Dance film workshop

work shop with two dancers.

So today we took part in a workshop with Rachel where we were lucky enough to have two dancers with us from Rachel’s university in london. They had choreographed a piece of dance for us to watch which was lovely. It included small lifts and was in a contemporary style. After this we were asked to get up with our cameras and video them, be the camera, move among them, film anyway we would like and see the dance from various different angles and perspectives.

At first it’s fair to saw we were all a bit shy of filming the dancers, Rachel then asked us if anyone wanted to experiment with the dancers to do with their own ideas. Alice stepped forward and discussed her ideas. She is working with Danielle, and they plan on working with luminescent body paint, a canvas and a dancer, the premis being that the dancer will be making art whilst doing/through art. So Rachel thought about how the dancers would cover themselves in paint and asked them to take a journey using their hands making sure they cover every inch of their bodies. And one of the dancers routines really stood out to me. The way she was holding herself so confidently, and going through everything thoroughly, really enabled me to picture Alice’s idea. I thought her routine was beautiful. We were again told to move among them, be the camera and film what they’re doing. I decided to be confident and get really up close with her, my reasoning is that when I was watching it before I pictured close ups of her routine and how stunning they would look, close ups of her covering every bit of her body carefully, being able to really see her facial expressions, and I wanted to do it in the form of one take, so I moved the camera a lot within the one long take, just so I could capture as much as I could, and honestly I’m really happy with what I got. This is the film I took on the day using my iPhone 7:

After this Savina asked if she would experiment with the dancers. Her idea is around dolls and doll like movement. So she and Rachel asked the dancer to choose some exadurated doll type poses, and then they referred back to what they could dull down into in every day life. What I loved about this was that the dancer used her facial expressions and it honestly completely changed the perception of the pose! It was fantastic how much more doll like each pose became when she involved various expressions.