PDC Dance Practice Schedule: After School Student Choreography

Please make sure you and your parents are aware of which dances you are in.  You MUST be at ALL practices for the pieces you are in!!!  Every practice is essential.

Every Friday B8 in class we will do showings.  Parents and others are welcome to come and watch and give feedback of our works in progress during our showings, which will start at 1:30 pm.

Nov 1:  Dances need to be half choreographed

Nov 15:  Dances need to be finished choreographed

Nov 25:  Dances should be cleaned

Soon after is the Thanksgiving Break.  Upon returning we go into the 2 weeks of concert prep staying after school doing spacing, tech-ing, lighting, dress rehearsal, etc.  

PDC this week, and our upcoming CONCERT!!!

Hello lovely ladies!

Good job to those that tried out for PDC for next year!  The list with the new member's names has been given to the counselor to put in.  Leave it blank, B8 (B-day 4th period) on your schedule.  

New Members, you will be performing Nat's combo in the dance concert.  Date and time of a short 1-2 hour rehearsal tba shortly.  Also, Congrats to Akaysha Greer, next year's PDC President!

Thursday is when we should have our dances cleaned, as per our calendar.  Please work hard!  

Costumes:  It is almost past the deadline to purchase costumes that will need to be shipped.  I hope we can use things we already have, or find some cheap things in nearby stores.  Choreographers, please be on top of costuming your dance.

Choreographers:  Whitney is working hard trying to put together the concert program on her own time.  Please get all information to her as soon as possible, including title, music artist, dancers, and any notes.

Choreographers, have your music cut by this Thursday.  If you need help, Mrs. D, Akaysha, and some others may be able to help with music editing.  If you have a mac and garage band, it is really easy.

Finale:  Natalie and Kalli will be working with you on the finale and should have the music cut this week.  Grade levels, have your sections of choreography completed this week and cleaned as much as possible.  We will be doing some of this in class.

Natalie's Dance:  we will be working on this in class, (as well as the finale).  

Extra practices:   your choreographer may have called an extra emergency practice to finish off or clean their dance.  Now is crunch time, and you need to attend and be on time to every practice.  

I know this Saturday morning Natalie, and Whit/Kenna are having an extra practice.  Please check with your choreographers.

Mandi's Practice:  Due to Junior registration, Mandi's practice was changed from Monday to this Wednesday, right after Autumn's dance. 

Nyah's Practice:  Due to missing dancers, also because of registration, Nyah will be having a practice this Thursday following Autumn/Kalli's dance, right at 3:40pm.

Poster:  Ashlyn, Akaysha, and Natalie, please send your outline drawing of how you want the poster, along with the picture/photo to Mrs. Di Lello as soon as possible, early this week.  If you can do it on your own without my help, in photoshop or some other program, please do so.   

Slide Show:  Please send your favorite photos from this past year to McKenna.  I think Kenna and Whitney were going to put together the slide show, with a Vegas section.  We can show this at intermission or right before the finale.

Tickets:  Who was making these?  We will also need volunteers (parents) to sell/take tickets and concessions both days of our concert.

All info for concert (poster, slideshow, program, tickets):  please approve and run a draft by me, Mrs. Di Lello for approval, then they will be sent off to the printers.  You do get NHSDA points for doing this, as you are helping "put on" the concert!

National Honor Society for Dance Arts (NHSDA):

If you want to be inducted or get extra points (starts) please turn in your packet no later than Friday of this week for processing.  If you have not been inducted you will need to pay the induction fee.  If you are graduating and want honor cords, please also pay the according fee and get all of your info in to me so I can order them.

SCHEDULE for CONCERT WEEK:

I hope you have gotten off your work and made appropriate arrangements for these upcoming 2 weeks.  If there are some extenuating circumstances, please let me know no later than this WEDNESDAY the day and the latest you can stay at the school, and the earliest you can come back to the school.  I know that things sometimes come up and I will try my best to arrange certain dances to be at the best times.  I will try to have most of our practices done no later than 8:00pm, but this all depends on the techies and your patience.  Guest choreographers, please get me the all the times you are available to space and light your piece.  I want to get our schedule out to everyone by the end of this week (fingers crossed).

Remember, when you are not spacing or lighting on the stage, you will be cleaning your dance in the dance room.  

Parents:  We would love to have parents bring some snacks and drinks on the nights of our lighting and tech-ing.  We will have a sign up in the dance room and will be asking the dancers to sign you up for a certain day for either a snack or drinks.  

Our concert (not recital) is only as good as you make it.  You are all beautiful and talented!  Let's put forth the little extra effort to show everyone how amazing we are!  This does require work, and work pays off :)

More and updated info will be posted often here on our blog.  Keep checking!

Love you all!  Keep being amazing!

~ Mrs. Krista Di Lello

Lone Peak High School - Highland, Utah
Dance Educator / Performing Dance Company Director

Email sent out 10/13/11

I am posting this email I sent out just in case some of you don't check your emails or have changed emails.  I want to make sure we are all on the same page.
 
Hello Dancers!

