Week 6

Monday 25^th February

In our first lesson back from half term, we were coming up to our final few rehearsals before our showcase. This meant that we should be confident with the School Song and the other performances, so we used these lessons to perfect and prepare. We began with an individual warm up. We were taught different warm up techniques at the beginning of the year, and we put them into practise in today’s lesson. This involved stretching and singing up scales us “la” and “fa”.

The first song we went over was There is nothing like a Dame. I remembered most of the choreography and harmonies, but I wasn’t sure on which way I was supposed to step after my line had thread through the line in front. I made sure that I asked so that I would know for the future.

 Our feedback as a group was that the harmonies at the end were particularly strong and that our vocals were clear and loud during the chorus. However, we needed to improve on our characterisation and work on our accents. As we were portraying boys, I made sure that I sat with my legs open and I lent back onto one hand, to mimic the impression that I was bored. I also made sure that I kept an American accent throughout, during the second run through.

We then ran over Seasons of Love. I made sure to practice during the half term as I had a solo part that needed a lot of lung capacity due to having to hit a D5. Our feedback was that we needed the ending harmonies to end on the relative minor. We were also told that we needed to give our performance more emotion, and that we needed to learn the context of the song in order to give a powerful performance. I was previously aware of the musical Rent and understood that the lyrics ask what the proper way is to quantify the value of a year in human life and says that the most effective means is to "measure in love".

 My target was to make sure that I kept the context in my head for future performances.

 Tuesday 26^th February

In today's lesson, we focused purely on the school song.Our first task was to change into the costumes that we will be wearing for the piece. The costumes consisted of a white shirt and either black trousers or a black skirt and most of us also wore ties. This costume was chosen as we had to look like school children. I felt that it looked effective and being in costume allowed me to get into my character.

As the costume section of the lesson took a little bit longer than we originally thought, we did not have enough time to do a proper, thorough warm up. If we had more time, it would have been sensible to make sure they were properly warmed up as we would be partaking in a high level of movement. Come performance day, I will make sure that I am fully warmed up, both physically and vocally in order to be safe and as prepared as I can possibly be for the assessment.

 After running through the number once in full costume, our feedback was that we had to work on the “phys ed” section towards the end as it lacked character and we also need to make sure we did not rush to get into our places (kneeling at the front in lines)

We then, as a group, decided to add some last-minute choreography to clean up that section. The choreography consisted of placing our right fist in the air then our left fist, then crossing both hands over and pulling them apart while descending our head left, mimicking chopping of our heads. These four movements were to be on the beat as we repeated the letter “eh”. We did a similar move at the beginning of the piece which means that, altogether, our performance will look more polished.