Before learning the choreography that we were going to be performing, we watched the clip of the prologue from the film version of West Side Story. This was so we could understand the context of the dance, that it's meant to embody a terf war between the city's resident gang and the Puerto Rican gang that have just been moved to the city. Watching the video allowed us to notice the different dancing styles of the gangs; one was more turned out and unfolded/flicked their high kicks whereas the other gang was in parallel more of the time and their kicks were with straight legs.
After completing this research and analysis of the dance we began learning the two different choreographies. At first I found the choreo tricky to pick up as it was a fast tempo and some of the steps were on odd beats but I went through it slowly until I could get it right. When it came to learning the second gang's choreography, I picked it up much quicker as the moves were similar. The two rehearsal sessions saw immense improvement from start to finish.
Finally, in the first half of our lesson in which we did the final performance, we were given the task of choreographing a fight section with a partner as this was the climax of the dance and the intention was to have lots going on at once so that the busy feel mirrored the anger presented in the music at the time. I found it a little tricky to start off the choreography but as Ruby (my partner) and I continued it became easier and we were able to bounce ideas off each other and come up with an interesting set of steps.
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