COURTNEY O'SULLIVAN
'Aspiring Dancer'

A piece of choreography what particularly inspired/influenced me was a dance to Nicki Minaj’s 2010 release ‘superbass’ and it was choreographed by Australian commercial choreographer Jasmine Meakin. Jasmine Meakin has her own company Mega Jam Productions and she also is very big on YouTube were she uploads videos of her choreography from her dance classes. Jasmine’s choreography to superbass was my first inspiration for commercial dance for me as four years ago when I first ever watched the video I was only dancing freestyle and doing freestyle competitions, where at freestyle competitions you have the opportunity to either compete in the ‘Slow dance’ section or the ‘street dance’ section and I always performed in the slow dance section until I started to take a more interest in commercial dance. I came across Jasmines video just by playing around on YouTube as I really liked that song at that time so I was searching for choreography I could watch.

Jasmine’s choreography caught my eye straight away as to me it just seemed so exciting to watch also back then it wasn’t something I was really into so I was quite surprised I liked it as much as I did. I think the moment the dancers start dancing in the video it’s so dynamic and sharp that it caught my eye straight away. This piece influenced me the most because I enjoyed watching every bit of it to how they are dressed, very casual in there commercial wear that it inspired me to start to learn how to commercial dance myself. The movements throughout the piece are all so different but yet so dynamic and the pace is quite fast so I was inspired by how sharp and consistent the whole piece was and how in time all the dancers were with each other, that it made me want to be able to perform such a strong dynamic piece with dancers myself. I also liked how throughout the video Jasmine linked the song to her movements for example when in the song Nicki Minaj says ‘ lip lip’ Jasmine mimics the words by doing a hand movement over her mouth and I liked how it showed the effect because obviously I was only doing freestyle dancing none of it connected it’s a style what include jumps and fast movements it isn’t a meaningful style of dance so I think watching this and connecting so much with the dance and it’s style it helped me to influence myself to try it out and to start attending the street dance classes that was taking place at my dance school and also for myself to think wider and experience performing street at competitions. I think saying this was four years ago, so I was only 15 years old I think the reason it was the first piece of source to influence was me was because I wasn’t really aware of commercial dance at the time so it really caught my eye and made me think that in the future I want to perform like that.
 

Photo Credits:
weheartit.com
plus.google.com
www.conroydance.com.au

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWyqDsfjvbQ