Costume Construction

A new topic

Over the past month we have started a new project in costume construction. We have to design make and document the costumes for a school production! As we are not doing a school production we have decided to make the costumes for Rock Challenge, an annual dance and drama competition that our school competes in. The theme for this years Rock challenge is A Midsummer Nights Dream. We are making the costumes for Titanias fairies. This includes building on a net tutu and decorating it as well as decorating a matching leotard and tights. Each costume is individual so each person in the group has a different dancers costume.

As these costumes are being worn on stage we have to ensure that they are produced well and are durable. This had to be done to enable ourselves to gain a distinction in this module.

To begin with we made the decoration that would go on the skirts, we firstly learn how to make roses. Firstly you cut out a wide strip of matterial and fold it in half, tacking with a needle and tread all the way down the open side of the fold. Once at the end slightly scrunch up the matterial. Fold the edge of the material down where you finished sewing, make sure it is tight at the bottom and tack until secure. Twist the matterial around so that the bottom of the rose will be in a spiral shape. Every so often tack the bottom of the rose tightly. Once at the end of the material, fold the edge down as you did at the begining and hide the open seem. tack securely and tie a knot at the end. Secondly we learnt how to make the leaves. Firstly you cut a strip of material, half the size of the material you cut for the roses, place the leaf template ontop and cut around it. Once you have many leaves cut of of material pair them up, pin them back to back. Tack round the edge leaving a small gap at the end. Turn the leave inside out using the hole left. Finally tack neatly along the open edge. Your leaf is complete.

Once we had all the decoration done we could continue with making the skirt. As we didnt have much time we used a basic net tutu as the base for our costume. We ripped many different colour strips that corresponded with our colour scheme. We then grouped the strips together and folded them in half. After this we pinned all the groups onto the skirt to ensure we had enough material satin strips. Once this was completed we tacked the grouped satin strips onto the elasticated waist band. This had to be done over and over again for each group so that they would be secure on the skirt. A way to test if the strips are securely attached was to tug lightly on them, if they came away the tacking was too loose if they didnt it was now considered secure. Once tacked tie a knot at the end of thread for safety. Once the stain strips had be securely attatched to the elasticated waist band we had to go round and cut the ends of the material into a point. This gave it a more fairy-like look which fits the theme and design criteria. After all the satin strips had been attached and cut it was now time to attach the decoration-ie the roses and leaves we made previously. We attacked the leaves first to the waistband and tacked repeatedly until secure like we did for the satin strips. To attach the roses you had to tack as before but through the centre of the rose so that the shape was still kept. Here is a picture of the finished skirt:

This is the finished skirt. My colour scheme is purple, yellows, and sparkly strips. I enjoyed making the skirt and found most of the techniques simple and easy to understand. I will continue this enjoyment when customising the leotard to go with the skirt. So that the skirt stands out on stage it will have fairy lights underneath it.

We have also help construct parts such as the roses and leaves for the main parts cotumes. here are some images of them.

<-Titanias costume left

 Cobwebs costume right ->

 <-Mustard seed and Peaseblossom left

All costumes right->

The Nutcracker performed by the English National Ballet.

One of my christmas presents from my cousins was to go and see the nutcracker performed by the english national ballet.I was so excited and the performance they gave didnt let me down.

We were in the upper circle so we could see mainly everything and the show was incredible. I remember watching the movie the barbie nutcracker when i was younger, so i knew the storyline well. But the barbie nutcraker had nothing on this performance.

The dancers were enchanting, the way they were so flexible and so able and free was hypnotising. The first half went by so quickly because i was enjoying it so much. Watching almost half of the cast on stage up on point yet holding themselves and being able to balance amazed me most. Considering i find it incredible when i can stand on my tip toes with my jazz trainers on for 3 seconds. I sat there mesmorised by their magnificent dancing and not one of them made a mistake fell or came out of character whilst still putting on the most amazing dance show.

I myself am not a trained ballet dancer but watching them made me want to be. Watching them i wished that i was as flexible, as talented as them. The dancing was just incredible, and every single movement told a story, and there was feeling in every step. the whole performance was just outstanding and i would recomend it to anyone.

