On 30 November at the Upper School in Covent Garden, our first years were joined by the Maxwell String Quartet, playing Prokofiev Quartet No. 2 Op. 92, to perform pieces they had choreographed as an ensemble. Students have been developing the scratch performances over the past four weeks in small groups, composing the work together using music which was pre-recorded by the quartet, ahead of the presentation. The groups then performed the pieces to an audience, accompanied by live music from the quartet.
First year student Harris Bell said about the project:
‘When you’re choreographing usually, you choose the music yourself. I found it quite interesting because you’re given a piece of music to work with and you get inspiration from that.’
Amelia Townsend, who also performed on the day, expressed her enjoyment at working as part of an ensemble:
‘You have to think about what the whole group can do as well as the formations, whereas when you’re doing it for just yourself, you know the steps that you can do.’
Amelia pointed out the practical benefit of learning choreography:
‘Later on when you’re working with choreographers, when they don’t point out exactly what they want, it helps you to use your own imagination to develop your work.’