Contact work / improvisation

Contemporary

Street dance – hip-hop, some break dancing and freestyle

Musical theatre and dance using props

Physical theatre and dance

Modern / stage

Mask work

Basic ballet

Choreography

Performance technique

A break down of each dance style

Street dance is also called vernacular dance^[1] is an umbrella term, used to describe dance styles that evolved outside of dance studios in everyday spaces such as streets, school yards and nightclubs. They are often improvisational and social in nature, encouraging interaction and contact with the spectators and the other dancers.

Street dance is also commonly used specifically for the many hip hops and funk dance styles that began appearing in the United States in the 1970s, and are still alive and evolving within hip hop culture today: such as break dance, popping, locking, hip hop new style and house dance. These dances are popular on levels, as a form of physical exercise, an art form, and for competition, and are today practiced both at dance studios and other spaces. Some schools use street dance as a form of physical education. Some of the most famous street dance styles of today, such as break dance, popping and locking, began appearing around the 1970s, and hip hop new style and house dance around the 1980s. Though some of these styles originally evolved separately, most of them are today associated with the hip hop scene, as they share many street dance elements.

More recently, new street dance styles are emerging that are further inspired by hip hop and its music. Krumping, with its focus on highly energetic battles and movements, is an example of such a style that just recently became publicly known. It's also common to see some characteristics of street dance being mixed with other more traditional dance forms, creating styles such as street jazz, a hybrid of modern hip hop styles and jazz dance. Such styles are generally focused more on choreography and performance and less on improvisation and battles, and are not always considered pure street dances, though a popular alternative to the more traditional and classical styles of studio dancing.

Contemporary dance is, essentially, a modern development of ballet. It is electric, taking its movement vocabulary from anywhere – classical ballet, jazz, tap, ballroom, gesture, sport, you name it! It has many forms: some companies use it to tell stories, some explore states of mind or ideas, some try to reflect the music, some explore movement for its own sake...again, the field is (almost) limitless. What we might call educational dance – the sort of dance taught by dance specialists in schools.

Performance skills work on the pupil’s stage presence and how to perform, working on stage directions, stage focus and how they work together as a group and an individual, spatial awareness and group awareness, confidence and team work skills. We will introduce some team work activities, where the pupils will get the chance to work in a group setting using dance.

Contact Improvisation is a dance form, originated by American choreographer Steve Paxton in 1972, based on the communication between two or more moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion – gravity, momentum, and inertia. Contact improvisations are spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic exchanges.  Dancetopia also offers dance classes at Halton Village Hall for all age groups every Tuesday and Friday during both term time and holidays. Contact work can be used in both street and contemporary dance styles.

Physical theatre

Physical theatre is a general term used to describe any mode of performance that pursues storytelling through primarily physical means. There are several quite distinct traditions of performance which all describe themselves using the term "physical theatre", which has led to a lot of 5 star movies r.e as to what the definition of physical theatre actually is. The term "physical theatre" has been applied to performances consisting mainly of:

• Some forms of puppetry, especially large *Theatrical Clowning/Physical comedy

• Some forms of Dance Theatre

Physical theatre may utilize pre-existing text, but the primary focus is on the physical work of the actors, expressed through the use of their bodies. It is a highly visual form of theatre. The action in physical theatre may have a psychological base, or symbolic resonance, or point to an emotional centre, or have a clear storyline, or any combination of the above, and it may grow out of codified forms, improvisational work, or invented gestural language among other means of creation. However, the means of expression are always primarily physical rather than textual.

Modern dance

Modern dance is a dance form developed in the early 20th century. Although the term Modern dance has also been applied to a category of 20th Century ballroom dances, Modern dance as a term usually refers to 20th century concert dance. In the early 1900s two American female dancers, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, as well as one German female dancer, Mary Wigman, started to rebel against the rigid constraints of Classical Ballet. Shedding the authoritarian controls surrounding classical ballet technique, costume, and shoes, these early modern dance pioneers focused on creative self-expression rather than on technical virtuosity. Modern dance is a more relaxed, free styles of dance in which choreographers use emotions and moods to design their own steps, in contrast to ballet's structured code of steps. It has a deliberate use of gravity, whereas ballet strives to be light and airy.

Basic ballet

The pupils will learn the positions of the arms and feet along with ballet terminology and some steps that will be put into routines and dances

Mask Work

The pupils will learn how to dance wearing masks and will learn how to use their bodies without the use of their face and learn how to perform without the use of their facial expressions. The pupils will undergo a few workshops where they will learn the basics of mask work and will create stories and characters, using their mask and characters.