Lights transfigure from one brilliant hue to the next at a moment’s notice. Layers of tulle trail behind dancers, accentuating their limber, calculated movements. Thunderous music emanating from the orchestra pit resonates powerfully, even from my seat in the balcony. I am three years old, perched on the edge of a plastic booster seat at the Wang Theater, watching The Nutcracker with a bag of M&Ms melting in my clenched fists. I am experiencing a complete sensory overload, and all I can think is I want to do that. However, upon arrival to my first ballet class, I was dismayed at the utter lack of tulle, sparkles, and general glamour in the comparatively drab classroom. To make matters worse, my tights were unbearably itchy, and I resented having to stand at the ballet barre and concentrate for what seemed like hours at a time. Fortunately, the promise of a recital at the end of the year kept me coming back each week. As time went on, it became clear that dance was much more than a juvenile phase for me; other childhood pastimes fell to the …show more content…
Despite years of experience, my first performance in front of my high school’s student body prompted the most gut-wrenching stage fright I’ve ever experienced. But that small risk has paid off tenfold; I’ve foraged connections with faculty and students through dance. Furthermore, my love of movement has introduced me to other powerful modes of expression, whether it be crafting articles about dance for the school newspaper, mastering choreography as dance captain for the school musical, or exploring theater through Grotowski movement techniques. Perhaps most significantly, dance has exposed me to a diverse variety of people and experiences, ranging from performances raising awareness for gun violence, to teaching dance to enthusiastic children at local YMCAs, to participating in arts immersion programs that benefit at-risk youth in my
What started out as a hobby transformed into a passion for an art form that allows me to use movements and expressions to tell a story. Whether I’m on stage in front of an audience of just friends and family, hundreds of strangers and a panel of judges, or the whole school, performing over thirty times, has helped me build lifelong
I considered myself a performer, and after years training as a classical ballerina I expanded into stunting and tumbling. While on tour, I developed friendships and bonds with dancers strengthened by a mutual love for dance, a commonality over the pain our bodies endured daily, and conversations on bruised and broken toes.
I had the pleasure of being in Western Kentucky University Dance Department’s concert, An Evening of Dance. The performance took place on April 29th through May 2nd in Russel Miller Theatre. It consisted of many works from faculty and guest artists. I felt like the concert was a success and that the choreography was all unique in its own way. I enjoyed the pieces that I performed, and the ones that my fellow company members were in. Through the analysis of “Petrichor”, I found that each production and chorographic element plays a large part in the successful outcome of a dance and emotional responses can be evoked by the simplest ideas.
... social dance. Many people in today’s society enjoy social; dancing. Chapter eleven dance concert, properly planning and establishing a dance concert is of the utmost importance. The partnership with the lighting designer usually takes priority over all other factors. One of the most important issues concerning customers has to do with mobility. The dancer must be able to move comfortably in the costume. The task of producing a dance concert is an overwhelming and tiring one. Chapter twelve dance in education and career in dance, many dance educators present the argument that teaching and learning dance as an art form is obviously absent from the American student education. There has always been and always will be people who have a love, desire, and passion to instruct and learn the art of dance, will ensure an important place for dance in higher education.
Growing up, one of my priorities was dance. I started dancing at age five at the City Performing Arts Academy and at fifteen I began taking classes at Elite Dance Academy. From early on in my dance career, I aspired to be just like the older dancers at my studio. They were such beautiful dancers and I dreamed of growing up to be as talented as they were. I remember in one of my classes we were given the opportunity to watch the advanced ballet class dance. This was the first time I ever saw dancers en pointe. I was utterly awestruck. I could not wrap my head around how these girls could so gracefully and seemingly effortlessly dance on their toes; however, I knew from that moment that I wanted nothing more than to dance en pointe. Soon, I realized
While a student in the dance program at Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing A...
However, New York Public Schools offered ballroom dancing classes to low-income students of color, which allowed the arts to be included in their curriculum. Watching the film, I observed the positive reaction the children had to the dance classes. Overall, they were exposed to different cultures, made new friendships, became more confident, and aware of different career options such as professional dancers or singers (Agrelo, 2005).
