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.