Hayley Izzard

Walking rolls, lunges and roll downs Practicing walking round the room and rolling into lunges, and roll downs, travelling in different ways has progressed since the start of term. At the start, I never had the confidence and felt self conscious to just roll on the floor and roll down infront of people, which sounds silly but I felt intimidated by others potential. Over the past few weeks in doing this exercise I have opened up loads being able to link lunges, roll downs and rolls into the floor. A sense of it is just not caring about what others think and just focusing on yourself. Roll downs I've learnt that there's loads to consider in roll downs, more than you'd actually think. I think, at the start, I was just letting my body do the action instead of really letting go, for example, letting go of my head has been a task for me. In andrea's technique Ive worked on this and I feel that I really let the head go now, but ive also learnt that imagining how your sp...

Yoga: Since the start of term, i've noticed a few differences. I feel that the elasticity in the back of my legs has loosened so i can extend and lift my leg higher and my pelvis can open more freely, there was a lot of tension there that was through misuse of my body. I'm so happy about this as my main goal for warm ups is to progress with gaining flexibility. I would love to work on getting my feet on the ground now, in positions like the 'downward dog' position, as shown below.  I think to continue to push my boundaries is the way forward. Pilates: I think I've found it hard to know how to engage my core abdominal muscles over the past weeks. I'm glad we've used the rubber bands and the foamers to help naturally engage the core muscles, to get to know what it feels like. I'm not sure if I'm doing it right naturally on my own, I tend to push my ribs down when carrying out exercises, and I do feel the stretch alot more. When using the...

I arranged my Siobhan Davis scrapbook looking through each decade of her pieces, choosing one i liked out of each of the decades. I chose these on certain aspects that stood out, for example, 'Bird Song' performed in 2004 caught my attention for its structure. It was originally choreographed for an audience to be 'in a round', and then it was later choreographed for the audience to sit in the traditional 'proscenium march'. Analysing it closely, they used alot of repetitive movements, keeping in a tight group constantly, improvising while separating and joining together again to repeat the previous movements again. In my opinion, this was so simple but effective. The lighting effects that they used compliments the moves they do on the floor, for example, at one point on the floor they're performing circular movements, to compliment this, the lighting projected on the floor is a patterned circular floor effect. Aongside this, the way they incorporate count...

Studying theatre with masks for a few sessions has been a comical and enjoyable experience for me. We started off exploring with expressive movement and how because your character is expressed facially (happy face, sad face, crazy face etc), you have to make more of an effort to make gestural expression, this reminds me of Brechtian technique with his technique of 'Gestus'. It's also using mime, which, when you get the hang of, really brings the mask character to life, and after a while I forgot that there was a person behind the m ask. It's like the mask becomes one with the actor. The Journey of Masks, http://www.giovannifusetti.com/en/workshops-detail.php?nav=1&lang=en&post=28 In the above picture, these are similar masks to what we were working with. To make them look more realistic, people would put their hair infront of it, putting hoodies up. Experimenting with open and closed positions determines what the characters are about, for ...

Feedback from Routine: (Abby and Emma) They could tell I knew what i was doing, fluidity was good. Although, it could be even tighter. Watch out when turning direction, as i tend to move my pelvis to get to the right direction still. MUST PRACTICE THIS. I wasn't rushing through the sequence but the momentum i had was leading me through it, and the fluidity of that comes hand in hand. I was elated about this feedback, simply because in past weeks confidence has been a massive issue for me. Today, I started to feel like a dancer rather than someone wanting to be one, and getting myself into that mindset proves to be very positive.

Stimulus or Object? For my IPP1 project, I have to create a dance theatre solo based on my personal experiences, feelings, objects that interest me or whatever i want to develop it to be. An object or stimulus for movement,(I'm not quite sure of what its uses will be at the moment) I've been thinking of is a really nice setting that i saw for when i went to see Spring Awakening at the Belgrade Theatre. The main setting were some cut out trees that would show a projected image when each scene went on, for example, for a library scene there would be an image of bookshelves to blend in and at the house a kitchen would show on these trees. A great lighting trick, so clever and abstract. Yesterday when i went shopping, i went into Topshop and found a very similar version of the trees that would show what I'm trying to explain. As I was thinking into this concept, I thought i could use the idea of transformation and explore that somehow, or i could ev...

Learning about the axial skeleton - from the skull down to the coccyx was a pleasurable experience for me, although quite restricting. We had to move with as many different ways that are possible, for the head to meet the pelvis and pelvis to meet the head  At first attempt of it, i found that I moved with alot of contracting and releasing. When standing, I noticed that my head lead quite often, examples of moves were letting the head go, aiming to go down one side of my body then bringing it over and coming up to the other side. Then, we progressed on to constructing our own movement sequence with the score of aiming for the pelvis to meet with the head and the head to meet with the pelvis. Before we did this, we drew our spines as we thought about them now.    BEFORE MOVING: AFTER MOVING: As you can see, after moving with my sequence, my thoughts and feelings of the spine changed dramatically. Instead of just seein...

This phrase was fresh in my memory from learning it in the morning. This is a video of me just working through it, working out the flow of movements

This page of my journal expresses how i felt during my movement journey in Improvisation. I feel that I really captured my feelings well in displaying pictures in this way. This is a written format of a different movement journey at another time. This focuses more on technical work, rather than expression. This pic displays my progress in ballet. My strengths and weaknesses This is a stimulus from Improv that really interested me in the way of how hidden meanings are contained with art, paintings and stimulus. My progression in Yoga, I really enjoy it and this shows my strengths and weaknesses.

Blogging is an amazing tool, useful for all kinds of things: Networking - getting your name out there to companies and potential casting people. It's an aid to monitor progress of your development as a dancer/actor or artiste, physically and mentally. Reflection is key in order to learn how your body works and copes with tasks - also to see progress. When made public, anyone interested in your work can have a look and learn from your video's/photos also.

Dance makes me feel like anything is capable. There are some technicalities to it, but I love to create, I love to improvise. It's a natural instinct for me to want to move to a rhythmic beat. Hayley x