Research

 In this week’s blog I will be discussing the research needed for my solo and for the past few weeks before even starting to choreograph I have carried out a lot of research, especially as this is a personal piece to me, I found it was very important to get all the details as this will help enhance my performance as well as challenge myself with the choreography and the choreographic devices I choose to use when creating my solo. 

Over the past few weeks, I have done a lot of research for my choreography, including watching many different choreographers and learning about their choreographic process as well as looking into managing my time correctly as this is an independent solo task. Nevertheless, I have done a lot of research into my idea as this then allows me to consider my music choices, the order of sections in my piece and the overall affect I want it to have on the audience. A key objective I hope to achieve with my choreographic process is to not rush the process, even if I am not content with a certain section, I can always change and adapt it after or along the way. 

 

As discussed in my previous blog, I will be using a diary entry written by one of the men when they were stranded, as a key resource for my piece due to the detail and the reality of being stranded for eleven days at sea. The diary entry allows me to get more of an understanding of what life was like on the dinghy as well as use this to create and tell a story within my piece. 

Attached is a picture of Flight Officer, Eric Hartley who wrote the diary I will be taking inspiration from for my piece. (Reynolds, 2016)

 

I feel the diary entry is going to be a huge part of my piece as I will be able to take words or sentences from the diary and creating a movement or motif around that word, I have used this choreographic process in the past and it really helped me to create different movements as well as manage my time a lot better. (Reynolds, 2016)

 

During my research, I also came across a podcast with Eric Hartley’s daughter where she discusses the diary her father wrote and even reads out some of the direct quotes, where his writing comes across very straight to the point but you learn so much about how they survived for those eleven days “decided to make a sail out of two shirts” this implies how creative and quick thinking they had to be whilst stranded for any chance of survival. (BBC, 2016) The podcast reads out an entry of the diary and I have been able to incorporate this section into my music and utilise as well as take inspiration from Crystal Pite's piece 'Revisor' to create movement alongside performing the story to the audience with their own words.

 

I have also found a number of images from different wars where this same instant happened and they were also stranded on a little boat, dinghy or life raft, which educated me on realising that this was such a reality for those who put everything on the line to fight in the war and I want the emotional side to be a key objective in my solo performance and hope my research and understanding is displayed when performing my solo. 

References 

BBC, 2016. Pants for fishing nets: How stranded WW2 crew survived. [image] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-35911549> [Accessed 11 October 2021].

Reynolds, M., 2016. Stranded heroes survived 11 days at sea using pants to catch fish, lost WW2 diary reveals. [online] Express.co.uk. Available at: <https://pulse.express.co.uk/news/history/653531/Eric-Hartley-forgotten-diary-world-war-two-soldiers-shot-down-survived-fish-pants> [Accessed 9 October 2021].