Last Group Post

WHAT DID WE DO?WHAT'S NEW AND WHAT'S CHANGED?(reflection and description of activity)

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING (include artifacts-photos, videos, drawings, sketches)

Today was the final day of practice! After weeks of preparation without the right props and costumes, we began an actual dress rehearsal. As a group we were able to communicate greatly outside of class, which certainly helped our preparation process. However, one obstacle remained. Our music was still incomplete, as Abby M had just begun the tedious working process (shout-out to Abby for doing- seriously). On the bright side we met our rehearsal goals by completing a beginning, middle, and end for our story, working on transitions, and putting the final touches on the ending piece. We can't wait to present our final product, and hope it does us all proud, because we've worked so hard!

Above is a snippet of our music choice- Irish Reels by Dean Crouch! (bae)

Natsumi's Individual Post

WHAT DID WE DO?WHAT'S NEW AND WHAT'S CHANGED?(reflection and description of activity)

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING (include artifacts-photos, videos, drawings, sketches)

During our last class of preparation before our project presentations, we spent a little time trying to find the most fitting music for the conclusion of our piece. This was a  bit of a challenge at first, as we wanted to incorporate "GroundWorks" type movement while maintaining a more upbeat feeling. Yet at the same time this "upbeat" feeling couldn't be too celebratory, too cute, or too bittersweet.  Needless to say, it took quite some digging before we found something we were all happy with as a group. We finally settled on The Piano Guys compilation cover entitled "Beethoven's 5 Secrets"- a hilariously clever title considering the song fuses together the band One Republic's song "Secrets", and Beethoven's 5th Symphony. The song was a fantastic hit (shout-out to Abby Cohen who suggested it!!). However, what really stuck out to me was a quote by Beethoven that The Piano Guys put in the beginning of their music video for "Beethoven's 5 secrets". The quote reads, "Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the Divine". Upon reading this I couldn't help thinking what an incredible layer of meaning this quote could add to our piece. First of all, just the phrase "don't only practice your art", out of context, is extremely reminiscent of what we are trying to portray in our piece; this is that although each individual comes with infinite moments of experience and their own style/genre of dance, we are all connected through the concept of dance itself. Because of this, it is essential that we "don't only practice [our own] art"- that we do and discover the beauty and connection of others. Secondly, Beethoven tells us to "force [our] way into [the] secrets" of our art. When putting together our piece there was of course a huge amount of digging into thought. It took some hard looking at what makes each of our genres of dance unique and individual for us to determine how they all fit together. Our piece shows a single, bonding connection through all the dancers of different worlds; This is that essence of dancing, that "ball of energy" that moves of all of us. This is the secret we all share, and that we've searched our way to through the creative process. Finally, although I don't know much about being raised to the Divine, there is one thing for sure. As a group we've built a connection, and human connection, human understanding, in my mind, is the most "divine" moment of everyday life. In fact, true human connection is not a feature of everyday life, but a product of shared experiences and common love. I know I'm getting mushy here, but through this project I believe we have achieved something Beethoven might approve of. We haven't only practiced our art, but we've revised and dug through it to our satisfaction. We haven't only practiced our own art, but instead expanded ourselves to discovery so many more genres and techniques. We have certainly forced our way into the secrets of our art, where we've discovered and broken down what dance and art is to each of us. Our art and our knowledge is pushed to its highest potential through the creative process, and it has brought us our own kind of divine. Our own human connection.  And our own product of hard work, which I hope we're all incredibly proud of. Thanks for a divine semester guys; love you all.

Above is a snip of the Beethoven quote from The Piano Guys' music video for "Beethoven's 5 Secrets". Below is a link to the music video itself! (Youtube won't allow it to play through other websites)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ_fkw5j-t0

Piecing it all together 11/15

WHAT DID WE DO?WHAT'S NEW AND WHAT'S CHANGED?(reflection and description of activity)

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING (include artifacts-photos, videos, drawings, sketches)

Unfortunately not having Juliana, we still had a productive day! At the beginning of class, we Face Timed with Juliana during our "circling up" time deciding on the order in which our solo and group dances should be performed. We were then able to set our goals of the day, to get everything put together into the big dance. We worked on piecing together the solos in addition from last class and then added on putting our group work together all into one dance. Towards the end of class we focused on how to transition between each of the group dances which we are still working on! We have to work more on adding acting into the whole performance. Also, making it more clear for the audience to understand as we are telling a story. We have decided to have an idea of music  for the dance to speak of and decide on the next class as it is our last one to prepare!

