Contemporary Dances - May 14, 2011 - Malmesbury
(Pictures taken on the day - Scroll down to view)
Contemporary dance is officially the name given to a series of dance styles including modern dance. Extremely interpretive in its choreography, contemporary dance often includes an innate focus on alignment, opposing movement, raw emotions and systematic breathing.
While many dance genres including jazz and lyrical, focus on flexibility and excellence of various structured steps, the technique in contemporary dance is focused much more upon unconventional choreographic moves that were devised in the first 60 years of the 20th century by various masters of the craft.
Contemporary dance is a genre of concert dance that employs compositional philosophy, rather than choreography, to guide unchoreographed movement. It uses dance techniques and methods found in ballet, modern dance and postmodern dance, and it also draws from other philosophies of movement that are outside the realm of classical dance technique.
The term "contemporary dance" is sometimes used to describe dance that is not classical jazz or traditional folk/cultural dance. The hallmark of contemporary dance is an awareness of the limitations of form. Sub-genres recently defined by dance critics include non-dance, conceptual dance and pedestrian contemporary
-source. Wikipedia
Convened by: Bernice Valentine, Schoonspruit.
Adjudicated by: Alida Tromp: Enthusiastic
dance teacher and ex-professional ballet dancer who enjoys being part of a team
striving for excellence in dance education and training. Alida has experience in
various dance styles in both teaching and performing on a professional level. She
enjoys working with students of all ages and shares a solid background of
training and professional dance expertise.
Alida's institutions of study includes:
1. The Royal
Academy of Dancing, London,
UK
2. Elmhurst
Ballet School, Surrey, UK
3. UCT Ballet School, Cape Town,
RSA
Alida boasts several prestigious awards namely amongst others the RAD Solo Seal Award
She currently teaches at Brackenfell High School in Arts and Culture (Gr. 8 & 9) and FET Dance
studies (Gr. 10 – 12) and she regularly
attends Royal Academy of Dance workshops and seminars.
Alida is also a guest
teacher at UCT for Cape Junior Ballet and workshops.
Pictures below - Supplied - Courtesy - A Parent
If you were one of the dancers and would like to save a copy for yourself, click on the picture to save the larger version.
If you know the groups and names of the dancers, please let me know and I will amend the pictures.
Please also keep an eye on the Paarl Valley Eisteddfod FaceBook page where they might make an appearance so you can TAG them.
Contemporary dance is an explosion of colour and movement and extremely difficult to capture in images without using flash or bright light. The pictures underneath, taken during the highly awarded performances evidently show the vibrancy of the performances on display. Terms like Spatial Awareness, Smooth Transitions, Interpretation of Music, Lovely Releases, Musical Performance, Relationship and Awareness of pacing between Partners, Dance Principles, Staging, Use of Formations, Lovely Releases and Swings, Energetic Performance, Execution some Very Technical and Challenging Movements, Strength and Agility, Good Interaction between partners, Well Polished, Eye Contact with the Audience, Excellent Execution, Excellent Choreography, Lovely Fusion of Dance Styles, Good choice of Music, Innovative Movements.
The PVE Executive Team expresses its deepest thanks to everybody who made this event possible and applaud the success of all aspects of the event, from organizing, adjudication and the teachers for preparing the dancers to put their best performance on display.
A Special word of thanks to the Body Corporate of Schoonspruit Secondary for the use of their facilities, Ms Bernice Valentine for organizing and staging the event and the audience for supporting this extremely important Eisteddfod discipline.
About the pictures below
The Performance Pictures below are not out of focus. It is placed here to show the richness in movement and artistic expression of the Contemporary Dances Category. PVE would like to urge those interested to experience the remarkable entertaining aspect of this movement rich category to make sure they attend future performances. The last pictures are members from the audience, the adjudicator watching the performances attentively, presenting a summary of her observations and talking to members from the audience.Also spotted on the last picture: Bernice, the convener busy transferring the adjudicator awards to the certificates, issued to the participants and groups .
