So this week I’m doing a 5 day intensive at Rambert! I’m going to attempt to write a post about each day, so here goes. It’s an adult course and it’s split into two groups: Intermediate and Advanced, I’m doing the Intermediate. I’d never been to the studios before today and would just like to mention how lovely they are! They’re all wonderfully lit by natural light, high ceilings and lovely flooring, really nice to dance in!
10:00-11:30 – Contemporary with Kate Mummery
The day started with a Cunningham based contemporary class, which was a bit different to what I’ve done before but followed the regular structure of a technique class working through a series of exercises using more of the body and travelling more, working into the floor as we got warmer, eventually learning a short phrase which I think we’re building onto/adapting as the week goes on.
11:45-13:15 – Repertoire with Hannah Rudd – The Strange Charm of Mother Nature
I really enjoyed this session; I think it was my favourite of the day. I couldn’t find a link on YouTube for the rep but I might not have been looking hard enough so I totally recommend you give it a search! We were shown a clip from the work and then we learnt three phrases, which I really liked. They were quite technical and we didn’t dance them at full speed (the whole piece shifts a lot, and the music is fairly abstract but all of the movement is very speedy), I particularly enjoyed the balletic style to some of the movements. We performed them in smaller groups at the end and went from one phrase to the next continuously which was nice, and were given plenty of opportunity to go through all the details and ask questions as we went along which was really helpful, the class wasn’t too fast paced but I feel like we achieved quite a lot over the hour and a half.
14:15-15:45 – Choreography with Estela Merlos
I didn’t know what to expect from this class; whether we’d be taught more choreography or have to make up our own or whether it would be like improvisation. We did a simple warm up and then learnt a short phrase which mainly consisted of arm gestures, it was really specific and the movements had to be exactly on the counts, which isn’t always the case with contemporary dance. We then learnt a development of this phrase which contained the same movements but made them bigger and travelled more in the space, adding in more leg movements. Finally we learnt a third phrase based on the idea of falling so used a lot more floor work, which was really interesting, a lot of the moves I hadn’t done before and wouldn’t have thought of using them in my own choreography but is something I probably will now incorporate in the future. These three phrases are being put together to form a piece which we are working towards for the end of the week, when we will have a sharing with the Advanced group so we can see what everyone’s been up to!
16:00-17:00 – Yoga/Pilates
This was a really nice class to finish off the day with. I think there was a bit more yoga than pilates, and I didn’t really know what to expect, I think a lot of people assumed that it would be the ‘easy’ class because Pilates and Yoga seem to be associated with older people I’ve realised? But I think some of the exercises were challenging, particularly the speed of the yoga flows we were doing. At the end of the day it’s quite easy to just want to curl up on the mat and have a nap! I do quite a lot of Pilates as my mum actually teaches it, and I wondered if there was going to be a difference between ‘general public pilates’ and ‘dancer pilates’ and there wasn’t really.
I think that’s it for today! I have also purchased the new Rambert t-shirt and hoodie which are both really lovely and soft. I have a similar day tomorrow so hopefully I’ll remember to post about it…
Dreams That Glitter xo 