You are going to choose 5 of the movies, dances, or video clips that most affected you from this course, and write a full descriptive paragraph about each one. Note: you can choose video clips from the Modules, as well as videos your classmates posted in their Discussion question answers. Describe what caught your eye about the clips, the effect they had on you, and how you interpreted them. You are welcome to pick videos that you both liked, and disliked. And finally, my strong suggestion is that you start your document now, and write an entry whenever you run across a video clip in a Module or Discussion that catches your interest. Then you don’t have to review the course during the last week to find the clips you want to write about!
FORMATTING
- Number the paragraphs 1-5.
- Your discussion for each video clip must be at least one full paragraph, in complete sentences, using proper grammar, and correct spelling.
- NO PAGES FILE TYPE OR TEXT EDIT (NOTEPAD) FILE TYPES ALLOWED.
- Titles of individual dances should be in italics and Capitalized. For example: Merce Cunningham’s Rainforest
- Dance company and Crew names should be Capitalized but not italicized. For Example: Jabbawockeez
- DO NOT PLAGIARIZE.
- Always cite when you refer to any other writings or opinions that are not your own.
- Other than taking factual information from websites (dates, times, venue, names…) or quoting from reviewers, you should not “borrow” writing from another source.
- **Please Note** If your paper can not be read by Turnitin, you will receive a “O” for the assignment.
CONTENT
- Write in standard paragraph format with an opening sentence, which includes the name/title of the movie, show, company, choreographer, youtube video and/or dance work you viewed and your thesis statements (main idea) about it.
- Give a brief description of each dance piece, but do not spend the whole paragraph giving me the plot of each piece. You will talk about your interpretation at the end.
- Pick 2-3 moments that really captured your eye. Usually they will be pivotal moments in each dance that created the overall effect of the dance to you as the viewer.
- Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each piece.
- Talk about the use of space, time, dynamics/energy, structure/compositional tools, movement vocabulary, technique, production elements (costumes, lighting), or theme using the language and concepts discussed in this class, specifically in Module and Chapter 2 of your course materials.
- Support your statements and opinions by explicitly describing specific dance phrases or details that you saw. Answer the following questions to describe these moments, in order to get across how these dance movements affected your opinion of the dance.
- What did you see? Just describe the movement or movement phrase as you would to a friend who had not seen the dance, without judging or assessing what you saw. For example, “The dancers spun around the stage with a frenetic energy stopping only once their bodies crashed to the ground and slid to a stop.”
- What effect did this movement have? Talk about the physical/emotional/or mental effect this dance movement or phrase created on the stage or screen in the dance, still without judging the dance, merely interpreting the movement you saw. Example: “This movement created the image of a group of people in a chaotic state of urgency, stopped only by their sheer exhaustion and inability to continue on with them movement.”)
- How did you interpret this dance or dance phrase? Example: “This piece was a wild but exhilarating dance that kept me on the edge of my seat with anticipation the whole evening.”
- Repeat this process 2-3 times for each dance. Then you will have recreated for the reader, your experience of this dance and the reader will understand how and why you came to the conclusions and opinions you did about the dance piece.