Today’s main focus was to continue developing the performers’ characters.
After playing warm-up games in character, the performers began to create their own freestyle disco routines. It became apparent just how physical and exhausting this dance form is! The performers rose to the challenge and came up with some great moves, and faces, which really reminded me of my childhood memories of disco dancing competitions.
The second task involved adding text to the character solos. This is where I found the characters to be most clear. The stories/text created ranged from a story about a dog, what ‘mummy says’ and other forms of interview text. The decisions on how to perform these solos were paramount to making the characters believable and engaging, even if the odd character is a parody.
Finally we worked on a more generalised theme of pressure. The movement created was very much expressive of the physicality of emotions experienced when under pressure, and not directly connected to the characters.
This was quite an exhausting day, but I feel we achieved a great deal in relation to character development and refinement, and the creation of material.
Silversmith Dance Theatre 
Improvising and structuring movement derived from my character, Violet, I felt restricted in a vocabulary. The choreography I was exploring, was the movement I would perceive a 10 year old Disco Dancer would display, which at times, I felt limited in creativity. As we are at R&D stage, it felt uncertain whether I should be working with a character who dances the way she dances, or dance the way I move (more contemporary) to explore that character. Or maybe it could be both methods, but at what times, in what context?
Working with text has never been part of my dance training, so this is always a challenge to most dancers with my kind of practice. Combining the physical with text helped me find my characters story.