Sylvia Halls Choreography

"Mental health" By Tom Richardson Tom Richardson      I will be analysing a 2 minute piece, choreographed by Tom Richardson called “mental health”. The dancer in the video is Włodek Kołobycz. Richardson uses a quote by Glenn Close "What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation" in the description of the video. The message they are trying to portray is that when mental health is ignored it is even more of a struggle to open up about what you are going through whereas, when you add the sunlight it exposes the mental health and therefore society will see what people are having to go through. There is a moment in the piece (1.20 minutes) where the shadows multiply to create the idea of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is when a person may not always be able to distinguish their thoughts and ideas from reality. (Schizophrenia, 2020) The dancer then looks down at one of the shadows with a fearful expression which reinforces the idea of ha...

 So far in the choreographic process, we have encountered problems such as spacing and time management. This table shows the problems and solutions from our choreography piece. 

The choreography we created links to the theme of the piece because people who have suffered from traumatic experiences often have DID later in life to help cope with that past trauma. The section I have choreographed with Isabella is representing a bad memory. The memory will be about abuse and neglect which reinforces the idea of past trauma. Our movements are very quick and the arms are sharp and flexed which is to show harshness. At the beginning of the section, there is a canon starting with the tallest member of the group from the upstage left corner to the smallest in the upstage right corner. One person will be crouching in the top right corner and the canon of movements is meant to show repetitive physical abuse. Throughout the section, there is a lot of negative space which to me could link to the idea of neglect because that space isn’t being filled with happiness or love. We found that pathways to get into formations are harder to get there in time due to music time pressur...