Unit 4 combined arts

Who is Akram Khan?  Akram is an English dancer and choreographer born in England into a Bangladeshi family. He trained in classical kathak and contemporary dance.  Historical Kathak is one of the main genres of ancient Indian classical dance and is traditionally regarded to have originated from the travelling bards of North India referred as Kathakars or storytellers. The Kathakars communicate stories through rhythmic foot movements, hand gestures, facial expressions and eye work.  Summary of lesson: At the start of the lesson we watched videos of Akram Khan dancing and how he was influenced by and combined Kathak (a traditional Indian dance) into his work. We watched 'Zero degrees' and the opening scene was synced narration with him and Sidi Larbi telling a story to the audience with some mudras movements. Mudras is hand gestures from classical Kathak. They also added symbolic gestures, mime and pedestrian movements as if they are thinking about what to say next, so...

 In this workshop, I created a duet with Millie inspired by the knickerbocker glory character from Act 2  in Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker.  Summary of the video: The character of knickerbocker glory (me) has a snakey, seductive and sneaky body language. he lures Clara (Millie) in and tries to pressure her into taking the invitation but only if she smokes with him. in the original scene he has a cigarette in his mouth the whole time he dances with her, and right at the end he offers it to her. when she doesn't take it, he leaves. In this duet, Clara has wide, innocent eyes and is submissive to the knickerbocker glory. Us together are telling a story because our body language and expressions contrast with each other. I tried to channel his seductive body language by leading with my hips and pelvis when walking towards Millie and remaining eye contact. The skill we ae focusing on is non verbal communication again, so this was done through movement together and most importantl...

 

 

 

Core skills-  dedication singing acting dance confidence on stage combining the arts Transferable skills- communication team player stamina reliable efficient approachable motivated can be independent when needed getting work done on time

  Combined arts skills workshop 1 Focus- becoming a dance actor. In this workshop i explored the combination of dance and drama (characterisation and expression) in the style of Matthew Bourne. Knowledge:  I watched the openings of Act 1from the 2002 production of Nutcracker by sir Matthew Bourne OBE performed by his Adventures company. Summary of the video: One main skill i discovered was non verbal communication. For example, mime, gestures, facial expression and body language to get the story and narrative across. I explored a scene from Nutcracker where an orphan child, Clara, gets given a precious toy for the first time. i spent time coming up with 3 gestures that would communicate a greeting of me and the toy. i came up with hugging, making it wave at me, and kissing it.  I made sure the audience knew how special the the toy was to me by keeping my wide eyes glued to the toy in amazement during the sequence. I first developed my sequence by getting inspiration from ...