Double - Storytelling - Blog 15 (Snow Queen) - 15/12/15 &17/12/15

15/12/15
Today, in our free periods, Lorna, Ollie, Charlie, James and I all worked on story 2. This part of the story focuses on describing the relationship between Kay and Gerda and establishing the change in Kay after the fragment of the mirror gets in his eye which leads to his disappearance. James decided he wanted to have silhouettes to distinguish his story from the others! I thought this was a great idea as this was a very uncommon form of story telling yet equally, if not more, effective at entertaining and informing the audience.

We started by assigning who would be each character and as it was James' story he got to choose. He decided he wanted Lorna to be Gerda and he wanted me to be Kay! I feel this pair-up was great as Lorna and I are very confident with each other so when performing lifts or movement which require a great deal of trust, we'll be okay. James had already decided on some music to be played in the background too; an acoustic instrumental of Justin Bieber's "The Feeling."

James consulted Lorna on some of he choreography as she has over a decade of dance experience. She thought I'd would be best to hear the narration and her and I improvise movement to gain first impressions on the narration for us to work on. I felt this was a useful exercise as it made us think about our story and the narration within which aided us in our understanding of the characters.

After this, we took Lorna's knowledge of dance and lifts and trialled a few lifts to test my ability and then performed them for real! We tested my ability first because if I wasn't able to do a lift and we went for it first time, then there's the risk that I could drop Lorna which could result in very serious and sever injuries!

After performing a few lifts, we picked our favourite ones and connected them with smooth flowing movement. The two lifts we chose was a. "Koala Bear" lift and a cradling lift. We chose these as they both represented childishness and innocence. 

Charlie then thought that at this point no one else had anything to do, so he suggested another pair perform the same sequence either simultaneously or in cannon. I then suggested to James that although he wanted his story to portrayed with silhouettes, we could still have some people not as silhouettes to bring some sort of diversity. I also thought this would be useful as having too many people as silhouettes would result in a great deal of masking which would render some people useless. We then changed it so that Lorna and I perform in front of the sheet being used for silhouetting and Charlie and Ollie be the silhouetted pair. We also though cannon would be best as well because having the two pairs perform simultaneously would be pointless as the audience will only really watch one pair then merely acknowledge the other pair.

Above is a video of the dance we have so far. Of course, the pair in the background, Charlie and Ollie, will be silhouetted in the legitimate performance but in the video they are just a few steps back. Source: (Click Here)

17/12/15
Today, during our lunchtime, we decided to add more to our dance! After quickly running what we already had, we slowly added more and more to our piece. This featured adding childlike hymn-hand movements. I thought adding this would further embody the child spirit in the actors (Lorna and I) playing the roles of Kay and Gerda. We also added a move where Gerda falls backwards and Kay catches her; we used this to portray the support between the two characters which then sets up their relationship! Having this strong bond established will make the kidnap of Kay a lot more traumatic.

We also briefly thought about how we would have The Snow Queen (Rhiannon) introduced. This would feature her rolling in as a silhouette, the rest of the silhouetted actors (Rob, Ollie & Charlie) covering her, then they disperse for the Rhiannon to strut out as the Snow Queen. This represents the clumping together of snowflakes which was mentioned in the narrative. Next lesson we will record this.