When I started Un Jour Dans La Vie, I was really excited. The music and the dancers allowed for so may new possibilities and opportunities to explore blending styles, characterization, and mood.

The music sounded playful, angsty, chaotic, light, and smooth all in one. With the musical piece being 17 minutes long with various sections and instruments being used, our first step was to narrow down which sections we wanted to use and in what order we put them in. During the first rehearsal the four of worked on the music together. First, we listened to the whole piece and I had the girls put there hand up when they heard something they liked. We then went back and listened solely to the sections that we liked and narrowed it down further. We then ct out the sections we no longer wanted. While we were choosing, we also decided that we wanted to include some variety in the sections instead of choosing the ones that were more similar to each other. After the sections had been chosen and the cuts had been made, we worked together using Audacity to rearrange the music so that it fit smoothly together. Lastly, we listened to our whole edit and we were amazed that we could make such a smooth edit and turn a 17 minute piece into a 3 minute one!

The second step in my process was the movement exploration and improvisation. I gave the girls a task to each come up with one or two Jazz styled movements and find a way to blend it and integrate some Ballet style into it. We wrote down and drew the movements on a white board that looked something like this. I then asked them to find ways to put the different movements together into 8 count phrases. we ended up integrating these phrases into a later part of the dance.

 

Next, over the course of a month, we held multiple rehearsals to put together the dance. We created new phrases, shapes, and movements together and built the skeleton of the dance through exploration, improvisation, and taking from the different techniques, styles, and repetoire.

 

 

Part 1:

 

Part 2:

 

Part 3:

 

After, the building blocks of the dance had been put together, we bang to rework it and find ways to make it better and implement more artistry. We looked at effects and concepts such as;

    1. Shapes
    2. Spacing
    3. Dynamics (speed, flow, weight) and
    4. Characterization

Once the dance was completed, we continued to run it and clean it persistently to prepare it for festival and competition.

Completed!

Our next step was picking out costumes to create our desired affect and pull the piece together. We figured that it should be something blue as the name of the song suggests.  We chose some royal blue corsets with a baroque pattern to assist the idea of possible a vintage jazzy saloon type era with a matching ballet skirt and sleeves to match. We also incorporated some prop hats into the piece to provide more of an era illusion. This piece was fun and interesting to work with since it gave us so much more possibility. The hats we chose are straw barber hats which the girls each decorated individually to add their own creative flare.