I have been a dancer since the age of 3. My earliest memory of dance was when I was too terrified to go on stage during a recital and I refused to go on no matter how much they tried to push me. Up until the age of about 12, dance had been just a hobby or an extracurricular activity. In fact, I didn’t even enjoy going to dance. I didn’t have friends there and I wasn’t that good of a dancer. It wasn’t until I participated in Dance Bermuda’s summer dance intensive in collaboration with the American Ballet Theatre in 2012, that I realized that I had a passion for dance. At the program, I was exposed to other dancers that were my age and older and most of them were much more advanced than I. So to avoid being the worst dancer in the program, I took to YouTube and watched hours and hours of dance videos. I researched all the ways to improve my ballet technique. I can remember trying to practice my pirouettes in the kitchen and falling onto the table and knocking a whole bunch of things over. I was determined to be as good as the other girls in the program. By the end of the two weeks I was fired up, motivated, and ready to get back to class after the summer.
A sufficient reason for attending many NYCB performances, even of the same program when possible, is that one can never tell beforehand when the constituent elements of the ballet-going experience will jell effectively for them. For a non-musician like myself, it is difficult to “see" the music, but on Sunday afternoon it felt as if I did. Mozart’s and Tschaikovsky’s composition never sounded so sublime. Alexander Glazounov’s music was imbued with an irresistible beauty of its own. And the company was firing on all cylinders for this matinee! Maria Kowroski and Tyler Angle were deeply moving in Mozartiana; Teresa Reichlen and Russell Janzen, spectacular in Cortège Hongrois. All the subordinate parts, by Daniel Ulbricht in one work and Lauren King, Emilie Gerrity, Savannah Lowery and Ask la Cour in the other, were performed admirably. The work of the corps members shone throughout. This was easily the most satisfying of the five
Steve Paxton: Speaking of Dance – Conversations with Contemporary Masters of American Modern Dance. Academic Internet Video. Directed by Douglas Rosenberg. Oregon: Alexander Street Press, 1996.
On November 25, 2017 I attended The Nutcracker ballet performance at the Eisemann Center in Richardson, Texas. The performance was an adaptation of a story by the same name which was written by E.T.A Hoffman. The show was a faithful, but imaginative depiction of the story. Overall, the presentation was successful in portraying the holiday classic that is The Nutcracker through the use majestic sets, extravagant costumes, and resonating music, all while still remaining true to the narrative of The Nutcracker. The production did this by having grand costumes and sets that resembled the time period of The Nutcracker and depicted the setting of the dances, the original music by Tchaikovsky which brought forth the emotions that are part of the
Price, Brena and Pettijohn, Terry. “The Effect of Ballet Dance Attire on Body and Self-Perceptions of
This world is filled with many different kinds of people. Of those people, many are, or have been, students. Each of them has their own way of interacting with their peers and the adults around them to achieve the highest level of education they can possibly get. For example, some people learn visually, while others learn through auditorily or tactilly. Personally, I tend to learn through my visual and audial senses. Seeing and hearing something at the same time helps it stick in my head, which, in turn, allows me to retain more of the lesson being taught in my head. Generally, I work hard and am very determined to learn things in every class, even if I don’t think it is interesting. When I really like a class, I spend less time studying it, since I get very absorbed in the lessons being taught and remember almost everything. In classes I don’t like as much, I have to spend more time studying, since I zone out and don’t remember what was taught that day. Since history classes tend to be the classes I am least interested in, they are the hardest for me. English has never been especially easy for me, but it is
Like any first experience we remember all the details of the event. I remember my first dance class at J in Jazz Dance Studio. I was under the instruction of Julie Pederson who was one of the young faces in my little town of Sierra Vista. I was thirteen and thought that the class was awesome. Now if you are under the impression that I was great the first time around you are wrong. I was the one goofy awkward kid who was there having fun. Julie thought that I would be gone by the end of three months because I couldn’t hack it. She was just glad that I was there having fun and being a good student. According to some experts, since I started after the age of ten I was not supposed to be any good. Just six months after starting, something somewhere happened to both me and my dance ability. I was put on the competition/performance team, and then I just kept excelling from there. Every year or two, I was put on a higher more difficult team.
The Winter Dance Concert is a collaborative collection of choreographic work by Ohio University Dance Division faculty and guest artists and was performed by Dance Division students. All the performances were live examples to the modern dance that Nathan Andary talked about in the class. There were six performances and each performance show a different way of moving the body. The dance concert represented variety ways of presenting vocabulary by the body movement and people's emotional expressions. Some of these dances featured special musical commissions, and some featured live music. Therefore, this paper is going to discuss three aspects; the design aspects of the stage and dancers, the communication of the dancers while dancing, and my