Task Two: Performance of Bollywood Dance

 Final performance of Bollywood Dance 

1.1- Style 

During the rehearsals and final performance of Bollywood, we had to ensure we maintained full focus throughout to really embody the style to enhance our representation of Bollywood dance. Due to this style being completely new to me, I found this a challenge at the start with the quick pace and intricate movements, specifically the mudras (hand gestures). I found these a challenge as I feel I focused on how exact and precise my fingers needed be so much that I made a simple mudra seem so much harder than it actually needed to be. For our first few rehearsals, we focused a lot on the mudras to help us become more confident to allow us to multi task on both the mudras and the choreography to enhance our performance. Another technique we had to focus on was our feet positioning, I found this much easier than the mudras as I the feet positioning was only ever out in first or in parallel with the odd positioning of second. The song we performed our Bollywood dance was 'Jai Ho' by A.R Rahman and the Pussycat Dolls. The pace throughout the song is the same which allowed our bodies to really feel the music and embody the true Bollywood style, this also helped us all make sure our movements were in time with the music. 

In our final performance, we performed the dance in full Bollywood costume. I personally feel this helped accentuate the dance as it made us look the part and even made us feel the part. Being able to hear the jangle of the costume made me want to give even more of my all into the performance as it made me feel professional, as if I was performing this on stage. It also made me really appreciate the dance even more as I fell in love with the costume. 

I feel Bollywood is such a fun and interesting style of dance to learn as when researching the background of Bollywood dance you find out so much more about Bollywood than you thought there was like the fact that in every Bollywood dance there is a story going on within the performance, this is typically a love story between the lead female and male of the dance so therefore, even though you are watching a dance, you are also watching a love story happen at the same time. 

1.2- Qualities 

After watching back my final performance of Bollywood dance, I can clearly see that I effectively used dynamics, space, techniques, expression, rhythm and musicality to create a well rounded performance. 

Throughout the dance, I feel I have been very accurate with the dynamics. The section which I feel shows this the most is the beginning section of the dance, I feel in this section I effectively show the contrast of movements from the harsh ones being the quick paced hand movements to the softer ones which were the hip circles with my arms around my head. The contrasting dynamics allowed me to flow with the music and really embody the style. 

The use of my spatial awareness was key when performing this as we all needed to ensure we were in the correct position to fully create the picture within our dance, In the still images section, our spatial awareness had to be spot on as if one of us were out of place, it would make the rest of us look out of place too. When it comes to technical accuracy, I feel that I did that well and knew exactly how the movements were meant to be however, there is a section where I feel I didn't exceed and that was in the last section where we leant out to the left then to the right, for this movement I know that I went the complete wrong direction of everyone else, if I worked on this a little more then I feel I would have exceeded in this. When looking at Bollywood dancing I noticed that the expression are very minimal until the main section of the dance which is the climax of the story when all dancers have an expression on their face, when performing our dance of Bollywood, this is what I tried to do. At the beginning my face was very neutral where as in the section where we move a lot, my face start to create a smile which gets bigger as the dance goes on. For this performance, I needed to ensure I had good musicality and rhythm to really connect with the music and create the performance. 

1.3-Context and interpretation

After watching back my final performance of Bollywood, I feel that I can confidently communicate the meaning of dance towards the audience through my movements and expressions. I feel doing background research on Bollywood really helped me understand so much about the style and learn the qualities of it, I also feel that it made me feel more confident when performing it as I saw how it should be performed.