Connections
During the beginning of the class, Carla went into some detail about the overall angle that her piece will take shape with – connections. With the space, music, time, energy, people, senses, movement, spiritually, etc. I like how this theme is giving us a huge amount to play around with in terms of movement, and how to react to what Carla throws at us in class. We played around with a couple of different styles and a mixture of techniques. House was the first style to come up. Throughout the whole class, isolation of the hips and chest were targeted the most, looked upon, and needs the most improving. Personally I find that I love House dance and want to get better, however as Carla kept saying – she needs us to release, I sometimes find my body wanting to do this, but then I find that I don’t have the certain mind set, the connection with the style perhaps, to compare with my B-boying, sometimes changing the way I do things, subconsciously to fit my own style, rather than following Carla’s directions, which brings me onto my next point:
At one point, Carla pointed out that our movements where not looking or feeling the exact same as what she was telling us to do. The original choreographer’s vision, material, feeling, themes, and movements have to be as he/she wants them to be, rather than taking the moves and steps and turning them into our own thing, our own style. A tip was to focus and break down a teacher’s/choreographer’s body into sections and analyse each part of the body, the direction, the level, the form, and how it is moving.
The latter part of the session we explored more contemporary elements, performing a travelling section across the diagonal of the studio. I found this section hard. I enjoyed the movements very much, I just feel frustrated and angry when I know that a movement is potentially very simple, and yet because of lack of technique or physical limitations such as flexibility or muscular strength, the movements aren’t executed properly, or with poor technique. I’m a competitive dancer, so seeing others, who I know do have contemporary backgrounds, and may have grown up with contemporary technique annoys me, simply as it looks easy, and yet hard to grasp.
Limitations: A key word to me as a dancer. I hate limits, I hate thinking I have any, I don’t want boundaries, I want to push them, break them, look past them, and ascend to my true potential. Carla pressed at us, that she wants us to push our bodies to their limits – this I will constantly strive to do.
Finally, we had the class, and I assume future classes, without the mirrors – to enhance that this is training for a performance – where is the focus meant to be? And what the intention of the movement, and feeling of the piece can be fully explored is important, which I liked.
