creating the group piece

We wanted to avoid our choreography staying at one pace throughout, to prevent the piece becoming bland. We intended to create points in the dance where the control would increase, As a group we  thought that contact work would help us to achieve, this as it can be an exciting visual to the audience.

To aid us with this we started to think of problem solving tasks that would push us towards using some kind of contact. One task that  worked effectively was that "One individual of the group must be off the floor at all times."

To begin with we found this extremely challenging, this was because we were trying to lift a person up safely in a new and unknown way. In time we had built confidence in each other and were then willing to explore more abstract approaches, giving us interesting and unexpected elevated movement.

I felt that this task helped us greatly in adding elevation and layers into our choreography. In my opinion if we did not  approach creating choreography in this way, then we would of ended up with dull  and predictable contact work. But because this task allowed us to explore beyond the structures we already new existed it gave use alternative options that we could manipulate.

This is an example of a piece of contact work the task helped us create:

These extracts  have since been further developed and now work more fluently within the piece. Also we have chopped any unnecessary movements out, so it lost any feel of tricks just being thrown in without a reason behind them.

 Another task that worked well was "One individual in the group must never touch the  floor." This pushed us in a direction that worked alongside our theme, as it showed a person physically being controlled by others as they were being passed along. One downside was that the transitions became awkward looking since the dancer could not use the floor, so once the material was made we allowed contact with the floor at certain points. In result giving the section more fluidity and levels as the dancer travels vertically as well as horizontally.

we also used other tasks in our group choreography however some did not work and hindered more than helped. We set a task that "Eye contact must constantly be made whilst moving." although this gave us intent in our movements. Though then the material became minimalistic  because we were focused too much on making the eye contact itself, we decided to then only make eye contact when it felt possible, although it didn't really work out it made us aware that eye contact was important.