22/9/14 Dance Lesson

Akrahm Khan: Rush

What do we know about Rush so far?

Choreographic Devices used: Repetition, Stillness, Change of Tempo

Stimulus: Free-falling, Paragliding - This is shown by the sharp use of extreme speed of falling and rolling side to side on the stage to show the freedom of falling.

Dance Styles: Ballet, Contemporary, Kathak - An Indian style of dance which is from Khan's culture and heritage 

Khan was interested in exploring what happens to the 5 sense (Sight, Smell, Touch, Hearing, Taste) during free-fall so researched parachute jumpers

Khan was interested in the contrast between speed and stillness and therefore played with different speeds and tempos in Rush

Rush explores both spatial restriction and spatial freedom associated with the unpredictable journey of freefalling

The use of repetition is also evident in Rush, this highlights key movements such as the fast arm circle and movements of near stillness

Key Words

1. Improvisation: The act of spontaneously creating work on the spot
2. Transitions: The linking between two parts of dance together

Improvisation was a key feature used in the choreographing process of Rush as Khan and dancers improvised around the idea of free-falling as a starting point to rush to create motif's and choreography. 

Lesson Plan

In the lesson we recapped what we did in the previous lesson where we developed our original motif that Kat taught us in our groups. In today's lesson we were given pictures as a visual stimulus of people free-falling creating different positions and shapes whilst they are falling. We chose 4 pictures in a our group and we created a different movement for each picture replicating the different shapes that the pictures were showing. After we created 4 movements/positions for each picture we were then asked to write at least 2-3 actions on a piece of paper which is seen in Rush and put them face down in a pile with everyone else's from the class and randomly select some. The reason behind doing this was to then  put them in between each picture to create actions and movements which act as transitions to each position created to replicate each picture. 

Which looks something like this:

Once we chose the actions randomly selected we then made a motif that used the pictures that we created a movement for along with the action transitions in between. We had a member of our group missing this lesson, however this didn't stop us from creating our motif and didn't cause too much of an issue as we have videoed our further developed motif and it will be easy to add Sax and teach her the development. I feel as a group that we worked well together to create this development as we got on with the task independently and were able to come up with positions and movement for the pictures and then further develop by including the actions. 

Here is evidence of our dance, this is only rough as there were a few minor mistakes as one member of the dance forgot some movements and it is only a draft of our piece, however you can still see our structure and see the development that we have done since the previous lesson.