An article by Bori, Year 13
Recently, the OHS Dance Company had the absolute pleasure of welcoming choreographer Christina Andrea into school for the day.
From 9:00 until 15:50, up on the stage in the main hall, we were taught the most amazing piece of dance. We began by learning a chunk of choreography which everyone would perform in unison, although chronologically in the dance is only performed at the end. This helped get us warmed up and ready to tackle the more collaborative partner and group work of the rest of the dance. Thankfully, doing this right at the start gave us some time to memorise the choreography, so that by the time we went to include it in the piece, everyone more or less had it down. Working intensively throughout the day was definitely tiring, but equally meant we could finish a beautiful dance from front to back in one single day, which we seldom get the chance to do in our weekly club during lunch break.
Working with a professional choreographer like Christina was such an inspiration and stretched us as dancers – both on an endurance front but also a technical one. She did so much more than merely passively teach us some choreography, instead working with us as a group while she led the sessions. She guided our movements and formations and made sure the accents and timings of each subsection of the dance were understood by everyone, which is especially important to perfect in a group dance such as this one.
The music to which the dance was choreographed to was Let’s Go Back by Jungle, who themselves always feature iconic dance pieces in their music videos. Therefore, the piece we were taught was mostly jazz inspired (including Christina’s own flair as well) – this was quite a new style for many of us and really helped to broaden our scope of genres beyond what each of us individually might prefer or lean more towards, out of habit.
We are lucky enough to have welcomed Christina to school previously – last year, as a result of which, we ended up performing the commercial dance she choreographed at a couple of different shows all around Oxfordshire and, of course, the Dance Show in March. We are doing something very similar as a result of her recent visit, as this piece provides a perfect outlet to perform, one of the most valuable ways to progress as a dancer, albeit slightly nerve-wracking at times!
It was really the collaborative aspect of spending the day together as one dance company from all throughout the school that made the day all that it was and meant that we had the best time!
A massive thank you to Miss Stevens and Christina for facilitating such a great opportunity.
