Performance Workshop IIA: Poi Performance Precision

Course Overview

This semester long workshop picks up where the Custom Choreography Creation workshop left off and is perfect for artists ready to perform powerful group choreography with 3 or more people. The first offering of this class yielded this performance and the second offering yielded this performance.

The focus of this workshop is to:

• assist artists in understanding how their performance fits in with the overall flow of the group piece
• help artists cue off each other
• assist performers in building and maintaining rapport with each other
• create powerful performance presence to existing choreography
• develop performers ability to present choreography gracefully and effortlessly
• provide "audience" feedback unavailable to us as performers

Each week, the performance will be video taped. This will provide an overall measure of the progress on a week to week, month to month and beginning to end comparison to assist artists both as a group and as individuals.

By meeting at a specific time each week, the group will have an opportunity to practice on their own and progress with group in the weekly practice. This reduces the challenges associated with finding additional group practice times since each artist is present at a specific time each week.

Class structure

The performance piece can be as short as 3 minutes and as long as 10 minutes. The group of students should already have the choreography created prior to the start of class. Below is an outline of the material covered in each class.

Class 1 (80 minutes each)

• review written choreography
• video tape initial performance
• provide feedback to the group and individual artists

Classes 2-12 (80 minutes each)

• video tape performance at the beginning of class
• note areas of improvement from previous week
• provide feedback to the group and individual artists
• practice sections as necessary to refine performance
• develop costuming, makeup, props and any other extras

Classes 13 and 14 (2 hours)

• gather for makeup, costuming, warm up and run through
• perform with lights and/or fire on video
• provide feedback to the group and individual artists

Prerequisites

Artists much have an existing piece of choreography ranging from 3- 10 minutes in length. They should bring their musical selection and a written copy of their choreography to the first class.