Sadie Individual Post

WHAT DID WE DO?WHAT'S NEW AND WHAT'S CHANGED?

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING

Before this class and group project I knew very little about different dance styles. My only background in dance was when I was 4 to 9 years old I took dance classes; however, I lost my technique and knowledge over the years. For our groups project I loved emerging myself in all of the different styles of dance, especially lyrical. Everyone in the group has their own "type" of dance, and throughout the class we thought each other our different dances. My dance was lyrical and Juliana and my group took time to help me learn the style, moves, and steps I needed. Although it might have started out a little rough in the beginning my knowledge and skills of lyrical grew each day as my team members and I pushed myself to the best of my capability. My team has really inspired me, and I am confident in saying I could not have done it without them.

The first time I learned lyrical with Juliana!

Individual Post-Claudia

WHAT DID WE DO?WHAT'S NEW AND WHAT'S CHANGED?(reflection and description of activity)

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING (include artifacts-photos, videos, drawings, sketches)

Figure out what you learned when working on this project and what you discovered about the creative process.   When I first joined this group, I was apprehensive about my collaboration. Surrounded by such talented dancers, I was uncertain about what I could contribute to the team. I was talking it over with my mother one day when she brought up the idea of dancing "con jarocha", or with the classic Mexican dress. I decided to go with this to celebrate the dance that my mother had grown up doing with some salsa. As I discussed this with my peers, I started to understand that collaboration with my team would be key to the success of this dance. I learned that with all of our different types of dance, we would need to bond even closer and make sure our story line was crystal clear. Thankfully, with such a good team we were able to bond closer and take into account all of our differences in dance and opinions. I learned and discovered the importance of listening to others and started to acknowledge what other's had to say, which had been a Kryptonite of mine for my entire life. I was also thankful that I could discover and take on some strengths from my peers like Juliana's organizing skills, Natsumi's creativity, Sadie's enthusiasm, Abby's kindness, Abby's swagger, and Alana's flexibility. I'm glad I had the opportunity to learn from the others and learned that creativity does not always come across easy. The Creative Process is long and tedious but if everyone shares ideas and works together it is able to create something really worthwhile. Thanks gals for everything!

Figure 1: Here is where my mom first danced with her own jarocha during her celebration of her 15th birthday!  http://trajedejarocha.blogspot.com/ Link 2: Here is some of the history behind the jarocha and its past in Mexico Figure 2: A picture of some of Movement squad before the big adventure! Figure 3: Practicing with my dress for the first time Figure 4: Practicing without our costumes for the first time

Abby Individual Post

WHAT DID WE DO?WHAT'S NEW AND WHAT'S CHANGED?

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING

My background in dance is mostly ballet and I don't know much about any other kind of dance. Throughout the process of our choreography, each person got the chance to teach us about her type of dance. It is so interesting to me to see how one art can take so many forms. Interested in learning more, I looked up videos of each genre of dance on YouTube. I came across a tap dance video from the world championship. It was amazing to me how the performer could vary his speed and isolation so perfectly in time to the music. It's inspiring to watch the professionals at work, and their work can be applied to our performance (even if we're not including a tap portion). With smooth transitions between the variations in energy, we can make our performance flow smoothly.

A Ukrainian tap dancer performs at the tap dance world championships in 2012

Environment Post: class 11/11

WHAT DID WE DO?WHAT'S NEW AND WHAT'S CHANGED?(reflection and description of activity)

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING (include artifacts-photos, videos, drawings, sketches)

What a productive day! As a group we were at last all together and able to catch everyone up. In addition to this, we have gotten much better at working effectively as a group, and the use of our three ground rules have contributed to this improvement. We circled up, set goals for piecing together the "big picture" of our piece now that we have all the pieces, and improved our communication by listening to everyone's ideas with intent. Along with putting the "big picture" of the dance together, we spent quite some time discussing our costumes. This is an interesting problem because with nature of our dance, each dancer is in somewhat culturally/genre specific dress, yet we must all be free to move together at the conclusion of the piece. We decided that everyone will indeed wear their specific costumes, with perhaps some modifications if necessary. For instance, I (Natsumi), will not be wearing a traditional Irish Dance dress as it is very constricting in the upper half. Instead I will be wearing a black leotard, skirt, and Irish dance crown, as this typical dress for more casual performances.

