In today’s lecture we were still brainstorming ideas, we were not too sure that doing this portrait piece on a piece of music fit the brief correctly. One other idea that we discussed with Lyndon was doing a portrait of a musician i.e. David Bowie or Tom Jones however we then discussed how this could come across as a documentary or a memorial piece if not done correctly. As we didn’t want to over complicate this project we decided to throw some completely different ideas around and start from scratch. Tom liked the idea of exploring someones love for a hobby and I then came up with the idea of doing a portrait piece on a ballerina. I did ballet for 14 years and thought we could make this such a beautiful piece as we could go at it from many different angles. We finally decided upon exploring the pain/ hurt/ discipline and the unglamorous side of being a dancer. We thought we would mainly focus on the dancers feet and not use any or use limited narration as when you go and watch a ballet, they communicate the story to the audience through the music and the movements, there is no talking or explanations, therefore allowing the audience to perceive the story in their own special way, allowing the art to speak to people in different ways. This is what I want our portrait piece to do. I want different people to come away with different ideas after watching it. We decided to contrast the ‘pretty’ things such as the pink ballet shoes and pink satin ribbon with the blood and bruises on the dancers feet. We want to use one piece of music throughout the whole thing which we will research various pieces for. I thin owe should look at what the music means and what ballet its used in. We should also use a piece with different tempos in to allow the story to progress.
A Portrait of Music 