Final Reflection: Senior Seminar

Senior seminar was a great stepping stone into the outside world. Creating dance resumes and bios were useful as I was applying to work as a dance teacher this summer. Grant writing may also be useful, but I'm not sure if I will need to use grant writing skills in my future. Some classes with guest speakers were great, but after so many questions that were being asked sometimes I felt disconnected when I was not interested in doing what the guest speaker did with their lives. But it's great to hear about all of the different options for the future and ways to use dance in many different ways. 

Dance 270: Crew

MFA Concert Stage crew 2009: Runner

Job: retrieve all the dancers from the dressing rooms when they are on deck and bring them backstage.

Participating in the MFA concert backstage was a new experience for me. It's hard to watch a dance show and work backstage when one is use to performing in the show. I enjoyed watching the choreography process during tech rehearsals and how each piece progressed from the the rehearsals and through the performances as well. I did have lots of down time because I was really only needed for dress rehearsals and during the shows all weekend. The hardest part of working crew was the strike when we hard to take apart all the lighting, cords, side panels, and pull up the marly floor. 

Dance 270: Dance Performance

Dance Major's Performance 2009

Performed in Jennifer Baxter's piece; Beyond

This was my first and only opportunity I had to perform in a piece for a dance concert at UW. Working with a student choreographer had its ups and downs. As a whole including the other dancers in the piece, we helped choreograph half of the work that was used in the piece. The collaboration of material helped the choreography process go by faster as Jennifer added her own compositional element to each segment. The reliability of the dancers in the piece seemed to be a struggle at first because our first month of rehearsals we always had at least one dancer missing. This is the point when Jennifer had to take charge and say that if anyone missed anymore rehearsals they were going to be kicked out of the piece. Being assertive about the absence issue was needed, and our final product was a success!

Dance 166: Dance Composition

In Jurg's dance composition class, we used improvisation to build on material. We set improvisations with sections and themes but left room for creative development in each section. After the first improvisation, I still had trouble seeing how improvisation is needed in the composition process. I did notice that using improvisations helps your body just move and can be a good tactic if your stuck when trying to compose a dance. We basically spent seven weeks using improvisation skills and games to create different movements we presented each week. We did create dances to set scores, but I feel that too much improvisation was used for a composition class. This is because much of our class time was spent working through different improvisational techniques and playing games when I feel that I had already done much improvisation before I took dance composition one. Contact improvisation is another great skill to learn and know about, but this is another portion of dance composition that could be emitted. 

I already worked with concepts such as cannons and juxtaposition in previous choreography but the use of spacing, speed and levels were more drastic than I had ever experienced them before. I enjoyed the last project where we took concepts from a piece of paper and had to pick two off the sheet. We took a dance we created from a picture and changed the dance to fit the two other concepts we chose. Our last adjustment to our original material was creating our own concept that was not on the paper. I now use this sheet of concepts in choreography to give my dances I create more variety. 

Dance 250: The Creative Context

In creative context, we started out learning about African dance forms. From there, we progressed into other dance forms that are closely related to the African dance style and culture such as capoeira which is a form of dance fighting in a circle. We had guest teachers come in on mondays and teach West African dance as well as capoeira with live musicians playing the drums. Then we learned about dance styles in America and Europe such as Native American Powwows, the Hula, Flamenco, Tango, Salsa, and Swing to name a few. And in particular, I never knew how different ballroom style dancing was from other forms of dancing in the same genre. Such as tango for example, Argentine tango and ballroom tango are way different in body positioning with the partner as well as leg positioning and how you cross the legs in between one another. Then, we also learned about dance a few dance styles from Asia such as Bharata natyam, Chinese dance and Kabuki Japanese traditional dance. 

This class was culturally stimulating in that we studied different dance styles across all the continents of the world. I loved having guest teachers each week come in and teach us a style of dance we were studying in class allowing us to embody the movement experience. We could not do with with every style of dance, but the styles we did have teachers for I understood more fully the particular style of dance we were learning. Also, I felt a connection the the emotions and experiences from time to time in class as the dance scholars wrote about when I experienced their genre of dance making my experiences dancing these forms even that much more amazing. Allison Rupert and I did our final project on musical theatre and the styles of dance that are used within it. I took a musical theatre tap class where we learned a portion of the dance Good Mornin' from the movie Singing in the Rain and my reflection is attached as my artifact for this class.

