Rehearsals for Cats choreography

Cats Choreography - Jellicle Ball

Working towards the content and choreography of Cats I have been allocated to choreograph 'The Jellicle Ball'. In the original show of Cats The Jellicle Ball is the celebration which gathers all of the characters together on this night.  As the Cats dance, Grizabella comes on stage  to watch. Some of the cats sense Grizabella's presence and scare her off and then all of the cats begin to dance in the grand Jellicle ball.

In our concept of fashion we are basing the Jellicle Ball on the idea of a big fashion show of Deuteronomy Design's.

Taking on this song started as bit of a challenge as I needed to cater to choreograph for everyone in the class because dance is our weakest link. We have a range of dance abilities so I needed to find a happy medium. The inspiration for the choreography was to include so elements of cat walk /model influencedmovements but a lot of it was big and energised and similar to the original Jellicle Ball. The dance will include leaps and rolls and extension of arms and legs which is apparent in jazz style, which in the original show jazz is the influence. I want to include piroettes, splits, step ball changes, high kicks etc which reinforces the Jazz style used in the original cats and what I want to carry through for my choreography.
The way I started to choreograph  was start a whole section with everyone in unison with uses of canon and then when the change of phrases happen in the music to section people into groups and do their own little bit of choreography in the center of the stage for 16-24 counts of music. Everyone in the groups are then able to come up with some movement that suits them and their group and I won't be worried as to if I am producing movement too easy or too difficult. The structure of the dance goes:

Intro unison
group 1
group 2
group 3
group 4
Unison
Group 2
Group - girls from 1&3
Group - Girls from 1&3
Group - boys
Final unison

I choreographed the unison sections, group 2's sections and decided all transitions and positioning on  the stage.
My main aim for this dance is for it to be a big impressive number that everyone can show off and it be one of the biggest numbers in the show.

Link To Rehearsal Of Jellicle Ball

Developments that need to be made for this choreography is ensure that everyone knows exactly what they are doing and refine the movements. When the choreography is done and refined it will then be time to polish the movements and look at the extension of movements and the quality of the movements. It is then time for everyone to ensure that in the unison sections that everyone is performing the movements exactly the same as there is nothing worse than having a unison section and people aren't performing the movement exactly the same with the exact dynamics and extension.  More rehearsal is needed because I am being copied at the moment for people to get the movement and you can see that there are people are still unsure of the content. For Further development I need to finish the ending for a big unison section. I am thinking of something sustained at the beginning of the definite change of music and ten a big build up of everyone doing their own solos to then end in a final position center stage.

Script Writing - Feedback from my Second Draft

Feedback from my Second Draft

Looking at the feedback that Deborah - From the National Theatre - Gave me in response to my second draft, she liked the bases of the story around the dance school and after speaking to me liked how the dance school is personal experience to me and the events that I have witnessed growing up in that environment. Deborah suggested ways that I could develop my final script by adding some extra scenes. Scenes that she suggested could be appropriate would be to include a scene of dancing as the play revolves around the performing arts however no dancing is seen. She then suggested that the character Emma could have a monologue speech like the character Danielle has and she could speak about the trouble she is having with her mother as Emma's mother is so pushy and obsessive with her daughter being 'A star'. We then spoke about the wear and tear affect that performing has which then brought us onto the tender subject of eating disorders. I knew a girl at my dance school who has an eating disorder and that has been an issue going on around me which could be included. We discussed about the idea of Emma planting seeds in the script of saying 'I'm not hungry' or ' I ate a big lunch' to put off eating food which then could be causing Emma to become ill and start to have an eating disorder. We then said that the idea of Emma having an eating disorder could be included in her monologue speech that Deborah suggested could be included and Emma could speak about her eating disorder and talk about her feelings of her mother and how she is so overwhelmed and struggling to cope with her mother's unhealthy obsession of pushing her daughter too hard.

Deborah picked up on my dialogue that it needed to be looked over as some of it was a bit unnatural how things were written and wouldn't necessarily be how you would say it in a natural/normal flowing conversation.

Deborah said she likes the character Sharon who is Emma's mother.

She also said that she liked the opening scene of having 3 crunch points within the same area of the changing rooms/waiting rooms and that lots of things were going on, almost giving a sense of things being busy which a dance school's environment would be.

More feedback was that more time needed to be spent over Megan and Phil's relationship and the issues that they are going through about Megan leaving to go for a job. Deborah said that the dialogue's flow needed to be better and consider language choices and the way lines were said. She also felt that the two characters didn't have enough meat to them so needed to develop their story further which I in fact totally agreed with after hearing that from someone else and reading the second draft of my script back.

As a final comment about the script, Deborah liked the way that all of my dilemmas were clear and all had an interesting story to all of the characters.

Things that I now need to do for my final script is to add a scene of dancing to the play, seeing as the play is based around a dance school. I also need to write a monologue for the character Emma and her struggles of dealing with her mother and the possible idea of an eating disorder. I also need to revise the language I have used to make sure that it is not superficial and that the dialogue has a natural flow.