When I finally took the plunge into researching modern artists, I began looking at ‘Lizzo’ not just because we just so happen to be covering her songs, but because of her outstanding performance at Glastonbury as it somehow kept me engaged throughout which takes a lot most of the time.
Even though she was performing to a backing track and shaking her body around the stage I couldn’t help but notice how all her songs had different choreographies which included herself and her backing dancers. You don’t see many solo artists willing to get up on stage in a leotard, dancing and singing as lively as her. Not to mention that amazing flute solo, reading into many articles I also found out that she is a classically trained flutist which is neat.
Her dancers bring another layer to the show as it is something to watch to go alongside with the song. After mentioning this to our singer something suddenly clicked and we then we decided to propose the idea of introducing dancers to our performance to the performing arts department within out college which was something new to all of us. There are many dancers that would be willing to help source this crazy dancing idea from. Not to mention how both our own lecturer and the performing arts lecturer thought it is a was an amazing idea and we should start working on it straight away.
However, this all seemingly worked out in our favor, there were dancers already had a routine to ‘Juice’ by Lizzo, so they have started to teach it to our singer the routine and adapt it for a live performance on stage. We have gone through it with them once so far and we are hoping to have routines to most of our songs in time for our FMP gig. This introduction of dancers really sets our performance aside from the mostly generic rock ones which will take place at our FMP especially when it comes to stage presence and being professional.
Lizzo’s outfit alongside her backing dancers corresponded with the theme and what she was putting across to her audience. As far as I am aware, I think we are going to take inspiration from their Glastonbury 2019 outfits with the theme of purple yet again, so I can finally make use of my Prince outfit again.
Yet again we are putting in the extra effort in our costumes again, just like at The Ashcroft arts centre, it will really set us apart from the rest of the bands, with the ideas behind costumes and the dancers keeping the audience engaged far more than we have managed to before. Personally, I think it is a is a great idea and can’t wait to see the final product when I get used to a couple dancers twerking in front of me…
Ellie Thornton Music 