Test 3 PAPER 1 READING (1 hour 15 minutes) Part 1 You are going to read three extracts which are all concemed in some way with dance. For questions 1-6, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text. Mark your" answers on the separate answer sheet. A choreographer’s diary May saw the premiere of my first full-length narrative ballet ~ ‘The Ballet Shoes—for the London Children’s Ballet. I have to say, was wondering if it was going to come off or not. In the studio the week before, I could see nothing exciting — no action. The dancing was coming along okay but the children’s acting seemed stiff and contrived. Well, that’s one lesson I’ve learned — don’t worry about children performing. Or at least, not until they reach a shy/awkward adolescence where self-criticism overrides any fun. No, as soon as this lot set foot on the stage, the dance floor might as well have been a trampoline. They were well and truly stage-struck, jumping and whirling around like crazy. Thanks to the efforts of too-many-people-to-mention, the premiere went according to plan, I wasn't really able to watch it objectively that night but when I came back to see the last show ~ the seventh performance in four days, I was actually smiling along with most of the audience. I have to admit to having watery eyes and after twenty-odd Sundays of losing my voice, ll was forgotten and I was very proud of ‘my children’! 1 What does the writer suggest about the dancers in The Ballet Shoes? A B c D They were better actors than dancers. They were too young to be self-conscious. They lacked sufficient enthusiasm for ballet. They leamt ballet techniques amazingly quickly. 2 When watching the last performance of The Ballet Shoes, the writer vou> believed her hard work had been worthwhile. was surprised by the reaction of the audience. thought that the show had got better each night. felt relieved that it was all over. 59Test 3 Opening Night On Tuesday | went to the opening night of choreographer Ella Winter's new dance show. The work was produced in collaboration with a linguist, a landscape designer, a heart surgeon and an architect. The score, by Antonio Prandini, samples Italian folk songs and their lyrics. There is a minimalist set - white boxes — incorporating a video installation. And there are Winter's eight dancers. The dance involves mechanical-looking repeated-action sequences and a running montage of mimed laughs, whistles, hissing breaths, and twists of the feet. At times, the dancers enact the lyrics of the songs - there are brief fragments of duet - but long sections are difficult to understand or merely banal. Many hands, on this occasion, had not made light work. At times, | found myself musing on Winter's collaborators. According to Winter, they had given her and her dancers different objectives, and each had brought a method of expression which had not been available to the dancers before, No doubt, but it’s hard to view the result, as Winter claims, as something unique in the sphere of contemporary dance. I've been an admiring spectator of Winter as both dancer and choreographer for over 30 years now, but | felt subtly defeated by the show. For me, it seemed a private conversation with a like- minded few. You had to be wearing very strong contemporary-dance goggles to make anything of it. 3 What does the writer say about the show in the first paragraph? A. Itis unclear which part each collaborator had contributed to. B_ Too many people were involved in the project. © The dance movements didn’t match the music. D The dancers had very different views on the roles they should play. 4 What was the writer's opinion of the show? It had appeal for a very specific audience. Each dancer had a unique form of expression. The choreographer’s long experience was evident. It was very different from other forms of contemporary dance. csou> 60Paper 1 Reading A system to notate dance For at least five centuries attempts have been made to devise a system of notation to record the sequence ‘of movements in dances. Scholars believe that the ancient Egyptians made use of hieroglyphs to do this and that the Romans employed a method of notation for formal gestures. However, the earliest known attempt, recorded in two manuscripts preserved in the Municipal Archives of Cervera, Spain, dates from the second half of the fifteenth century. Since that time, many other systems have been devised. Some were published and achieved a measure of popularity for a while, but almost all, until the present day, fell eventually into disuse. It is significant that music notation, which opened the way for development in the art of music as we know it today, was first conceived in its modern form in the eleventh century, but was not established as a uniform system till the beginning of the eighteenth. Dance notation got off to a much later start and has undergone a long succession of false attempts. That so many unsuccessful beginnings were made is not surprising. Dance is more complex than music because it exists in space as well as in time and because the body itselfis capable of so many simultaneous modes of action. Consequently, the problems of formulating a movement notation that can be easily written and read are numerous. 5 What do we leam about systems to notate movement from the first paragraph? A_ Researchers have different views about how the systems were used. B_ The evidence regarding the use of early systems is unreliable. One system was used in more countries than the others. D_ Some systems have been in use longer than others. 6 Why does the writer make comparisons between music notation and dance notation? Ato explain why music notation took so long to develop B_ to emphasise the difficulties involved in dance notation C toillustrate the similarities between the two forms of notation D_ to describe how notation has affected the development of both art forms 61Test 3 Part 2 You are going to read an extract from a newspaper article about coral reefs. Six paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A~G the one which fits each gap (7-12). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet. Reef Encounter Tropical fish look very colourful to our eyes, but is that how they look to each other? Our reporter Penny Gosh met the man who may have the answer. If you're snorkelling around a coral reef, you'll see the local marine life in all its carnival colours. But the show clearly isn’t just a tourist attraction. For the fish that live on the reef, it's morea matter ofllife and death. As with any other creature, the survival of a fish species depends on two things ~ food supplies and breeding success. LL Seeing a coral reef in all its glory, you can’t help feeling that fish have completely failed to solve this dilemma. The picture, however, only comes into focus when you take the fish’s-eye view, For fish, according to Justin Marshall from the Vision, Touch and Hearing Research Centre at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, see things differently. a ‘This means that the carnival looks quite different to the marine life itself. To help him discover exactly how different it looks, Marshall has designed a unique underwater ‘spectrophotometer’, which analyses the colours of things objectively in terms of their physical reflection. He is also measuring the light available in different micro-habitats. [3] The general shift towards the blue end of the spectrum in underwater light explains why most nocturnal reef fish, such as the soldierfish, squirrelfish and big-eyes, are mainly red in colour. According to Marshall, some reef fish might see red, in which case they could capitalise on the colour blindness of others and use red markings for private communication. But in most cases, red species are surprisingly inconspicuous. 62 10 | Uh Swen ia] As any snorkeller will know, lots of reef fish display the sort of colour combinations that suggest camouflage is the last thing on the fish's mind. The bright blues and yellows that are most common, however, are only conspicuous at a certain range. ‘They fade to grey at a distance, because the colours are 50 close together that they merge. mu - Wider colour bands will be visible much farther away, of course, but still the fish’s-eye view is different from ours. Most recently, Marshall has discovered that fish may see hardly any contrast between the blue of many species, such as tropical angelfish, and the colour of the water around a tranquil reef. More surprisingly, says Marshall, a fish with blue and yellow stripes can be just as well camouflaged, as even this distinct pattern will ‘merge into some backgrounds. When the fish are all together in a shoal, i's hard for a predator to spot where one individual starts and another ends. It’s what Marshall calls ‘the zebra effect’. If Marshall is correct, then a fish with bold blue and yellow markings can either advertise or hide itself by simply adjusting its behaviour. Bo In other words, one set of colours can send out very different signals depending on the setting. To complicate things further, most reef fish can vary their colours, whilst it is common for species to change colour from night to day or as they grow older. Colours may even change with a fish's mood whether it’s fighting or fleeing from predators.