle choreography and learn the dance as well as all the timing each of us was on. After we did this we did the tuning section and created it ourselves after this we had most of our group dance bits finished.

Our class worked together with the other year 8 dance class to create a binary structure. We both did separate pieces and we worked together and combined those pieces in one for the Illuminate concert. We both had the same style of dance which was a doll theme but we sometimes had our own class bits where we each performed in different bits. This relates to my school journey, for example, when we are at school and also on a test we kinda led back but when we get out of the test we get a sense of freedom, that we have finished and completed them finally, this relates to my school journey as test are quite a big part of high school.

This dance concert preparation helped me with my collaboration skills, as we did quite a lot of choreography in small groups. Sienna, Myself, Maya, and Eva were in a group and we created a dance piece to add to the choreography for the concert. My group worked very well together and listened to everyone’s ideas and contaminated ideas effectively as well. We started off by brainstorming some ideas and just telling each other some ideas we had about freedom and some dance moves to represent that freedom as well. We used teamwork to create our dance as we all worked together and used moves that were comfortable for everyone. Next time l think maybe we could be more time efficient as most groups had finished their dance when we were still adding on to ours. But overall l think we all worked well together and l was very happy with the way our choreography turned out in the dance Illumination concert.

In this dance, we effectively used space, time, shapes, energy, and different levels and movements as well. We used Space and movement in this choreography by moving around the common area and the grass area up the top and the gavel on the floor. Near the end of the dance we were we skipped around the common area and we used space by going into the audience and interacting with them as well. This used space as well as time for us to interact with the audience while we were still performing, so they felt like they were part of the dance. We used many different shapes in this dance like when we were in the triangle formation, and when we were doing that part of the dance where we used our arms to create shapes like straight and diagonal lines, and squares. When we were free in the dance near the end we had to have lots of energy to show that we were free, we also did this by untucking our shirts and taking off our braces we had to show that we were having fun and not being controlled by anyone anymore. We used many different levels at the start of the dance, some of us did our poses and movements on the floor while the rest of us were standing up this looked like we were efficiently using different levels. In each of the dance parts, most people were using different levels too. This dance experience helped me gain new skills as l was not use to this style of dance.

Reflection on the Illuminate Performance

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In this performance, I feel like my timing was very good as we had some tricky timing that we used and l feel like l was on the correct counts and time for the dance. I also feel my facial expressions and energy was great in this dance as near the start you had to have quite a serious face, and at the end, you had to have a face that represented freedom with your facial expression. In this dance energy was a key concept as in some parts of the dance, you had to have more energy than in other parts of the dance. I also felt like l was more confident than l thought l would be during the dance because l was quite nervous performing in front of the whole cohort, but when l go up there I felt like l did not show that l was nervous and when l started dancing it went away. I am proud of how l performed and feel like when l was on stage l have it everything.

I feel like my Group performed very well in the Illumination dance concert, our timing was great, and we were all on the right counts for the cannons, and the rest of the dance as well. I also feel like our group was great with spacing as we were all in the correct spaces and that made our dance look better and stand out more. We all knew the dance so we were not looking at each other to find out the next move, which was a big difference because it would not look as good if people did not know the dance so we did a good job with performing the choreography on the common. I feel like we did a good job of interacting with the audience even though no one stood up and danced we did well trying to get them involved, and making it more fun for them as well as how much fun it was for us. We worked together amazingly as a team and l feel like that improved our dance a lot.

The common was different to perform on than the stage as we were using different levels and it was more challenging as l am used to performing on a normal stage, so it was quite different for me to perform on the common. I feel like performing in the common went more with the theme l want to break free as we were outside and not on an ordinary stage performing so it gave our performance more creativity. Performing on the common also gave us more creative choices in our dances for example if we were on a stage Eden could not have claimed up that tree, which showed that we were breaking free.

I have learned quite a few things from this process and performance, I have learned dancing on different levels and relating/interacting with the audience as well. I have not interacted with an audience in dance before and it felt like the audience was having fun and enjoying it as well as we were. This will help with my future projects because we may need to make up a dance not dancing on a stage or interacting with an audience. This may help me in another way because l do dance out of school at Elevate Performace company and we may need to interact with our audience in one of our dances that we make up as well l sometimes do this as l interact with the judges at comps but usually l don’t really interact with the audience as we did in the Illuminate concert. This concert helps me with many new skills and my confidence in performing in front of people as well.