Lesson video

Keeping safe in this lesson, if you are 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 is warm and dry enough if it is safe to do so.

Ensure there is space for you to work safely, including overhead, make sure that you use bare feet and that the floor isn't slippery.

Also make sure that you're wearing comfortable clothing, put your hair up if needed and remove any jewellery.

Pause the video now if there's anything that you need to do to get ready.

In this lesson you will need to make sure that you've got your appropriate clothing on.

You might need writing equipment, so a piece of paper and a pen, and also double-check that safe space, clear any obstacles out of your way.

So, in today's lesson we're going to make sure that we've warmed up.

You're going to do a workshop task with me looking at how we improvise.

You're then going to do an improvisation session.

And then finally you're going to take part in your exit quiz.

So, let's look at some key words.

Improvisation means creating unplanned movement in response to a stimulus.

A stimulus is a starting point or idea for creating dance.

And generating means the process of creating movement material.

In our warmup we're going to do an improvisation-based warmup activity, so play the video, listen to the instructions on the video, and then follow those to conduct your warmup.

Enjoy.

For your warmup today we're going to use improvisation as a way of doing a warmup.

So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to call out some words, and each time I call out a word you're going to move in a response to that word.

So, for example, if I say run you're going to run until I say the next word.

If I say jump, you're going to jump until I say the next word, and so on, and so on.

But some of the words are going to become a little bit more trickier and or a little bit more where you need to use your imagination.

So, for example, if I said reach I would like you to keep finding different ways of reaching with your movement until I change words.

So, don't just do one action and then wait for the next word, you keep moving in that way until the word changes.

So, are we ready? Here we go.

Start off easy, run.

Keep running.

That's it, great.

And jump.

How many different ways can you find jumps? So, not just a straight up and down jump, look for lots of different ways to do your jumping.

The next word is slide.

So, think about safely finding different ways of sliding in and around your space.

Excellent.

Hop.

So, you might want to hop between both legs.

Roll.

So, different ways of rolling in and out of the floor, thinking about creating a rolling action that maybe doesn't need to be on the floor.

How can you show that action but up on your feet? Turn, different to a roll.

How many different ways can you turn? Crawl.

And just pause there, great.

So, now we've got the idea.

We're going to go in with a few more trickier words.

Some of these might be things like textures or feelings, and I want you to see if you can show me them through movement material.

So, your first one is going to be the word thick, so how can you move showing this idea of thickness? Imagine that you're in some really thick custard, or honey, or treacle, something that's going to make it really, really difficult to move.

Excellent.

Now we're going to go for the word crispy.

So, the way that I like to imagine this, imagine you are inside a packet of crisps.

So, think about what would happen if you were crunching through those crisps, standing on them, pushing against them, rolling on them.

So, what would crispy look like as an action? Now we're going to try the word melting, so finding ways of melting through that body.

Imagine you're a cube of ice or a scoop of ice cream on a hot day and you're just going to melt away.

Excellent.

Now I would like you to use the word crumple.

So, imagine you're a big sheet of paper and someone is screwing you up into a tiny little ball, so how much can you isolate that crumpling in from one part of the body to the other? Excellent.

The next one is going to be fidgety.

So, that time when you just can't sit still, the idea of having ants in your pants, maybe in the summer when you have those like thunder bugs all over you and it just makes you really, really fidgety and itchy.

Excellent.

Let's go back to jump.

Back to run.

Back to slide.

Back to melting.

Back to crispy.

Back to fidgety.

Back to thick.

Turn.

Back to roll.

Back to run.

And stop.

Brilliant, well done.

Infra was created using a poem called "The Wasteland." We can use images to help us picture a location, sense of mood or atmosphere.

Images can also give us ideas for shapes and patterns in our movement material.

Take a close look at this image.

We're going to use it today to help us create some movement ideas.

Have a think about what shapes and patterns you can see, have a think about maybe how it makes you feel.

Does it give off a sense of a particular mood or atmosphere? So, pause the video and write down as many words, ideas, moods, and actions as you can linked to that image.

You may wish to create a mind map, list, or columns and then link words together.

Set it out however it works best for you.

Pause the video and then come back to me once you've finished.

So, we're going to start our technical session.

How do we improvise? We're going to look at different ways to approach improvisation.

It can feel strange or a bit tricky at first, so what we're going to do is break it down.

I'd like you to try joining in with my ideas as the video goes, and if you need to at any point you can pause, rewind, and go back over a task again until you feel confident with it.