Great job doing your proposals.  I was impressed with the research and effort many of you put in.  I wish we could have more dances, but our time is limited.  I hope some of you propose your dances next semester again! 

Wonderful work at Shakespeare.  Huge thanks to our wonderful parent chaperons!

Heads up, we only have about a month to start, finish, and have your student choreographed dances cleaned before we go into the 2 weeks of concert prep.  Please do not miss class or after school practices, as we are on a tight schedule.  That said, choreographers, always come prepared with material or tasks to do during your hour.

PDC PICTURES:
Your pictures orders are due tomorrow (Friday).  Please have your envelope ready to turn in to me tomorrow.  If you have specific questions, contact Sherry Ward, the photographer.  I also need the picture # of which headshot photo you want me to order for the pictures I am ordering to put up on our bulletin board.

Social: Sadie's Dance
optional, but for those who would like to go to Sadies as a dance co. group.  I will be teaching swing dance at 5:30pm in the dance room for an hour, then I think the dancers will be going to an old diner, then the dance.  Dress theme is 50's / Greece. 

SHAKESPEARE ASSIGNMENT:
One to two page type written paper about what you learned from our Shakespeare trip.
Due: Tuesday October 18th

Halloween Social: ? TBA?

State Dance Festival is confirmed for Sat Feb 18th at the UofU.

Need deposit soon for our big trip to Philadelphia to purchase tickets.  Trip helper moms looking at ticket prices, please keep me informed, we should act soon, contact me once you contact an airline and get "real" prices.

I have also attached our "Dancer Spotlight" so we can start presenting those with the information all the dancers submitted at the beginning of the year (the questionnaire).  If you still didn't do it, please do it :)


You are all wonderful, I am so happy to have you on company! 
Please remember to take time to keep up your dance technique and take ballet classes :)

Publicity Officer: you may want to get out how well we did to the school (school newspaper) or anywhere else that you can think of, or even write up a little thing about our experience there.

happy dancing--
KD

October!

We had a great weekend at the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City!  Second in Ensemble and First in Duo/Trio.  The duet was one out of only 4 dances that were invited to perform in the Closing Awards Ceremonies!

Now straight into more business...
This Wed, Oct 12th: PDC Dance Proposal Assignment
                         This is required by all.  Out of 100 pts!
                         Remember all requirements: -proposal paper filled out
                                                                        -Twyla Tharp "box" or research collage (pics, words, etc)
                                                                        -oral proposal presented
                                                                        -1 minute of movement
                                                                        -mind-map web
                         As a class we will be voting on 4 proposed dances to be in our winter concert:
           "Myths and Legends"  Dec 7 & 8th.  We only just over a month before the dances need to be finished, cleaned, and ready for spacing and tech-ing!  Please do not miss any practices, as our concert is early and we need all the time we can get. 

Back to School: Week 1

We are back in the swing of things!  
Hello School!

• Tues 8/23
• no after school practice Tuesday
• Wed 8/24
• bring dance clothes!!!  We will do locks, but also run our dances.  Hope you've been practicing.  
• bring your 3 ring binder!
• Voting on PDC Officers!
• Thurs 8/25 
• 2:30 sharp, be dressed and ready to dance in the dance room
• Shakespeare Proposals Due!
• 3:30-4:50pm Officer and PDC Parent Helper Meeting
• Fri 8/2
• regular B4 class with "Hello Assembly" time adjustment

Recent PDC Comp Assignment

Liz Lerman's "Little Red Riding Hood" Composition Exercise.

Liz Lerman was in Dance Spirit Magazine article "Eight modern choreographers you should know"  February 1, 2008
Quote from the article from Liz: 

 Advice for young choreographers: "You need dance skills but you also need to nurture creativity in others, to learn to bring out the best in them. Figure out what it is you want to say and think about how to say those things through dancing. If there’s something bothering you in the world, at school or with your family or friends, go make a dance about it!" 

Choreographing to words:
It can become trite if a dance is choreographed to every single word of a song, but abstraction and variation can help with this.  Usually it is advised that begining choreographers do not choreograph to a song with lyrics in it because they will follow the words instead of creative choices, their theme and motif, and choreographic devices.
A good fun example of movement made to fit words is the Napoleon dance by Nederlands Dans Theatre.

Our Adapted Liz Lerman Process:
1) Every person makes one movement gesture for each word in the first 2-3 lines of the story "Little Red Riding Hood".  Time is short to prevent second guessing and quick brain work.
2) They connect each movement "word" together to make one larger phrase
3) Everyone is put in a duet with one student choreographer per duet
4) The student choreographer puts the two individual solos together to make one cohesive duet, by exaggerating, deleting, manipulating, adding, repeating, skipping, etc. the given movement.  The choreographer is in charge of the new duet, not the dancers, and gets to do what he/she will with the given movement from the solos. It may end up looking very different from the original solos. 
5) We presented these with randomly picket music without the story being read.


Obviously this is a work-in-process, but I am very proud of these dancers for working hard and taking it seriously.  This can be an advanced composition exercise.  It really helps dancers "see" possibilities in choreography.  You become better at choreographing by practicing choreographing. 

Here are their short works: