Week 9, compare task

 

In this blog post I will be comparing two of James Wilton’s pieces. I have decided to compare The Shortest day and The Storm.

I will be beginning with The Shortest day. I chose this work as our group were inspired by it when creating our choreography. We were inspired by the small pauses in the movement and the way the dancers portray a feeling of confusion. They do this by stopping and looking around as if they are lost. We were inspired by this and added our own version of this movement in our piece. In the Shortest day, Wilton seems to have really thought about the thoughts and feeling of the audience when watching the piece. Right from the beginning of the movement I was compelled due to how the dancers were really selling the small movements they performed. For example, one dancer was just looking around however the way in which he did it caught my eye and inspired me for my choreography. In the beginning the dancers perform small and slow movements whilst they are deeply in character. They then explode out as the music changes. We were also inspired by this factor of the work, we incorporated a prominent beat drop in our choreography music so that we could rapidly change dynamics and catch the audience’s attention. The fact that there are only four dancers in the piece showed our group that we could create something amazing with a small amount of people. The way that the dancers repeat movements together throughout the piece shows unity despite the dancers each doing their own thing for the majority of the dance. We also incorporated this in the improvisation part of our dance. In order to still show the sense of unity we created throughout the piece we each perform the same movements during the improvisation during the counts 7 and 8 and then we go back to performing our own movement. Overall, the dance seems very chaotic and every movement seems unexpected.

Similarly, to The Shortest day, in The Storm each movement seems unexpected. As if the dancer does not know what is coming next but their body takes them. This is a very eye-catching factor to this piece. In this piece there are many dancers which allows there to be many uses of different formations and sometimes some of the dancers leave the stage. However, in the Shortest day all the dancers stay on stage. They seem to be less focused on the different formations therefore they seem random and misplaced. In the Storm, the movement is very grounded and chaotic. Some of the dancers may stay still whilst the others dance. A similar thing is done in the Shortest day as when a dancer breaks off into solo the other individuals perform small movements to prevent taking attention away from the dancer performing a solo. Both of the pieces have fast and upbeat music which in both works sometimes contrasts with the movement as well as correlating in the more fast and chaotic phrases. In both of the works contact is used in order to support one another. This also gives a sense of unity to both pieces. In both pieces, all the dancers wear trousers and a tight top. However, In the Shortest day their costumes are a mismatch of colours which correlates to the mismatch of formations used in the piece. In the Storm, all of the costumes are dark orange or brown colours which gives a neat vibe to the piece contrasting to the Shortest day.

Overall, I believe this analysis of both pieces has really shown the way in which James Wilton choreographs movement. I can see how he is not afraid to incorporate stillness into his piece as well as using a more relaxed way of creation. For example, the way the formations do not seem to be set within the Shortest day tells me his choreographic approach to this work is relaxed which contrasts to most choreographers. I think both the pieces I chose are similar in the way that they contain very grounded movement which seems chaotic and unexpected to the audience. Both of the works are eye-catching and thrilling to watch. This task has inspired me due to seeing the amazing movement Wilton has created in both pieces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5_8XULLto0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcdjluM44jg