Mambo!

So, onwards an upwards with creating our show. We managed to split off an delegate roles to try get the most productivity out of nine people. I volunteered to start sketching together some choreography as I am familiar with the process of putting together a dance from many years of experience in not just learning a dance, but actual choreographing also. These were relatively simplistic choreographic formed on the basis of combining actions, formations and pathways and so this was an easy approach to adapt in the choreography of our dance.

It was in 2006 that I was in a stage show of West Side Story and after doing any intensive show, you never want to see it again. Having gone back now three years later, I found I am at the point where I can really enjoy it again. I had to do a bit of reading up on it before it all came flooding back. Essentially it is a more modern Romeo and Juliet love story which, and like Romeo and Juliet (and unlike most musicals) it doesn't have a happy ending. The main characters, Maria and Tony fall in love (at first sight - eyes meet across the room, soft focus etc.) but it is a forbidden love as she is Puerto Rican while he is American and so they are caught in the middle of cultural tensions and intense gang rivalries between the Jets (Americans) and the Sharks (Puero Ricans). Maria has already also been promised to be married to a Puerto Rican named Chino.

To achieve the main to themes through our choreography, we recut the track of music into four sections. An introduction, a section with all three robots (Maria, Tony and Chino) to establish the tension between Maria torn between what she should do - marry Chino - and following her heart and her feelings - running away with Tony. The third section is a slow dance which is to reveal the gentle, peaceful characteristics of Maria and Tony and their love. The fourth and final section is a 'dance off' between Tony and Chino to represent not only Maria's choice, but the gang rivalry between the two gangs and ultimately, the social context which this represents in them musical which comments on the American society at the time. In the segment of video we were shown, it is predominantly a partner dance so I think it works well that we have three robots to work with as it is good for conveying a lot of the tension of the storyline.

Actually planning the choreography proved a little trickier. I flapped my arms for a while trying to figure out a good way to physically record it and finally decided on a storyboard approach which I have been working on this weekend, which can then be converting over into programming.

We did some research on what we can do with the programming to make the choreography fit together smoothly and fit the different sections while also corresponding with Ryan who was part of the sub-group building the robots and is moreso familiar with the programming of the robot kits. Ideas we considered were using careful choreography and timing for synchronised movement, programming the light sensor to follow coloured lines for set pathways, programming bluetooth for the dance off to trigger the opposing robot when movement has finished, and callibrating the ultrasonic sensor so the robots can detect each other and move accordingly, such as in the slow parter dance. Similarily, we also considered ways of making them follow each other in a pathway, possibly again by ultrasonic sensor or even light as we found in this video:



So Ryan went off over the weekend to have an initial tinkering with the programming while I edited and recut the music and then deconstructed it into smaller sections which I then analyzed in terms of the music on the storyboard which we can use to slot in separate movements. Whew. It all still seems like a lot to bring together and though we got the basic structure of two of our robots build, we are still waiting on a third kit and we need to figure out how to customize them a bit more to reflect the individual characters.

Goal for tomorrow is to start on programming. Ideally it would be fantastic if we could get it all done, or relatively sussed anyway. Aim high! 5 days until showtime.