Watching them on stage just makes me want to be in the performing arts industry even more.
*EDITED DUE TO COMMENT UNDERNEATH*
When watching the ballet i couldnt stop watching the main ballerina.  The way they used the character and create the choreography was amazing and vise versa. She was so in character and never went out of time or mood once. She performed to her best and was amazing. The night i watched it the understudy was performimg because the main ballerina was ill, you could see thorugh her performance that even though she was in character how much she wanted to be there and how much she so wanted that performance! The character of the ballerina was partly an individual role but however was some what reliant on the nutcracker character. You could see every move she did had some sort of meaning or relevance to the story/storyline. Every breath she took on stage was totally in character, every move she made was in character! she was faultless! Throughout the performance she had solo performances although they dwindled out as the character became more dependant and had more of a relationship with the nutcracker character! seeing her on stage and how amazing her characterisation was i will definitly try to use this experiance when performing.

before christmas...

Before we even go into what happened over the Christmas holidays we need to say what happened before. We were still working on jazz and we have now completed all 3 workshops- woo! If we recap there was the first one which was lyrical jazz taught by Kelly Myriam and Alice, then there was the rock and roll jazz which was taught by Shauna, Ellie, myself, Louise and Laura-Anne, and finally there was the street jazz taught by Chloe Shannon and Katie.

We all enjoyed teaching the dances to our class mates as we all like to be bossy and in charge, and i think i can say on behalf of the class that we all enjoyed learning them, even if we don't usually dance that sort of style. I know i personally enjoyed learning the other two, mainly because i have become more confident in the more contemporary side of dancing and i do dance street myself so i enjoyed learning that. In a way learning these jazz style dances has helped us, as a group, get to know the performing arts industry because when you go to learn a dance you are expected to pick it up whether you're a dancer trained in that style or not.

Nearing the end of the term we looked back at the dances and we went over them again, off camera. Just so that we remembered them. But then we took time out from dancing and took time to organise our folders or do the jazz workbook. We also watched our performance at our school carol concert. We just performed our hairspray routine that we performed at HMS has got talent.

Although the jazz unit is not completely over, i have enjoyed learning and performing jazz and i really like the style.

jazz and a busy two weeks...

To start with we are working on our next assignment, jazz dance! Which i am very excited about as it is much similar to disco/freestyle which is the dance style i feel most comfortable in. We started with learning a dance choreographed by Miss Dolan and i am thoroughly enjoying it. Whilst half way through that we moved onto our individual choreography tasks, we had to split into groups one of which will choreograph a contemporary jazz routine, another a street jazz routine and lastly one will choreograph a Rock'n'Roll jazz routine. We will later teach these dances to the rest of the class. I am in the group that is choreographing the rock'n'roll routine. I really enjoy rock'n'roll and i am extremely pleased that i am in this group. We picked the song 'Candyman' by Christina Aquleria as this is a very upbeat and bouncy song much like rock'n'roll techniques. Although its, at the moment, not completed we are partly thorugh choreographing and only have a little bit more to do!
Secondly the other weekend i had tickets to the x-factor live shows! WOW, it was amazing, i enjoyed myself so much. All the contestants were amazing and so were the dancers. Going to the x-factor really gave me an insight to the performing arts industry, i got to see all the dancers preparing themselves, make up touch ups, the wy the cameras worked and timings for television. The layout of the studio was incredible! seeing all the dancers up on stage makes me what to be a west end dancer so much more. A dancer more than a singer because i am not comfortable with singing and need to work on my vocals a lot more! I had an amazing day and evening! i also got to meet John Wilding and Luke Lucas contestants that didnt make it to the live shows and they were so kind and lovely!

Finally, I danced at watford football club on halloween weekend! I am part of the 'Watford trust awareness dancers' every so often we perform dances we have worked on before the match and at half time. Although it is slightly embarressing when you spot people in the audience you know because you are so close to them and in character. However i wore a mask as it was halloween and nobody could tell who i was! I love dancing at watford because you get to see the audience's reaction immediately and the adrenaline rush is incredible. Although at this performance the footballers were practise shooting behind us and one ball did nearly hit my head, rather scary!
Overall i have thoroughly enjoyed the past couple of weeks and it has made me realise my love for the industry! even if i have realised i need to work on my singing!

The Past Two Weeks..

These past two weeks we have been working on our hairspray routine. We performed it last Sunday. Although we have worked incredibly hard on the routine and had to work out the dynamics and we discovered that the singers couldn't dance and sing at the same time so although they had to do the dance moves they didn't do them as energetically as the rest of the group.

When we got to the event (MSH got talent)  on Sunday the 2nd October 2011. We rehearsed and supported the other rehearsing acts, all the singers rehearsed with the head mics. They were around £2000 each, which scared some of the singers i think! Allthough we felt very professional and it was amazing experience we saw that the stage was much deeper than expected! So before we did our technical rehearsal we walked through the routine and worked out the position's.

We did our technical rehearsal and we all thought that we did well and we really enjoyed dancing it! In the evening we went back and got ready! We did all our hair and make up and got into our costumes. Here are some pictures of us!

We performed 5th, we were all incredibly pleased with the performance and the audience's reaction was amazing! We were all buzzing with adrenaline from the performance. However we soon all clicked back into reality when we got some harsh comments from some of the judges! Overall we were scored 26 out of 40, which i am sure all the girls will say, we were pretty disappointed with that as we thought we had performed really well. In my opinion i thought it was the best we had ever danced it! During the interval we all had individual audience members come up to us and say that we had been judged wrongly and that they really enjoyed the performance. Unfortunately, our day was somewhat ruined by the comments of the judges. Although i am still incredibly pleased with our performance and with all the girls.

Overall it had been a brilliant 2 weeks and performing for MSH got talent really gave the girls and i an insider to the performing arts industry. It gave us a chance to experience things that they use in the industry such as the equipment. We were exposed to some criticism and when in the performance industry you have to be able to accept that and work on the comments. Bounce back from any unreasonable comments and carry on performing, which we have been doing.

i have thoroughly enjoyed these two weeks! Its sad to think that these two years could be coming to an end soon.

Taking a break..

This week in performing arts we have been focusing on creating choreography for a competition our group will be competeing in. We are dancing and singing to the hairspray song 'you cant stop the beat', i have enjoyed this as this is really the style of dance i do best! cheesey ott dancing! I've previously done dance routines to this song so i have merged them together and created some choreography that i have taught the group. Although very tiring i love this dance! It makes me happy and bubbly which is what dancing is mean to do!

In costume design we have been focusing on bringing the work already done together and placing it on boards to create topical mood boards for this topic. We have finished some costume designs and completed all research, we have begun to present our boards and have attacked fabric swatches.

Also this week i took part in a national ISTD qulifying competition. In these competitions you compete against other girls and boys in your age and medal catagory for a place at the national finals which will take place on the 9th of october. At this competition i danced rock'n'roll with my partner because i have qualified in set dance at a previous event. When we danced rock'n'roll they played the music for a long time, and considering rock'n'roll is a very technical yet uobeat dance this made us very tired and we lost engergy. I didnt think we'd get a call back for the next round but we did! and we danced much better! round after round we got through and we even got into the final! Nand although we didnt qualifie for the nationals i am proud to say that we came 4th out of about 25 couples! it was a successful day of dancing!                                                                                                                         

This shows my partner and i when we collected our medals for 4th place.

First Week back in performing arts!

Well, although we didnt have performing arts much this week because we just got back off of the summer holidays and had a half week, we've already cracked on and done an assessment! how good are we!

Over the summer we had to memorise and learn our own individual monologues! The monologue that i was given to perform was called 'And turning, stay'. It was an argument between lovers who had broken up. I've never really been in this position before so to get a real idea of how you'd feel in a situation i spoke to my mum! she told me that if you've just broken up with someone you really love then of course you're going to feel hurt upset and sad. One other thing that she said some people feel is, insecure and vunerable. As  this was my first performance of something like this i decided that i would use the 'vunerability' idea. I knew i would be nervous, even though i wouldnt be performing to a live audience, so i decided that i'd use my nerves and turn it into the vunerable character who is feeling very insecure! I performed it, it was filmed and fingers crossed i did ok?!!!
One other thing we did this week was get our observation sheets back, one thing i forgot to do was do some research on the kit kat grils from Caberet, so expect to see that on here soon guys!

We had costume construction this week too, we tried to finalize our initial costume designs as we will be needing them soon to start making them! how exciting!
speak during the week!