Tango Maureen Part 2

Today we split off again to work on our indvidual numbers as we had done the lesson before. So me, Dan M and Freya contiued to work on Tango Maureen and sorting out our opening to the number. We kept the start of the number number simple in just having us stand and sing to each other until we reach the first "Tango Maureen" which is sung by me. I then wanted to start dancing like abit of an idot becaues ithough that Mark is that type of character who would just make a fool of himself. So when I start to sing, i swing my right arm above my head roll my waist and jump closer to Freya, I then do a quick step and turn on "merry-go-round" adn pretend to be on strings when  dsing "dangling". I follow this with a knee slide towards Freya and twist my body side to side. Then get up and move away for my next line where I act as a voice of torment wondering around her putting doubts about Maureen in her mind. After this we reach where we started choreagrphing last lesson so we decided to keep going forward and polishing the steps. We then wanted to change the ending movement where we all circle aroung the stage, we wanted to move me and Freya into the centre and had us moving around the oposite direction to everyone else so we can signal me and Freya out as we're the only people who are actually there. We then went over Another day with Meg and Tom new movement within the number while the rest of us went over the words with ur harmony lines in the background in the number.

Tango Maureen Part 1

Today we split off into groups to work on seperate numbers so that we can cover a large range of the show.
Toby, Carl, Dom and Dan S went off to create the staging for all three verions of "Christmas bells". Meg and Tom went off to work on "Another day" becaues they wanted to change soem of their movement in the number. Me, Freya and Dan M created "Tango Maureen" in this lesson, Dan create a Tango stylied dance for me and Freya to perform to "Tango Maureen". We started the song half way hrought going from "Where'd you learn to tango", where me and freya meet in the middel and she leads me back and we do a 180 step turn so then leads me the other way back to the centre. On the line "you should try it in heels", Freya lifts her leg and wraps it round me. Then me and frey waltz gown stage, spin then pull back into each other again. We then spilt off till "When your dacing" which is where me and freya hold hands doing an extended leg walk. I then try to turn her freya to which she then turns me, we though this would be humours to our audienece while fitting our characters personaility. After freya turns me we join again stepping foward followed by a rise hip twist. We then split off, moving to the centre of the stage until "I'll have tangoed at all", there is then a loud beat in the music following this in which i stamp my foot throwing my right hand out to pull Freya in. We were then inspired by the movies veion of the dance to Tango Maureen and decided we would copy some of the moves from their dance as well as having others join Me and Freya while dancing.

The groups we dancing are:
Me and Freya
Toby and Dan M
Tom and Meg
Carl and Lorna
Dan S and Dom
The groups were decided bassed aroung realtionships in the show as well as who was comfortable dancing the women steps in the number. The steps for the male side of dance break are two hop steps then step legs apart. Then we turn her out while letting go but then grab her to pull her back in with another turn. Those were the steps that we liked and wanted to borrow from the film but after those steps we are back with our partner in a circle shap around the stage in which we start to travel around the stage using the step left, right, up, up with our legs. Everyone else then leave while me an Freya split off to other sides of the stage to finish singng the song which is the end of our song.
Our target for the next lesson is to polish what we have stage as well as come up with a start to the number for me and Freya.

Life Support- Will I? Part 2

Today we decided that we would quickly run through "Life Support" and "Another day" before we moved onto "Will I?". We an through these numbers with little problem other than not everyone was confident with the lyrics in "Another Day" but we still decided to move on and stage "Will I?". In our version of "Will I?" we had Dom who is playing Paul start the song standingin the centre of the stage, the rest of us are spread out around him. We all decided we wanted to just stand and sing this number as we all the song is a very sentimental song that shouldn't have movement to accompany it after Dom sings through "Will I?" once, we split our selves into three groups to sing throurgh in the layers that get created during the song. Group one who sings through the song five times is me, Lorna and Tom. Group two is Toby, Dan M, Freya and Dom. The final group is Meg, Carl and Dan S.
After we had finished setting "Will I?" we went back to "Life Support" and ran all the way through to "Will I?". Having some speare time after setting these numbers we talked about what other songs in Act 1 we wanted to cut from our performance. The number we have cut from Act 1 rent are as followed:

• "You okay honey?"
• The end of "You'll See"
• "Out Tonight"
• "The streets"
• "Christmas Bells" except the starting verse
• La Vie boheme B

Life Support- Will I? Part 1

Today we looked at 3 different numbers to create over the next 2 lessons which are the numbers "Life support", "Another day" and "Will I?". We deided to cut "Out tonight" as we agreed that the song held no purpoes to the plot of story. We all received the words for "Life Support" while Tom and Meg went off to work on staging "Another day", we stage Life support sitting in a full circle and assigned the names of the members to our cast except we decided we would keep Meg as Mimi in the meeting to sulttlely tell our audienece that Mimi has Aids as well. Life support was resenable easy to set as we all decided to have everyone stay sitting with Tom at the appartment behind us.
After we finised setting "Life support" we brought back Tom and Meg and added them to our performance after inform them what we do during the song.
After we ran through "Life Support" with Tom and Meg and then moved onto have look at what thoes two created for their "Another day" piece. We all learned the last verse of the song to sing in the wings as we didn't want to create a dance on stage or create anything on stage to distract away from Tom and Meg's growing drama throughtout the song.

"I can't control
My destiny
I trust my soul
My only goal is just
To be
There's only now
There's only here
Give in to love
Or live in fear
No other path
No other way
No day but today...
No day but today
No day but today
No day but today
No day but today
No day but today"
These are the lyrics we all sing as a company at the end of another day, we spent the last half of our lesson singin through the lyrics trying to learn them. After we had finished learning "Another day" we ran out of tme to start looking at "Will I?" so we decided to go home and learn the words ready for the next lesson so that we could set the number quickly.

