Please, someone give us some constructive feedback on these performances! We want to continue to improve and this is the best way to see how things are going.
Margaret

Well, here are some of my notes, and they’re nitpicky, but sometimes I find if someone highlights the small things it really makes all the difference, because I never notice them in my own performances unless someone hilights them. I also was watching this at work with the music off, so take my comments with a grain of salt. I have never done ATS, so I didn’t look at the improve one, because I don’t think I’d have anything useful to say.

1) Veil work-- at the beginning, some had straight arms and some had crooked. Also, when you angle the veil down and look back over your shoulder around 1:49 in the first clip, I would check what angle everyone is at. If this is improved, I realize that would be hard to do. I used to be in color guard and a lot of our time would be spent going over particular moves and going over where our hands were on the flag to look uniform. You all know the same veil movements, so maybe one practice you could go through all the movements you know and try to establish where you want everyone’s hands to be? Like, “If we do this angle back move, everyone’s R hand should be directly overhead and the L level with the shoulder” or something. This would be good for all moves. Or go through the dance count by count and agree where everything is going to be at on each count.
2) Following people—some of your troupe members are more discreet than others on looking to the leader, but that just comes with practice, I’d imagine. Try to use your peripheral vision if you don’t know the choreo instead of whipping your head over, it’s a little distracting.
3) It seems “chunky” at parts. You’ll have a really pretty combo and then there’s a bit of a stall before the next chunk. Maybe work on transitioning smoothly? Zoe Jakes hosted a workshop I went to and she said your dance should be like a sentence, just not a bunch of random words. Look where one “chunk” of your choreo ends and then next begins and link them together.
4) When staging the circle of you all facing in, maybe stage it so the audience can see through the front two people, so they get more than the back of someone? So like this:
X
X X
X X
(Audience)

As opposed to:

X X
X X
X
(audience)

5) Except for a few places, you girls seemed to move with purpose… a few times the arms seemed to be unsure. Good job!
6) Some moves start at different places for different people, it looks like… someone’s undulation starts with the chest popped on 1, some hit the chest back on 1. I would have a day where you make sure everyone’s moves start and end in the same “spot” and also that you’re using the same muscle groups or not using them. If one person is doing a really “muscular” undulation (focusing on using the muscles to power the movement and not just moving the skeleton) next to someone doing a “skeletal” undulation, it might look a bit different.
7) Little things like arms in the same place, same angle, same level. Make sure movements go the same direction! Especially hip circles, since you do them so big (nice job making the movement visible) and for long periods of time, make sure they start in the same place and go the same direction.
8) In between songs (or what I assume to be in between songs—after you ditch the veils?) still act like you own the stage and “stay in character.”End of the first clip—hold your pose, milk it! As a dancer, you have to be an actor too, so “stay in character!” Hold the pose for a few seconds, then slowly lower your hands and smile confidently before your bow.
9) At the beginning of the second clip, someone tosses their hair. Those little movements really stand out, and I’m the WORST at doing that. Make sure the whole time you’re onstage, pretend everyone’s watching your every move. Your eyes are immeditately drawn to movement. I saw a lot of costume adjusting and fidgeting.
10) Good job having a uniform “style”! Sometimes you see troupes and it looks like everyone’s doing an different interp on the same choreography. It is awesome that you all seem to share the same interp of the choreography and you’re moving as a unit.
11) When you travel to the vertical line, have some agreement if you’re angled front of to the side

Nice job girls! They're all little things that will make your troupe completely bad-ass looking once you tighten it up a bit. Keep dancing!

Well...,

It does show improvement from past videos. I like the costume transition. Looks more put together as a troupe.

Performance Skills take practice - facing the mirror and looking at each other that way so that when you are on the stage you don't turn your head to look at each other. Enterence - needs to be crisper/more POW, We Are HERE. And..... huge pet peeve of mine... when you are discarding the veils - make it part of the movement. You can do a circle and as each dance is at the back, you can drop it,,, anything except turning around and walking to the back and 'flining' them.
Height does not matter unless one id directly in fron t of the other - so put who ever is strongest in the memory in the front and to the left. Vary the movements so it is not always 4 of each and move around each other [I liked near the end of the 2nd vid where you did this].
Another tip for the improve 3rd vidoe... make a list of all the moves you know and put them on little pieces of paper and every one draw out 4. Those are your moves... so you are not thinking..."oh geez she just did what I was gonna do" - it helped out allot when i danced tribal with a troupe.

Over all though this was much more enjoying to watch then the past vids so improvement is showing and hard work paying off.

Although not ideal for seeing certain moves/facial expressions, it really helps to have a far away shot so you can see how, as a whole, everyone is coordinated.

To begin, it seemed like the group was not in sync with the initial turn or the lowering of the veils. It was hard to tell whether or not that was intentional. I really loved how you moved the veil around - I would have liked to have seen more of that. It felt like a very brief bit of veil work.

You might consider having someone 'dance' the veils offstage, or take turns putting them down. Even though you were inbetween songs, you all were still very visible onstage as you walked back and prepared for the next number.

In my troupe, we are always working extra hard to make sure our arm positions are comparable, and intentional. Depending on what your goal is with the choreography, you all might want to focus on that for future performances - there were a lot of small (and some not so small) variations in arm positioning. Similarly, the backbend toward the end of the piece had girls at all different levels/heights.

I always like to see improv mixed in with choreographed pieces. Its always fun when you're not sure which is which. If there are going to be solos, its always nice when there is minimum background dancing so the girl in front is set apart. Alternately, you all could pick a leader and everyone could follow as a group. I wasn't really sure where to look during the final video (and it may have been clearer closer up).

Hope that helps!