Journal: Jazz20th October 2014As we were all familiar with our usual warm ups at the beginning of the class this week we were able to move onto more practicing more technical moves such as pirouettes, kicks and leaps, as well as a small travelling routine. This enabled me to showcase my ability to quickly follow and maintain a routine within a short amount of time, which I think is my strongest asset when it comes to the discipline of dance. However as the routine was quick paced and involved high kicks and pirouettes, at specific points I found it difficult to keep up whilst still maintaining a strong technique. In result of this my main target throughout this week is to rehearse this amalgamation of moves step by step focusing strongly on precision. To then allow myself to gradually speed up the pace still sustaining a powerful all rounded performance. Not only will this benefit me when it comes to stamina within a performance, but also when given a task such as this to complete again I feel as though I can do so efficiently. As I have focused on training my muscles throughout the summer, I have unfortunately lost a lot of flexibility resulting in certain positions and moves needing more effort than usual. Because I want to improve on flexibility as a whole, giving further opportunity to progress on my kick and leaping height, I plan to stretch every night before I go to bed. This will develop my muscle memory and increase the stretch further and further each time. To this this successfully I must allow myself to relax so that my muscles can release slowly rather than jolting in a firm position, leading to possible injury.27th October 2014This week focused a great deal on weight placement and core strength, with our warm-up exercises including tondus, glisses, and the plank. By building our core strength were able to maintain specific positions and movements for longer with correct technique without collapsing, turning an average dancer into a great dancer. By practicing these warm-up routines and exercises (pirouettes, corner work) out of GSA time, I can feel a huge improvement from the first time we ever performed these in class. Knowing this gives me a great deal of positivity within class as I have never progressed so quickly in such a short amount of time, making my determination to improve further higher than ever. Within this session we also did a vast amount of corner work to allow Brenda to study our technical ability once performing a routine that uses the space given. This included par du bourress, pirouettes, and kicks, whilst holding our arms in specific positions during each move. By adding arms to this short routine it soon made me realise the amount of support needed from my shoulder blades to allow them to be sustained for a long period of time. Because your arms technically come from your shoulder blades when mobilising them in dance, everything must be engaged including your latissumus dorsi muscles. Because of this I now understand why muscular strength within our warm-ups are so important, to allow ourselves to start using them efficiently before putting it into practice. As I was focusing a great deal on my upper body support, certain moves such as my kicks and pirouettes werent as good as they could have been the first time round. In result of this, before performing it the second time round I decided to break each section down bit by bit, instead of thinking of it as one big section. This then allowed me to produce each movement with as much effort as possible until it soon became one continuous flow. One factor that Brenda said I must improve on this week if the positioning of my arms when performing a pirouette. As I have a habit to panic and become rigid before showcasing this particular move, the placement of my arms increases in height, resulting in my weight transferring backgrounds. I believe that because this has become a bad habit of mine it must be corrected as soon as possible, from pirouettes being of major importance when it comes to the dance style of jazz. To overcome this hurdle I plan to practice on a regular basis, holding my arms in the correct position with the right amount of support for it to slowly turn into muscle memory. After completing this successfully I will then put it into practice with a singular pirouette, and then a double. By taking it step by step not only will it start to become normality for my arms to go to the correct position, but it will also calm my nerves before performing a pirouette from the vast amount of practice I will have had. 3rd November 2014 & 10th November 2014In both of the classes listed above, Brenda primarily focused on corner work and pirouettes to begin to clearly understand where we are technically as individuals. This not only gives the Brenda the time to analyse how we move as dancers, but also allows us to examine ourselves and discover what we think are our strengths and weaknesses. From doing this I have found that when given a travelling sequence, I must pli a lot more than I am doing currently to help myself get across the space required in the time required. By grounding yourself there is more support within your lower body to move your weight forward in the most sufficient way possible, also enabling your movements to become fluent and energetic throughout. I plan to overcome this hurdle by focusing on how I use my body whilst performing contemporary routine, due to this style of dance including a vast amount of floor work and jumps, requiring you to pli an incredible amount to perform in the best way possible. Within this weeks lesson I have also discovered that from a vast amount of practice the performance of pirouettes have exceeded a great deal, so much so that my turns to the left are now far more supported and sustained than those to the right. Now that I have proved to myself that with hard work and extra rehearsals I can overcome any weaknesses that head my way, I am now able to take this on board once again and attempt to balance out the rights and wrongs of both pirouettes to allow them to be performed equally strong. After practicing throughout the week, when it came to our lesson on the 10th November I saw a large improvement on both sides when presenting pirouettes, and because I had concentrated so much on the pli before turning whilst rehearsing, when it came to corner work I was far more confident at applying this technique to that also. However I am still trying to overcome the problematic mistake or leaning backwards whilst pirouetting and this is purely in result of the positioning of my arms and the tension within my shoulders. As this has been mentioned to myself before, I am very aware that is it a bad habit of mine and because of this I plan to exercise my muscle memory to inherit the normality of keeping my arms placed opposite my belly button, and my shoulders relaxed. This factor will only get better through hard work and practice, and to allow my pirouettes to be performed at the best standard possible my effort towards this will be 110%.