Dance390: Dance Teaching Methodologies

Teaching our lesson plans in central Washington, I discovered my true love for teaching and working with kids. Megan and I taught a hip-hop routine at Moxee Middle School to three different groups of P.E. classes of seventh and eighth graders. Even though most of the students we taught had never taken dance classes before, all of the students ended up dancing by the end of the class we taught. It was hard at first with some of the middle schoolers who did not want to allow their body to move, but once everyone around them felt comfortable all of the students ended up dancing. This experience as a whole impacted the communities of the school districts we taught dance classes at by allowing the students to move to music in ways their body may not be use to. Also, sometimes when I expeirenced struggles from the students after breaking down a step, I had to go back and re-teach the step in a different way or use different words to describe the movement. 

Having Anne Green Gilbert come and teach a few classes, I really learned so much more about how to create a lesson plan and add variety to a dance lesson plan. The brain dance is a great way to get the brain and body moving. Having a focus/ concept for the dance class was helpful in creating the movements of phrases and picking out movement activities for the classes to experience with as well. Because I am teaching dance classes this summer and in my near future, these skills I learned about teaching and creating a lesson plan will be useful in my future. 

Dance 344: Early Dance History

In early dance history we learned about ballet and it's history starting at court dance from Renaissance Italy. These dances were performed in banquet halls in between courses along with other forms of art such as paintings, poetry and music. Court ballet made its way to France there after. Later, court dance evolved into early ballet in the mid 1600's. Ballet later became popular throughout the world and it spread to the U.S. as well. 

It's useful knowing about a form of dance you are studying and it's history of origins, but this class could have been more diverse in the dance forms that are taught. I know we do have a cultural context class where we learned about other dance forms, but I feel that if we did not learn just the history of ballet it would have been more interesting. What about the history of African dance and incorporating it into the early dance history class? I know that we learn about African dance in cultural context, but African dance is such a valid dance form in it's origin and how many genres of dance that have come from African dance today. In early dance history I learned some great history of ballet and how it became what it is in America today, but this class was dry and boring in how we used the material and only talking about court dance and ballet the whole time. 

Dance 242: Music in Relation to Dance

It was great to learn more about musicality and variations in music to expand on my knowledge of music I gained previously from choir in high school. The full bodied experience with music and creating steps and rhythmic dances in class helped me differentiate rhythmic patterns more easily. There is a sense of embodiment when one feels the rhythm as a dancer and compliments the rhythms of the musicians or music in class with their bodies. Instead of always working for 2/4 and 4/4 music as most ballads are today, it's great to work with time signatures of 3/4 and 6/8 as well as other rhythmic options for a greater variety in dance class. I love having an intricate dance combination along with music that is not 2/4 or 4/4 to strengthen my knowledge of how dance and music and collaborate with one another. 

Paul Moore is such a great teacher. He is inspiring in that he has such a great passion for music, and the way he plays music collaborates wonderfully with dance classes. As a dancer I feel a special connection with his music unlike any other musician I have ever danced with before. Truly this class without Paul Moore just would not be the same. My artifact for music is a page of notes and exercises from the book practicing with counting music and using 1/8 and 1/16 notes along with whole notes, half notes and quarter notes.

Dance 493: Anatomy for Dance

The most beneficial part of the anatomy for dancers class was the hands on class once a week. After learning a particular muscle group for the week on Monday's and Wednesday's, we would have a class with hands on massage and finding muscles in class on Friday's. With a partner, we would find the muscles we were learning about in class on one another, massage them, and learn about their counter muscles and range of motion with the ligaments and joints they connected to. We also moved our bodies and discussed anatomical definitions for movements in dance class such as the anatomical definition for turn out, which is the greater trochanter rotating under the icialtuberosity.
My artifact is a picture of my mom giving me a hot stone massage. For studying purposes, my mom gave me a few massages to teach me more in depth about the muscles I was learning about in class. My mom would also quiz me to see if I knew each muscle she was massaging and what movements they were important for as well as flexion and extension of each counter muscle. This was the most efficient study tactic I had ever used for class before, and my mom's anatomy knowledge helped me gain more knowledge in this class then I expected.