Rock Challenge Evaluation

Rock Challenge is a dance/drama competition in which schools/colleges create a 7 min dance performance based on a theme of their choice.

Our theme was the story Dorian Grey, we called the piece Eternally Grey - Believing that the only things having are youth and beauty. The impressionable and naive Dorian is willing to do anything to avoid ageing. He pledges his soul in order to gain immortality whilst his portrait ages recording every sin and immoral experience however his actions lead to heart ache and he begins to realise what is important, but to what end?

Our piece was split up into 6 sections; opening, Devils, Duet, Girls, dead in the water and finale.

We started by working on the Devils and Girls actions as we could split up and get more done, The main focus of the girl section was to show how Dorian was easily swayed to other girls and would cheat on his partner, so we made it very mature and sassy.

For the Dead in the water section Kat asked me to use some of my choreography from my solo in the dance show as it was very emotional and drama based, so I took it and changed it slightly so that the dynamics were more to the song as well more fitting to the story/situation. I had to change it also so that it worked with three people including Jess who was playing Dorians partner. This section was about her being heart broken and wanting to kill herself, so I made it more dramatic for jess so less leg movements so that she could focus on acting, whereas becky and I did more physical version of the motifs. A lot of the motifs consisted of reaches, contractions as well to make it more compelling and emotional to help towards the drama score.

When she actually drowns herself we need a travelling section to go in a circle to act as the waves so Becky and I created a small motif to repeat in the circle which was then repeated in the finale but slightly different. This consisted of slides, spins and jumps as I came up with the idea that as the moves got bigger it represented the waves getting wilder and her closer to death. This I think helped tell the story more as otherwise it was slightly confusing.

I also helped with the choreography for the finale section, for this section we had to be aggressive as we were representing Dorians feelings as we are like his conscience and we are in a way dying so a lot of the moves were very heavy and sharp, as it was the end I made the suggested that we should as more of a build up towards the end so as it was getting more dramatic we added more jumps and the guys to go in and start intimidating/aggravating Dorian, then Liam came up with the final idea to explode and all die at the end from Dorians outburst.

In a rehearsal I strained a ligament so I was out of practicing the week before show so I was very anxious about how it was going to go, I think that it went really well and my strengths would be my characterisation, projection, focus/eyeline however my coordination and balance went off as I ended up snapping my ligament within the actual performance but I didn't stop although it effected a lot of the movements I was doing I had to change them slightly and therefore my timing wasn't perfect to improve this I need to recover properly and go to my physio and then go back to rehearsing when I am fully recovered as well as making a back up plan with the dance in case it happens again so I don't panic on stage .