Time travel - 2008

So this weeks blog is a bit of a blast from the past for sure! The image on top is a photo taken from a performance I was involved with in 2008. The company is Cambridgeshire County Youth Dance Company, I had been a member of them for 3 years and this was my final summer, as I was about to start my training at Northern. The performance was called cubicles and was performed over 4 days at the Southbank Centre. It was a piece created by Amy Holly. The piece was an exploration of youth culture and the pressures that can be faced around on nights out and what can happen in the bathrooms on those night outs. The film that I watched back was very sweaty as the cubicle myself and Mark performed in was tiny! There will be some more images on our Instagram. 

Blast from the past two, I found my old log book from Northern, so I have taken week ones blog from September 2008. I haven’t changed any of the wording, but I have corrected a few of the spellings! Over the course of the year we were required to keep a log of our time at Northern explain what we had been through, connections and developments we made in class, performances we had seen and creative work we were developing.

Week 1

Wow, what a first week. The first thing to note is all the new exercises that have all had to try and be learnt, so I have got like 15 or so new exercises for contemporary and ballet, lots of different conditioning exercises working on pliés at the moment and maintaining turn out and good posture. If we come back to these that remains to be seen or are they intended for us in our personal warm up. But then as well as these main classes we do body conditioning classes every week, this class was very tough and something I definitely need to improve on is my core strength and quickly.  

Also there is a supplementally technique class, this session is based on looking at breathing, well sort of, the main exercise that we did was an Alexander technique were you lay on the floor with your legs in neutral position and your head slightly raised (if that’s comfortable) and you lay there. The exercise is designed to lengthen out your spine. This exercise was amazing, not just that we got to lay on the floor, but when you come up off the floor, your spine feels like it’s 2 foot longer! Your head feels like it is so balanced on top of your spine and that you as a person feel more in control of your body. We also started to look at the head and tail connection, in this we were required to’feel’ the connection between them and then we were asked to do a short improvisation task. This wasn’t the simplest of exercises, but I found it was something I really enjoyed and was moving for the whole time.  

Academic studies,  this is our only written session we will have a week, this is good as writing is one of my weaker things to do with dance. Fortunately we don’t have written exams like in A-level dance which I found hard and brought down my overall grade. But with this session, we talked a lot about our personal log and how we should write them. Hopefully this is going well! But we will be looking at how best to write them over the next couple of weeks our personal style and learning goals. We got shown examples of previous students work, giving a rough idea of how this log will look at the end of the year. 

We also have to write about our personal development, thinking about what I have had to do in the first week of living with two new people and an old friend from home. Learning how that when I come in from college I have to wash my tights, socks, unitards, get my evening meal prep done,  do my core exercises, stretching. Stretching while watching tv is good fun though. Paying bills, we haven’t had any yet, but I need to begin to save for this, food budgeting comes along with this too I have set myself about 20/25 pounds and this is what Northern recommend too, so I feel this’s will be possible, as having done my first weeks shop I was just under this amount. I haven’t shrunk any of my own clothes yet so I am glad of that! I have met lots of new people and already making new friends. Next week the real work begins this was only a two day week! 

So I hope you enjoyed a little look back at what the start of my training was like. Next weeks blog might be a bit random again as we are currently on the Easter break. See you all next week!