Rehearsing

Will taught us some exercises which we then adapted into the performance.

The most difficult exercise for me was reluctant beauty, because it was hard just left your body go without controlling it and making weird shapes which weren't forceful. Doing the exercise over again it became easier to go with the flow and loosen my body posing in deranged ways trying to look beautiful.

Magpie Dance Charity Research

Magpie Dance

May 1985 – Present (28 years 3 months) Bromley, United Kingdom

Magpie delivers over 200 sessions every year for over 200 people. A recent new partnership with Oxleas NHS Health Trust supported by Reaching Communities, Big Lottery to deliver inclusive dance sessions for older people, challenging behaviours and people on the autistic spectrum. 

Magpie dance charity is a contemporary dance company for learning disabled dance. The company is well known for it's inspiring work and inclusivity.

Magpie believe that you can over come any obstacles, no matter if you have a disability or not. They'll try their best to make you feel comfortable and make you bring out the best of your ability. For example; if you was in a wheelchair and can't use your legs or limbs to dance, they'll adapt that and have someone either dance while they're steering you around or jump on top of the wheelchair, if you're comfortable with them doing so and create a movement or shape on top of it.

Funding;

Location;

Astley centre in Magpie hall lane Bromley 

Avril Hitman - Artistic Director

 

Avril Hitman founded the charity in 1985; she has the overall responsibility for the selection and interpretation of the work which will later be performed.

Aswel as being the artistic director Avril also manages the company which a hand full of artistic directors do.

Avril has been in the performing arts industry for 35years, this lead her to start leading and facilitating dance workshops for people with a range of abilities and ages.

Her aim was to help her students gain confidence and dance skills in a 45 minute dance class each week.

Two decades on, the over subscribed classes help around 80 adults and young people every single week, with over 200 scheduled sessions each year.

Interview:

Mrs Hitman said: “What we want is for the charity to be sustainable into the future so that there will be a Magpie here for people who need us.

“It’s been going more than 20 years and we want to make sure it is going to be providing opportunities well into the future for more people with learning disabilities.

“The main thing is getting some sort of financial stability for Magpie, which is important if we are to go on developing what we do.

“The charity has to raise around £250,000 every year and none of that is regular funding. It is quite a challenge.”

As part of our Help Magpie Fly campaign, News Shopper is helping to raise £100,000 for the charity helping people from across south-east London and north Kent.

“I very much see Magpie as an opportunity to open doors for people, to help realize their potential” Mrs Hitman said.

“The creative arts are vital and are a medium for people to get involved.

“It’s a way to channel creative ideas while developing skills.”

The mum-of-two from Chislehurst added: “If you find communicating difficult then dance is a fantastic medium because it doesn’t rely on verbal communication - it relies on you as a person.”

The idea for Magpie Dance came about after Mrs Hitman who had previously taught dance for 12 years, shadowed well-respected practitioner Wolfgang Stange who founded AMICI Dance Company in west London.

“I knew after taking part in the session that I wanted to work with people with learning disabilities”, Mrs Hitman said.

Got to dance

On the 7th Jan 2012, Magpie dance comapny thought it's about time to get there inclusivity and talent out there, so they applied for Got to dance;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlEt3ZN5h80

Getting all threee gold stars Avril Hitman as the artistic director and founder of magpie dance charity was proud of her work and most of all the passion and commitment which was showed on that stage.

Devising Ideas

As a whole we all looked at the the most interesting and common themes that we got from everybodies research, which we found at croydon library this being; change, crime and attitudes towards disabilities.

We then set off in groups, Raph, Hannah and I looked at the idea of contrasting good and bad. This being someone that looks bad on the outside but in the inside they're good and a kind person, which symbolizes 'Don't judge a book by it's cover.' The contrast of good and bad also represented people who had disabilities and how we judge them without actually knowing there talents, interests and so on.
But thinking ahead we wanted to be more diverse and thought it would be better to get rid of the good and bad person, but to have the cave represent the contrasting. An object being so dull and dark on the outside but as you walk in and get deeper in the cave it becomes more beautiful and bright, this is where the crystals also come in.

After sharing our ideas with the class we moved onto a different task, we was now put into different groups and each group was given a different area in the crystal centre, with the areas we where given we had to think of performance ideas.
Raph, Cassie and I was given the loft trap



To devise this piece we thought it would be a good idea to gain more ideas by actually using the loft at Brit.
At first there wasn't really any discussion and all three of us where lost for ideas, to over come this we decided to actually get up on our feet and each stand on a different level on the loft which worked.
The scene we came up with was mainly around a different individual being inspected by doctors, wondering what she/he is, if she/he is human, why does he/she look that way and just really confused in all.
On each level there would be a different inspection happening, the higher the level gets the deeper the concern and the more tense the investigation gets, for example; level 1 - doctors making he/she cough, looking inside their mouth or even tapping their knee. Level 2 - picking her up, playing with their limbs, tugging at her. Level 3 - opening her/his eye lids, pinching her/his, smelling him/her.
Too add more of a dramatic edge to the scene we also wanted to use a soundscape by either hitting the bars with an object or our hands or using our feet.

Negatives;

As a group we could of worked more as a team and came up with more ideas by pushing one another and not doubting ourselves. We could of also added more detail into our ideas by looking at it from a directors point of view.

Teaching it to the class

When teaching the piece Raph, Cassie and I created to the class, it was difficult as no one was listening and we didn't think of detail as much so it was hard giving directions to the class. It was also a challenge as Hannah, Alex and Saffron had a simaliar idea to ours by using 'giving birth' and the doctors, so we had to re think about our scene and change parts of it to make it different to the second scene.
The first part of the scene was giving birth but we changed this and decided to be more abstract by using the beeping heart monitor as a stimulus by getting everybody to stomp there feet like a heart beat. This idea then changed because it was hard to stamp your feet and walk in neutral, we changed this by giving each person a number, these numbers being 1 or 2. 1s would walk back and 2s would walk forward and each person would repeat the word 'beep beep', this would create the zig zag effect that is on a heart monitor, 'Other' then runs straight through zig zag, which represented a different birth.
We then made a swift transition from the person at the end of the line walking off and everybody following still in a line then into a circle. When in the circle 'Other' is in the middle and everybody else changes into a doctor. When doing this part I found it dull and boring as their was no character given to anybody to act and no sound apart from their feet. So I thought it would be a good idea for everybody to be doctors either writing down something about daisy, scratching their chin, or just showing any sign of interest, when doing these actions everybody will also say 'hmmm'.
After that a lift happened with 'Other' and everybody moved into a open semi circle shape, Cassie then gave everybody a number; 1 - laugh, 2 - revolted (errr), 3 - amazed (aww) or 4 - interested (eyes widen and scratching chin). We decided to do this in cannon starting with ones, to give it more of an affect and tension to the scene.
The final part to the scene was the doctor checks on the chairs, this was the most challenging part as the atmosphere from then just went dull and no effort was put in. Will soon changed this and everything was back up to scratch.

Crystal Centre Road History

Daisy, Amy and I was given the task to find history on St. James road, we had to find this research at 'Croydon Library.'

 

Negatives;

Finding information about St. James road was difficult, we couldn't find any interesting facts or stories about the road in any books and nothing really caught our eyes when we was going through pictures. But as Amy got set up on the computer she found plenty crime statics about the road and from then on everything started looking more positive, we found funny, weird and interesting news article stories which came in handy the most.

St. Giles

Today the art students and my class visited St. Giles. St. Giles is a school which educates children with cerebral palsy. We visited the school to meet the children and bond with them to gain some ideas for our performance. The children at St. Giles had created some wonderful art pieces based around crystals which they shared with us, and the art students had also done the same. These art pieces for the performers will help us gain some ideas and find a stimulus for the final performance.

St. Giles artwork;

Looking at the images each of them where colourful.

After we looked at there pictures and took photos of them, we moved on to doing a task with the children. The art students had a sheet of paper which had diamonds on it, after you coloured in the diamonds you then could cut it out and make the diamonds into a big one. We all scattered are selves around the room helping a child with there diamond.

Hannah, Jiselle and Me 

Jiselle loved art and her mum is an artist, therefore her diamond was very creative and she mixed colours in each diamond with the top bright and the bottom darker, which turned out very good.

Diamonds Completed;

Site Specific Performance Positives and Negatives

Positives;

• Found the space we wanted to perform in without any hassle and was all happy with it
• Worked well as a group
• Ideas came together and fitted well
• Objective was handle well with great energy and commitment

Negatives;

• Making sure the audience was able to see everything that happened
• Combining the history of the site with the performance

Having had information now on the space we chose to perform in, we found it difficult combining dance and the use of the TVs as neither of them had a connection to each and we as a group wanted to include the TVs, it being the main object in the room. By sitting down and talking about the situation together, we over came this obstacle by using our actions in a routine like way having; different dynamics, using cannon, doing things in unison and using our bodies and actions to tell the story rather than speaking.

Evaluation of Site Specific Performance

Megan's Group

I chose to evaluate Megan's group as I found there performance was very adventurous and well acted. I liked the fact they had a tour guide to keep the audience alert and still interested in what was going on, I also enjoyed that the tour guide kept the same emotion throughout the piece, even when she was telling us about hell and asking us about our sins, because it added humour to the performance. 

My favourite part in the performance was how they split the audience in half basing it on how bad there sins where, taking one half to hell and keeping the other half where they where to go to heaven. As this happened I was with the half that went to hell, the tour guide then made us stand outside a wardrobe and spoke to us about where we was going, making sure we where not aware of the wardrobe that much and someone then jumped out of it and took us in the wardrobe one by one and told us to scream making the performance still exciting. This was my favourite part because it involved the audience and made you want more.