Claudia's Latin dancing wear just arrived from Mexico!  How cool is it is to highlight so many different cultures and genres of dance?

Social Interactions 11/10

WHAT DID WE DO?WHAT'S NEW AND WHAT'S CHANGED?(reflection and description of activity)

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING (include artifacts-photos, videos, drawings, sketches)

Today, we were reunited with our very well missed friend, Abby! We sat in our circle and discussed our norms and kryptonites and superpowers with her. Once we all established our own goals and our tasks, we were able teach and collaborate with each other while working with one another. While Abby was being taught by all of our dancers, we were also able to stay productive by working on our solos. Then, we ran it from the top and worked on some specific parts of our pieces like tap and lyrical. When we reflected on our experiences and what we learned, we thought about our story line. We wanted to make sure that our collaborative dance shared a story and touched emotions of the people around us. Next time, we want to think about our steps a bit more and polishing our final piece. Off to a great start!

This is a timelapse which we streamed during the course of the class. One may see us practicing our solos and teaching Abby in our time. After, we learned tap and lyrical which was a fun, collaborative time.  Here, we are seen practicing one of our lyrical pieces while we prepare for our final dance. Trying our best!

Compiling Our Knowledge

WHAT DID WE DO? WHAT'S NEW AND WHAT'S CHANGED?

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING

Today we discussed our superpowers and kryptonite. Each member of the group wrote a strength and a weakness, and we used the weaknesses to create “norms.” These norms consisted of guidelines we were to follow during our creative and collaborative process. Once we’d set our guidelines, we reviewed the different genres of dance we already knew, and were taught new ones. Up until today, we’d learned Irish dance, ballet, gymnastics, and salsa. We reviewed each dance to its own music. We only learned one new genre of dance today, which was lyrical. Along with lyrical, we also re-rehearsed the other styles of dance that we learned. When we did this, we were able to review the steps that we previously managed to accomplish. We videoed the group doing each type of dance and compiled them to help illustrate our process. We’re really excited because all of the pieces of our movement study are beginning to come together.

Discovery - Inspirational TedTalk

How am I participating in this idea at this particular moment?

Document ideas & changes generated through this interaction:

We searched for video inspiration to help further our ideas for our final creative movement project. The video is a TedTalk about a woman who is a misfit. She talks to misfits because she knows that there are a lot of people that miss fitting in. She herself wanted to be a writer, but when the opportunities came, she realized she wasn't as happy as she thought she would be because she suddenly had to fit into a mold, when she's rather just be herself. Our project relates because each performer in the movement study will be a misfit. Each one is unique and no one fits in because there is no pattern.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lidia_yuknavitch_the_beauty_of_being_a_misfit

Experience 1

How am I participating in this idea at this particular moment? (reflection and description of your new thinking)

Document ideas & changes generated through this interaction: (artifacts of learning, collaboration, and iteration)

Juliana loves ballet and offers this to our group.  She laughs, "Throughout my life, I've done all sorts of dance.  Dance is really special to me and I am so happy we are combining our talents."  Both Sadie, Abby and Abby offer their past history of hip hop and jazz.  "We're happy to join this group!"  Alana, our fellow gymnast and Claudia can't wait to join in with some salsa from their past cultures!] Each member of our group brings a different perspective to our final group project.  Natsumi Meyer states" I have an extensive history in Irish Dance.  All throughout my life, I've loved to explore all different genres and combine all of our talents to create something we are all a part of."

Here are our shoes from all of our different styles of dance!  Pointe shoes, ballet shoe, tap shoes, Irish dance shoes, light shoes, pedinis and half soles.