Evaluation of Chorus Line - continuing from last term.

This evaluation is about a musical theatre piece that is combined with singing and dancing. It is a famous finale ensemble using unison from the musical 'Chorus Line'.
           Firstly I will evaluate my professional practise . Throughout our the weeks of learing ‘One’ as though I was very dedicated to the project, dance lessons always started in the afternoon so I had no reason to be late, I also made myself available for out of lesson rehearsals. I think that my focus in lessons were very good as I was in the front line, I had to be very vigilant because our choreography was slightly more complexed then the back line. I believe I did well working as a team with the rest of the dancers, we really had to help eachother out to make sure we were all doing the same thing at all times. I found at times when I couldn’t quite understand how to do a move I would ask Ruth to go through it with me slowly and she would kindly do so.
            In the beginning I struggled with the cross- ball change, because we had to cross-ball change to the right and then turn around and repeat the same on the left, but for some reason it really confused me and It looked messy and It would put me off. However I wasn’t the only one who stuggled so the choreography was adapted in a way for us to exit the stage before the cross- ball change so then I felt more comfortable knowing what I was doing. Closer to the date of the final performance it was changed again for me to then be doing the cross- ball change in order for the staging to look better I was very nervous and anxious for the show because I didn’t want to be the one to mess up because it would be noticeable.
          In my opinion for the beginning of the piece I had really good muscle memory, I picked up the moves quickly and could do the moves without thinking, but I feel like as the song went on, even though alot of the dance was repetitive there were slight adjustments that needed to be added and so I began to forget some parts and felt myself using my proriveral vision to see what the other dancers were going to do next and I felt like it was like this because the ending was very rushed and we had a very small space of time to learn it.
         I have a habit of having a very serious face when I am concentrating especially if I haven’t got a mirror In front of me, so you sort of forget what your facial expressions are like and you focus on remembering how the choreography was done in the mirror and how you need tp execute it the same way just with out the mirror. Because ‘One’ is from the 70s era and it is also a finale song, facial expressions are everything, you need to be overly happy and overly expressive with every thing you do and basically look like to the audience that the whole ensemble is very easy and this is what we do all the time because we are professional dancers. If i’m honest I managed to remember to keep smiling sometimes throught the routine. For example when I made an entrance to the stage and did the step kicks and then again when we formed a snake and exited the stage the re-entered with step-taps and then finally at the end of the song to finish the song.
           In my opinion the allignment and accuracy in some aspects of the performance. For example when the back line exits the stage and the front line runs in a line to further down the stage and start the cross-ball change, I feel as though the line wasn’t as straight as it could’ve been because at that point of the song and dance the tempo changes and speeds up a bit so the line becomes less straight as we rush in to place. Alot of times in rehearsal spacing became an issue, as we would go too far to the right, that a dancer would end up going off stage. I noticed accuracy and allignment became an issue when the frontline took of there hats in cannon, I felt like it was rushed and could’ve been tighter.Then the effect would’ve worked much better, just like the movie. In the finale the front line had to turn around in canon in order to go on to repeating the first step of 8 in the routine. We did learn this vey last minute and I feel like there was alot of uncertainty of when to turn around, some thought straight away after the second beat of eight and others thought to wait until the person in front of them turned around but I think if we had rehearsed that a bit more it could’ve been on point.
         When singing and dancing at the same time I realised like 2 minutes through the song I had lost my breath and was struggling to keep up with the singing, my sound was getting quieter and so I focused on dancing and tried to pick up the singing at some points in hoping the audience would be distracted by my smile because I was really tired and I tried to make sure my performance didn’t start to slack.
         Timing throughout the ensemble seemed really good, but could always be better and even tighter, when watching the perfomance back, I realise I posed to finish the finale to early, so I was waiting for everyone else to pose so that we could throw our hats up.