Earthfall Dance Masterclass Tuesday 3rd March 2009

On Tuesday 3rd March Briny and Rebecca from Earthfall Dance Company came to deliver a 3 hour masterclass to students from years 8-12.

After warming up travelling in the general space and performing a range of key actions to mobilise joints, stretch muscles and raise the heart rate some key phrases were taught. It was really interesting as we had to learn the phrases in a set dance style way then we were asked to break the movement down so it became more pedestrian and gestural. It was quite hard to do this as we are used to learning something gestural and then abstracting it so it looks more dance like.

The dancers we worked with were really fun and energetic. They didn’t let us stop working which was good. We started to learn material which had a dance idea thinking about being scared and running away from something. There were specific moments of stillness looking behind you, running, dropping to the floor, jumping and rolling.

The best part of the masterclass was when we were taught lots of physical contact ideas working as a pair. We learnt how to take each others weight safely and developed our sense of trust. Some of the lifts we had already learnt but the best bit was learning new ones that we can put into our choreography.

We really enjoyed the class. Comments at the end included; ‘I really like having to make up our own duet using their ideas’ ‘I felt so energised’ ‘I learnt how to put trust in people who are lifting me and how to make movement big.’

Mel Tucker, Miriam Lettiya, Lois Baggott, Beth Mortimore, Louise Bjoro