Unit 27: Workshop - Learning 'Summer Nights'

The target of this workshop was to learn choreography from 'Summer Nights'.

During the rehearsal, we were shown several YouTube videos of different versions of the song 'Summer Nights'. We liked the choreography from the 2010 West End version the best, and so we chose to attempt this choreography because it contains the most exciting movement and more intricate choreography.

We began with the blocking of the scene, with the girl clique (The Pink Ladies) and the boys' (The T Birds) on opposite sides of the stage. We used this split scene technique in order to show the extreme differences between each of the cliques. The dialogue switches between the two groups throughout the scene, holding whichever group is silent in a frozen image, this helps to build anticipation and excitement to know what will happen for each group next. The scene ends with both Danny and Sandy's separate groups eager to find out what happened at the beach over the summer with their 'mystery' partner, whom their cliques don't yet know is each other.

During the choreography, my character, Rizzo, spends the majority of the track sat down, rolling her eyes at an over-excited, naive Sandy and filing her nails, expressing vanity. However, the other Pink Ladies, Marty and Frenchy, dance alongside Sandy, performing clicks and claps, supporting and accentuating Sandy's movements. The Pink Ladies found it difficult to pick up the choreography from  the video of the rep because they found that the video focused a lot on the male choreography so it was difficult to see their movements in order to pick them up. On sections where their choreography was not visible at all, the girls either repeated a previous section or improvised with 1950's based movements to compensate.

I think this rehearsal was effective and we did meet our initial target by learning the choreography and also exceeded this by completing the blocking of the scene too. Next time, we should focus on cleaning the choreography and ensuring that it is tight and looks effective in order to improve.