Swansong VS Nutcracker

Swansong VS Nutcracker

1. Swansong

   • First performed - 1987
   • Dance company - Rambert Dance Company
   • There are 7 sections
   • Dancers - 3
     • All male dancers
   • Dance styles - contemporary with physical contact, ballet, tap, ballroom, tango
   • Choreographic styles - episodic, dramatic and thematic
   • Themes - human rights, prisoner or conscience
   • Stimuli - the work of Amnesty International, saying goodbye to Christopher Bruce (name swansong), experience of Chilean poet Victor Jara and 'A Man' by Oriana Fallaci

2. Nutcracker

   • Two acts
   • Accompaniment
     • Classical music, played by an orchestra, composed by Tchaikovsky
   • Costumes
     • designed by Anthony Ward
   • Set
     • designed by Anthony Ward
   • Lighting
     • designed by Howard Harrison
   • There were 24 dancers
   • Dance style - contemporary and ballet
     • With use of exaggerated gestures and facial expression
   • Choreographic style
     • A reworking of the traditional ballet, narrative and comic, influenced by film and theatre, close dance-music relationship

3. 10 Marker

   • Nutcracker
     • Mood/atmosphere
       • Set was dark, lighting was dark, shows what it was like there
     • Narrative
       • Doll opens the wall, sets them free, wall used to help the plot
     • Era
       • Type of bed, suggests Victorian era
     • Entrances and exits
       • set contributed to entrances and exits, wall opens to create more
   • Swansong
     • Social context
       • he is treated as a minor, they do not treat him equally, gets pushed down onto the chair
     • Theme
       • human rights, they push him into chair and make him lower
     • Symbolic
       • Light symbolizes heaven