This is a video of our version of "Life support"

Rent Opening

Today we quickly ran though La Vie Boheme with no problems so we decided that we would move on and work on the opening of the show as Tom and Toby had planned out what they wanted to happen during the opening so weall agreed to let them take charge of the lesson.
Tom and Toby descrided as wanting the opening to be manic and unorganised to show off the fact that were all poor and almost homeless. So for the starting instramental they want everyone running on stage being frantic an bring on rusty junk. So we all talked about what kinds of objects we would find in a a rundown building.

Chairs
Ladders
Boxes
Industrial lights
Bin
Posters/paper
Stools

We came up with these ideas of what the others could brig on during the intramental, so from the strat of the song everyone is bring all this stuff on and moving it around the stage while I as Mark, am at the front of the stage singing. After im done singing I run and sit on the table while Tom starts his solo, on my next lryic of "We're Hungrey" I grab the table and Tom dose the same on "It's the life". On the next 3 "How we gunna pay" me and Tom get up of the table put our arms on each others shoulder and then sing out to the audience on "Last years rent". I run to stage right and Tom goes stage left to where Meg, Dom and Dan i tyring to burn his posters for heat while Tom is singing, i then run over to them for my verse. On the next "How we gunna pay" we go down low and start to rise for the "Last years rent", we then jump into slow motion for Freya's verse which we then freeze after for Toby's solo as collins. I then grab my camera and start to film Tom playing guitar as the others rise around the table during the next "How we gunna pay", a intramental starts which is the queue for Toms idea to have a live feed coming from my camera projecting him playing guitar on the table. Also during theinstramental Tom Choreographed a dance for the others to do behind his guitar playing that was inspired by broadway musical American idiot. when we all start to sing agin i jump on the table and Tom is crouched in front while everyone else starts to crowd around us until the end of the song where they all spread out to the back leaving me and tom at the table ending the song.

La Vie Boheme Part 2

Today we contiued to collectivly choregraph La Vie Boheme, we started at the beging so we could decide on how we get to our seats. Bennie is already sat at a table in the restruant when we are all stopped as a group for the waiters line "Oh no, please not tonight" but everyone starts to walk to their seats after Roger goes "What", this happens to show that the group aren't bothered by the waiter and believe him to be having a joke with them. Mark and the waiter exchange a few lyrics to each other where the waiter is still trying to convince us not to stay but Mark (I) still believes he is joking. We are all standing our the table and take our seats on the lyric "The enemy of Avenue A will stay". Bennie comes over to us and starts his solo on how he is trying to clean up the streets, we're stopping him and the bohemia is dead. As i get up on the table to start Mark's eulogy we decided as a goup that Angel would lay down on the table pretending to be dead as he is a more flamboyant character who wouldn't care what peopel think so he would just lay down on the table. In the background the rest of the cast start to act out the nativty with Johanne (Freya) givning birth, Roger cradeling a crying baby and Collins mking barn yard noises until we reach La Vie Boheme where start the choreography from last lesson.

Continuing from where we got up to in our last lesson for La Vie Boheme, we talked and came up with the next couple of steps to follow for the last part of my solo. On the next "La Vie" everyone turns their head to me, then on the one after that they point to the left and slowly start to rise. On the last "La Vie" they all drop back to their seats except me while I sing "To any passing fade", I then proceed to get up on the table while the others start to rise again for the lyric "Instead of one of them". We all dance for a little bit the take our seats again which we decided was a good idea so that Maurine and Johanne could have their conversation without having any distractions. After maurine and johannes dialogue we decided we didn't want any group choreography now and instead wanted to freestyle what we do in our solo's or group singings until we reached Mark and Mimi's "Why Dorapht" lyric. After this we all starting at Dan S ends cross our legs in cannon down the line and then on a loud beat in the music we swap leg. Maurine and Johanne have a second conversation infront of us and then it goes into group singing. We discussed and decided that we would freestyle the last part of song until the end of La Vie Boheme.

La Vie Boheme Part 1

Today we started work on our next production in double drama which is going to be the rock opera called "Rent". our cast list is:

Mark: Ashley

Roger: Tom

Collins: Toby

Angle: Dan M

Mimi: Meg

Joanne: Freya

Bennie: Carl

Maurine: Lorna

Paul: Dominic

Waiter: Dan S

We started working on choreographing La Vie Boheme and disscussed as a chorus what we would like to do. We decided from the first "la vie boheme" we would create 8 different pose times for each "la vie boheme". We then started a hand movement from the la vie boheme that followed Mark's line "To loving". The hand movement was agreed that we'd start with arms straight out crossed, left above right and then on each step of the best Wed do the following movement:

Cross arms infront

Move L hand to L side

Move R hand to R side

Lay arms on to each other (L on top)

Rotate L arm up

Rotate L arm down

R hand to under chin.

We ran through these movements with and we needed to change our starting poses so that our 8 pose We'd all be sat down. After that we continued with more hand movement following where we left off:

Stretch R arm forward

Grab and pull R back using L arm

Link arms with person next to you

Look Left

Look Right

Unlink arms

We talked what we wanted to do next and as a group we said it was too early for us all to get and start dancing now so we continued hand movements but a more reptative vibe to the next set of movements so we came up with the following choreography:

Raise R shoulder

Raise L shoulder

Look Right

Look Left

Shoulder shrugs

Repeat again doing the opposite direction of what we had just performed.

This was our first Rent lesson as a group we had managed to collectively go through each other's ideas and work a choreography for a section of La Vi Boheme.