Choreography Stimulus

 Before reaching our final stimulus, we were presented with multiple choices from which we had to choose our favourite and then stand behind it.  Our chosen stimulus comprises of a picture of a human brain with emojis displaying an array of emotions strung out from it, to me it conveyed a sense of overwhelm, that the brain can only take so much before emotions have to be released. Some of the other ideas that were discussed included the concept that technology is used to express feelings, that everyone is the same but unique, a representation of the human brain being overworked and how social media can try to fit everyone into the same "social norm".

The message we will be trying to portray through our choreography will be centred on mental health and a some of the aspects surrounding the topic. We, as a group, chose mental health as our key idea. The process we went through to come to this conclusion consisted of us looking at the stimulus, collecting our thoughts together as individuals and then writing them onto the whiteboard as a spider diagram to then discuss as a class. After this we categorised the ideas, took part in a blind vote gradually getting rid of categories that were not as popular amongst us until we ended up with mental health. We then created another mind map with mental health in the middle and stemmed off aspects we wanted to potentially highlight in our choreography piece. These ideas included confusion, body image, how the past affects the present, self-esteem, body image, psychology, social media and social awareness along with mental health disorders - DID (dissociative identity disorder) in particular. With regards to the impacts social media has on mental health it's said that, on average, people in the UK check their phone as many as 28 times each day and whilst social media does have positives, sometimes the negatives outweigh them. Spending too long on social media can result in unhappiness along with low self-esteem, what with the abundance of seemingly perfect photos there are out there, comparing oneself to them is sadly a given. Furthermore social media has also been proven to have negative impacts on sleep, human connections, memory and attention span (Barr, 2020).

(Labels for emotions, 2016)

We decided to look into dissociative identity disorder because we felt we could take inspiration from it when creating our choreography piece. One symptom of DID is "the experience of detachment or feeling as if one is outside one's body" (Dissociative Disorders, 2019) which relates to our stimulus, and could be reflected in outward movements such as lengthening and reaching out. An additional symptom of this disorder is having a perception of the people and things around you being distorted and unreal (Dissociative disorders - Symptoms and causes, 2017), one small way we have incorporated this into our piece is having our feet flexed in various movements such as circular round kicks. Some of the other symptoms include: a blurred sense of identity, significant stress or problems in relationships work or other important aspects of your life, inability to cope with emotional or professional stress, anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts/behaviours. 

Bibliography:
2016. Labels For Emotions. [image] Available at: <https://alessandroinnocenti.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/labels-for-emotions/> [Accessed 6 October 2020].

Barr, S., 2020. Six Ways Social Media Negatively Affects Your Mental Health Without You Even Knowing. [online] The Independent. Available at: <https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/social-media-mental-health-negative-effects-depression-anxiety-addiction-memory-a8307196.html> [Accessed 29 November 2020].

Mind.org.uk. 2019. Dissociative Disorders. [online] Available at: <https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/dissociation-and-dissociative-disorders/dissociative-disorders/> [Accessed 7 October 2020].

Mayo Clinic. 2017. Dissociative Disorders - Symptoms And Causes. [online] Available at: <https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/dissociative-disorders/symptoms-causes/syc-20355215> [Accessed 23 November 2020].