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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Final Reflection
At the end of my freshman year, I decided that I no longer wanted to be a physical therapist. I felt that I needed to take some classes at UW that I enjoyed and follow my passion for dance as well as working with kids. Spring quarter of freshman year I became I dance major and decided I wanted to be an elementary school teacher as well. In working toward my new goals the beginning of my sophomore year, I took technique modern and ballet with Mark Haim as well as modern with Tanya fall quarter. I also took the core class anatomy for dancers and learned more about how my body works and what muscles I use for each movement in a dance class. Having hands on anatomy days in class when we worked with partners and found muscles on one another gave me some new study ideas and tactics to use at home. My mom is a massage therapist, so I visited her a few times throughout the quarter to study with her as she gave me massages. These hands on experiences and feeling the muscles on myself being massaged helped me so much with learning the muscles, ligaments and tendons of the human body.
Music for dancers was another amazing class I took in the UW dance program. Paul Moore is a beautiful musician and truly loves music as well as dance. In this class I was able to use my previous music and dance background and use both of them together in learning and breaking down rhythms. We counted out simple rhythms at first and then moved to complex rhythms that we created clapping and stopping rhythms to. Time signatures were challenging to work with in this class because we learned about different time signatures, than we had to listen to a few music selections and say what time signature the music was in. Especially when listening to music in the time signature of 3/4 in comparison to 6/8 was a challenge for me. All of our counting exercises have helped me in dance classes since I took this music class because when dance teachers teach a combination that is in 3’s or 9’s, I listen to the syncopation and dynamics of the music to hear for keys as for when the start of each measure and how the dance fits with the music the musician is playing.
In Betsy’s early dance history class, I had many bored moments. I have studied ballet when I was younger, but ballet never seemed to bring out my passion in dancing as other dance forms did. The history of ballet and its origins with court dance are interesting along with the transitions of ballet into how it became what it is today. I just feel that the way the class was taught was dry and the lectures all used overhead projector slides that were black typing with few stimulating pictures. We did see some pictures of outfits worn in court dance and during the baroque period, but I wish that when the lecture seemed to be somewhat stagnant, we switch gears and watched more videos of the origins of ballet or if their were some funny parts in class. Keeping the same overhead slide for us to look at just with words on it for the whole period of a two hour class drove me crazy because I am a visual and kinesthetic learner. Sitting still in a classroom for a few hours sometimes can drive me nuts especially when visually there is not much around me to reengage and stimulate my mind with. My favorite day in early dance history was when we had a baroque teacher come in and teach us some baroque dance steps along with her bringing in some baroque costumes for us to try on.
As my passion for teaching grew stronger, I then took teaching methodologies my sophomore year. I loved this class because after learning about the education system in America from the education classes I was taking this quarter, teaching methods complimented them. It was great to learn about how many varieties and methods you can use when creating a lesson plan for a dance class. The format we used for the lesson plan was very useful, and having Anna Green Gilbert was an amazing addition to the class. I had never studied the brain dance before this class, but I plan to use the brain dance as I continue teaching dance in my future. Teaching dance in Central Washington to middle school students is a life changing experience I will never forget. It was a moment when I realized that working with younger kids is something I love. I also tutored at Summit K-12 this quarter where I taught creative movement classes for a 8th grade Holocaust class. I used games, activities and other ideas from class and applied them to the dance classes I taught at Summit K-12.
In creative context, we learned about so many different dance forms that I have had little experience studying before this class. Starting with African dance was important because of its vast history and importance to so many other dance forms. I loved the dance classes we took with guest choreographers on Mondays after learning about the style of dance the previous week in class and reading research papers on each style of dance. