05/04 Choreographing Fat Sam's Grand Slam

This was the first of our after school rehearsals where the whole class needed to turn up as we had a dance teacher coming in especially to teach us some moves to the song 'Fat Sam's Grand Slam'. However, we did not get everyone to turn up but it was the usual suspects who didn't bother to show. Ms Williams was absent this day so she wasn't there to support us but we had Mr Bowden watching in over us, to make sure we were all keeping in line. We started off with some basic steps with the classic, step, kick and bull change behind, we repeated this until everyone managed to get it smoothly and we also added in a little bend of the knees to make it seems more exciting and enjoyable to watch. We carried on and added in some turns with the bottom half of our right legs kicking out sideways and also ended it with our hands on our knees swapping our hands over, every time we got to the end of line a sang 'Speakeasy'. It's really quite difficult to explain! However this took some time and the chatting of the other students didn't help too much to push it along. We did however manage to get up to the instrumental and in the lead up to it the moves are all quite similar and some repeated. We added in a few more new moves though like little step to the sides and also Alex volunteered to do a kart wheel centre stage which is quite funny to watch but of course we can't laugh as we have to act shocked, as it happens during the line 'each night astounds you' and after all we have a 6'2 boy playing Fat Sam. After this bit we all do these tiny little runs to move place and to give those who were in the back, a chance to be at the front. I start off the song down stage centre, so right in the middle at the front and then move a couple of rows to the back.

This took up all of the rehearsal and I think it went quite well, although it will be a pain to teach it to the other members who weren't there. However, we did manage to choreograph half of the song so it's an improvement. I think that, as a dancer myself, the moves were very simple and they will be easy to remember. Someone else in the class even said are you a dancer as they could see that I picked it up very fast and it just felt natural. Overall, it was a good rehearsal and it seemed like everyone enjoyed it.