Lesson video

If you're unsure about doing any of the activities in this lesson, make sure you have a trusted adult nearby when you start them.

This lesson should ideally take place indoors, but you could work outside if it's warm, and dry enough, if it's safe to do so.

Ensure there is space for you to work safely, including overhead, ensure that you're work in bare feet, make sure the floor is non slippery and wear comfortable clothing, putting your hair up if needed and remove any jewellery.

Pause your video now if there is anything that you need to do to get ready.

In this lesson you'll need comfortable clothing, writing equipment and a safe space.

Once again, pause your video if you need to get any of those things sorted.

Today's lesson is going to consist of a warm up, a technical session, a choreography session, and then finally your exit quiz.

The key words we're going to learn and look at today are, action, so what we do, these are movements for example, jumps and turns.

Space, which is where we do our movement and this can include things like levels and directions.

And also dynamics, so this is how we perform the movement and this includes speed, effort and energy.

First of all, we're going to complete our warmup.

In your work today, I want you to think about trying to include those different uses of action, space and dynamics.

So, try and include things like jumps, turns, different ways of travelling around the space, thinking about using gestures such as shoulder rolls, thinking about rolling down through the spine to change your levels and include different uses of speeds of actions in your warmup so that we're already thinking about what those key words are as we move on into the next part of the class.

Pause the video here, and then come back when you're ready to try the next task.

So, I have a question for you.

What do you think we mean by the term pedestrian movement? Think about the word pedestrian and where you may have heard it before.

Come up with two examples of pedestrian actions that we could use in our dance work.

Pause the video here and quickly jot something down if you want to.

If not, you can call out the answers straight away.

To answer that question, pedestrian movement is a series of everyday actions, e.

g.

walking, running, scratching our leg with our fingers, looking around and giving someone a hug.

We can use these in dance to help make things look more realistic, and for our audience to understand clearly.

If you write down something like that, then high five to you.

Let's look at this quote.

"Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, a crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many." And this is written by T.

S.

Eliot and it's from the poem "The Wasteland".

What pedestrian actions do we think might work with this? Have a think, pause your video and jot down some answers.

In our technical session, we're going to explore pedestrian movement.

And we're going to do some exploration of those actions together, which show the imagery of the brown fog and a crowd flowing.

You will then use some of these ideas to create your own phrase.

So you're using the ideas of walk, hurry and stop and pause to help you.

In these videos, what I would like you to do is to join in alongside me thinking about the instructions that I'm giving and the approach that I'm taking.

And then you're going to also then have time on your own to explore those ideas further.

So don't panic if you get stuck, go back to my videos and use those as an example to help you carry on.

So we're going to explore this idea of the brown fog and the city moving.

So what you might be able to hear in the background, I've got some recorded sound from walking through London.

So we've got this soundscape of the traffic, the noise in the background to help us.

So we're going to look at this idea of the brown fog first.

So when we think of fog, we think of this kind of wall of murky, grey, brownie colour that we can't see through and it's quite oppressive.

So that means it feels like it's pressing down on us and it feels quite heavy.

So we're going to at ways that we can show heavy, thick movement.

So you want to think about your weight going down into the ground, then this idea of trying to press through something and it not being particularly easy to do.

So we're going to explore that together, first of all, so you can copy me or you can come up with your own ideas.

Let's go.

Hopefully, that's given you some ideas to show you that idea of heavy thickness, that being difficult and using a lot of energy to move.

Pause the video here and then come back when you're ready to try the next task.

This time, we're going to look at the idea of the crowd flowing.

So this is how pedestrian actions might come in a little bit more.

It's this idea of if you've ever been to a big city or you live in a big city and there's lots of traffic, there's lots of people and then everyone seems to be in a rush trying to get everywhere, we want that idea.

So we might include actions like our walking, we might include actions where we run.

We might also include actions where if you've ever stood at the traffic lights and there's been lots of people waiting to cross the road, and sometimes you feel like everyone's kind of like sweeping you along, so you might have that sense of being punished or being nudged.

Maybe someone gets in your way or you have to sidestep to get out of somebody's way.

So we're going to try a few of those.

You might also want to include things like a time check or having to hold something like a bag or trying to keep your jacket on.

So you can include those kinds of everyday actions as well.

So let's try a few ideas out together.

Here we go.

Pause the video here and then come back when you're ready to try the next task.

So now I've explored the idea of the thick fog and the crowd flowing over the bridge.

