Evaluation of Technical Rehearsal.

My dance performance took place on 9th and 10th of December 2015. Lucy’s

stimulus of the piece was “arrival and departure”, it consisted of contemporary, approximate length of the piece was about 14 minutes.

In this evaluation of technical rehearsal I am going to talk about visual settings of the piece and my opinion about it, my strengths, weaknesses and abilities which I used in order to give an excellent performance and further develop my dancing skills.

Firstly, I would like to talk about my strengths and weaknesses relating to my positioning on stage. In my opinion I did fairly well but I still have to improve my performing skills and etc. My strongest sides are contemporary technique, spatial awareness, remembering repertoire, attentiveness and concentration during the performance.

My weaknesses are extraordinary nervousness before going on stage, urban technique, engaging with audience, rushing while performing which leads to unfinished movements.

Secondly, I am going to talk about my skills which helped me and skills which need improvement to give a better overall performance. I believe that I have a good ballet base which helps me to be more flexible and technical. Moreover I have good musicality, timing, memory and focus skills which leads to quality performance of choreography.

Although all skills which I mentioned before definitely are very helpful during the rehearsal period and an actual performance, there still are skills which I have to develop even more, such as: emphasis, expression, stamina and flow of energy. Furthermore, I have noticed that I already improved my stamina since the beginning of the rehearsal period which causes greater productivity during rehearsals.

Thirdly, I am going to talk about my personal improvements as a dancer and choreographer. I will start by describing my development as a dancer during these 5 weeks of hard work. When we first started to learn the repertoire it was very hard for me to make it beautiful and clean. I was also very tired after each rehearsal which caused a big headache and weakness. After a while it started to go away. I started to dance cleaner and more thoroughly. I also got used to such a complex rhythm of lifestyle and I felt more active and improved my stamina. Furthermore, I started to focus on the story and the meaning of it rather than just the movements. I also improved my flexibility and physical fitness which helped me a lot in terms of making movements with greater ease and confidence.

As a choreographer I did not really improve on the practical side but I have started to think differently and to see things differently too. I got very inspired by our performance therefore I began to create my own piece for our next assessment. In addition I have started to think more deeply about the theme. Earlier I was thinking about beautiful movements and shape but now I think about how to make the movements linked to my stimulus and how to make the audience feel and understand what I meant by my choreography.

Lastly, I would like to describe the visual setting in our dance and my opinion on how it affected the piece. We had black floor and black background with no decorations and colourful lighting. Personally I think that we had very good lighting settings on the show. Our choreography was about one character that was born to this world alone and who died alone as well therefore it wasn’t bright on the stage so the audience could feel this sadness and depth. Lighting definitely influences perception of the choreography because it makes it more mysterious and profound. We didn’t have very complex lighting. All the lights were shining from two sides of the stage and it was changing with the change of choreography. We also had one diagonal light at one moment when four of us were doing floor work on the diagonal. It looked amazing but we didn’t really fit to this light.

In conclusion, in my opinion we could have made some changes with lighting for the duet with Sam and I. There was one big illumination from one side but it could look even better if we did one spotlight on us. Then everyone could see just us two but not the whole stage so it could look more romantic and thrilling.