A trip to London Contemporary Dance School - Dance Saturday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
On Wednesday this week, me and my IB dance class went on a school trip to London Contemporary Dance School, to watch a performance that was choreographed by the third year students there. The performance took place at 3:00pm in The Place theatre that was adjacent to the dance school and about 5 minutes away from London King's Cross Station.
As some of you already know, during the period of online learning, I did a virtual contemporary dance workshop with London Contemporary and it was a lot of fun. I haven't properly trained in contemporary dance before as I've only ever learnt the style at school and not in the studio. However, I enjoyed getting involved in the classes and getting to practise my technique with such experienced practitioners in the field. I learnt breath related movements, a lot of suspension and release, and how to improvise. It really brought me out of my comfort zone and gave me a few of the essential skills that I needed to enhance my performance.
On Wednesday, however, I got to see the proper dancers in action and overall it was an amazing experience. I've always said to people that one day, I want to go and see a proper performance in London, and I hope this will be the first of many dance performances that I get to see. Despite having to wear my mask for the entire 2 hours I was in the theatre, I felt at ease getting to sit back and enjoy a performance for what it was worth. The group danced 3 pieces on the whole and they each lasted around 30 minutes. I was really captivated by the first routine. I liked how there was an element of dialogue in the beginning and then there was a sudden change in music. All of a sudden the vibe became really energetic and strong and the dancers were using up so many different parts of the stage in so many different ways, it was difficult to know what to focus on in particular. I think I described the first routine as "strange but cool" to my dance teacher.
The other two routines I think were so unusual in a way, that they were almost too out of the ordinary. 😂💜 There was this marmite moment where the audience either loved the performance, or they completely disliked it. I think there were quite a few people thinking the same way as me. The second routine was set in some sort of party or night club and the dancers kept on laughing and crying throughout the whole routine, which I found a bit strange. The third routine was kind of a mixture between contemporary and commercial dance and it wasn't my favourite either. It was very artificial and quite sexualised, and I didn't enjoy watching it as much as I thought I would. My dance teacher reckoned that the message of the performance was that the commercial dance industry has become very money-orientated and very sexualised. This performance would have been showcased to the upper echelons of society so the dancers were perhaps trying to make a point there. I probably didn't like the dance because of the message that was associated with it.
However, I admired the dancer's confidence and bravery because I don't think that even with the practise, I could ever become a dancer with that level of personality. They sold every routine that they did and they were not afraid to be a bit weird and a bit quirky. Contemporary dance really does represent art to me because you can interpret the performance in the way that you want to. Some of the choreography was not my cup of tea, despite the dancers being technically and choreographically on point, but I guess the dancers were not trying to get me to like everything that they did, they were just trying to get me to think. If that was their aim, then I guess that they were successful in achieving it.
In the future, I hope to at least try and audition for dance schools just because I'll never know where I might end up. I don't think I'm a London Contemporary dancer in terms of my style, but I'll definitely try out anything that comes my way because you never know what might happen.
Have you ever seen a proper dance performance before? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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See you next time,
Bye,
XOX, Juliette
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