Our next task is now trying to put that together somehow.

So you're going to take your movement ideas for the fog, the movement ideas for the crowd flowing and intersperse them together.

You could also use things like the noise that you hear in the background from the crowd and think about a little bit of a phrase that then has this sense of flow.

Think about different speeds, think about interspersing those pedestrian actions and think about using your space really, really creatively.

I'm going to show you an example of the type of thing that you can come up with and then you're going to have 10 minutes to create your own.

So pause the video to complete this task.

You need to spend 10 minutes working through the exercise focusing on creating a variety in the choices of pedestrian actions, as well as a clear direction of travel and the use of speed.

Restart the video once you're done.

In the choreography session, we're going to be developing material using action, space and dynamics.

You now need to change the way that your movement looks by varying the way that the action, dynamics and space are used.

So you can use these things to help you.

Action, you can repeat actions, you can reorder or resize your movement.

For the uses of space, you can do things like change the levels, the pathways or floor patterns.

And with the dynamics, you can try using a variation of sudden sharp, heavy, rigid or sustained speeds and qualities.

Don't forget I'm going to give you some examples of things that you could try and then you'll be able to take those and add your own ideas to them.

So now we've got a phrase, we're going to do something creative with it.

So we're going to look at how we can change the actions, the space, and the dynamics to make it look really, really interesting and really, really creative.

So if we take, for example, my action, where I push through the fog, I could change the way that that looks by changing the direction I push my arms in.

So for example, that would be a use of space.

So rather than pushing towards the audience, I might decide to push down instead.

So that is an example of how I could change the use of space.

If I take my running and coming back up to this corner, I ran down here and then I ran up here, I could change that by I could change the direction that I run which would be another use of space.

I could also change the dynamic for that.

So I could make it look really different by maybe trying to run in slow motion.

So I can have this sense of like, I need to get somewhere but I'm going to punctuate the idea of having this slow motion bit by then suddenly running fast.

So I've got a change of dynamics.

When it comes to changing actions, we can put a combination of things together, so we can chop a phrase up and reorder it.

We could reverse an action.

So if we take my looking to the side and then sidestepping somebody, I could reverse that by sidestepping and then looking I could also put little things fragments of my phrase together and chop it up and use a smaller section.

So I'm going to take those three actions that I've just demonstrated with you.

So I'm going to take my push through the fog in a different direction, followed by my slow motion run into my fast into my sidestep.

And I've got a new little chunk of movement material.

Some more challenging ways that you can change your action, space and dynamics would be for example, changing and resizing the actions.

So if I take my sweet ground, for example, from my previous phrase that I did that's quite a large action.

So I could make that smaller by just using my upper body.

Another thing you could do, which would be a real challenge is to translate your movement, that standing up on to the floor.

So for example, if I were to kneel down I could take my pushing through the fog into something that became more floor based.

And can you see how using and exploring those levels opens out the range of movement that you can then create and making it look really, really different and really, really interesting? So your task is to now use your original phrase and really, really mix it up.

So I want to see you change the way that the actions look, change how you use the space, thinking about levels, thinking about facings, thinking about directions.

I'm playing about with speed, so go to the extremes, how fast can you make your actions? How slow can you make your actions? And then think about energies.

Imagine if you were in the hustle and bustle of the city, would you feel tired? Would you feel stressed? Would you feel anxious? How can you put that feeling into your quality of movement so that we feel that tension or you feel that sluggishness of being so tired? So really, really explore those extremes because that's going to be what gives you the best and most exciting choreography.

And I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do.

Good luck, have fun.

Pause the video here to complete your task.

You're going to spend 10 minutes again working through the task and experimenting with different ways of exploring your movement material.

You could video yourself performing the exercise and watch it back to help you review.

Resume the video once you're done.

Have fun.

So let's review how that went.

What was effective about your choreography and the way that you chose to develop it? What could you do to further improve your work for next time? Pause your video and write your thoughts down.

Hopefully, you've got some ideas written down.

When we're thinking about what was effective, we're thinking about the things that worked well, so maybe for example, today, you could say, "The effective part of my choreography was the way that I changed the levels.

This added more interest and also gave the sense of three-dimensional work to the piece.

The thing that we could improve for next time could be that I need to improve exploring dynamics further because I didn't have enough variation in the speed or effort of my movement material." Don't forget to share your work with us.

So if you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to show your work on Twitter and make sure that you tag us in it.

Thank you for taking part and I'll see you next time.

Bye-bye.