Let's go.

So, we've looked at that image and hopefully you've got some words written down that are going to help to generate ideas for us to do some improvisation with.

Now, improvisation is really tricky, and a lot of people find it really hard to get going.

The nice thing about improvisation is nothing is wrong, so it's just an opportunity for you to explore ideas.

So, there's different ways that we can get going with that.

The first thing we're going to do is we're going to look at our paper and we're going to choose one word.

So, I wrote down the word sparse.

So, to me sparse means there's nothing there, but it also means it maybe could be quite expansive.

So, my first thing would be how can I show a really big and empty space in my movement? So, I might do movements that stretch myself out through this space, and I just play about with finding different ways of stretching and reaching to all of those parts of my space.

And as you can see, nothing's really choreographed or set at the moment.

It's just me exploring movement, but also exploring my space.

So, that would be one way of starting off with improvisation.

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

Another way that we can start to look at with improvisation is to think about mood words, so words that we have a feeling or an emotion attached to.

So, in my list I put down the idea of, it looks quite gloomy in that picture and quite sad.

So, I'm going to think about how can I physicalize gloomy and sad in my movement.

So, initially if someone looks sad you might have your head dropped, you might have your shoulders dropped, and I might just walk feeling a bit gloomy and a bit sad.

I might also think about if I walked into a space that looked gloomy and sad what would my reaction be? So, I might be looking around and thinking this doesn't look particularly a nice place to be.

And again, this isn't what I would call your dance movement material, but it's just beginning to explore how we can move and show that idea of sadness, of something looking maybe not quite as appealing as, I don't know, going to your favourite shop might be.

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

The third thing that you can do when you're improvising is to think about shapes and patterns that you see in that image.

So, there's quite a lot of rectangles, squares, quite uniformed shapes, so I might think about making rectangles and shapes like that with my body.

There's lines going across the floor so I might use those as directions to travel.

And as you can see, again, this isn't a dance, this is me exploring movement material.

So, I would like you to now have a go yourselves at trying out looking for particular words that you've used, particular shapes, feelings, moods, and emotions, and trying to make movement material out of those words.

Off you go.

We're now going to look at the choreography session, and you're going to have a go at doing some improvisation on your own this time.

So, using the image and the ideas you have written down you're going to begin generating some movement material.

I'm going to also give you some ideas to get you going, and if you totally get stuck then you can use them and include them in your work.

Just pause the video, go back to it, and take whatever movement you need.

So, in our creative task my approach is going to be choosing an action word, a use of space, and a dynamic quality, and I'm going to put those into different sets of words.

So, I'm going to end up with four word sets.

So, my first word set is extend, sideways, controlled, so I'm using the idea of extending out sideways and it's going to be controlled.

And this is to show the idea of the shapes on the picture.

So, we talked about having those like linear shapes, so I'm going to find how many different ways can I do extending sideways and it being controlled.

And you keep going until you've exhausted all of your ideas, and then you choose something that you think looks and feels the most interesting to look at.

And it might be that it's a combination of a couple of your ideas, so you have one movement.

You'd then do the same again for a second word set, and again for a third, and again for a fourth, and then you put those four actions together.

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

The other thing you could try when you're doing your improvisation is to start thinking about maybe you choose one of your words but make that word look physical.

So, if I chose the word dark, for example, I might try and physicalize that by imagining that word dark was in my space, and then I was going to try and outline it.

Or if it was on the floor dance around the outline of the word and fill in the gaps where there are spaces in between the letters.

So, for example, I might try and go over each of the parts of the action with my arm, but I could also do it with my body.

So, I might trace the outline of each of those words.

And it feels really awkward, and it might feel that your movement looks weird or rubbish, but actually you might find just a little bit of movement material you think , I quite like that.

And you could take that bit out and use it.

Then what you could do is put that together with some of the action material that you created from your words in the previous example.

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

So, you've got 10 minutes now to spend some time working through the task and experimenting with different ways of exploring your ideas for the image.

It would be a really great idea to video yourself performing the exercise and then you can watch it back to help you pull out movement material that you like the look of, but also to help you review.

Resume the video once you've finished.

Let's review this.

What was effective about your improvisation, and why? What is challenging? How can you overcome those things? Write your thoughts down.

Please feel free to share your work with us.

If you'd like to do that please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter, and don't forget to tag us in it.

Thank you for taking part and I'll see you soon.

Bye.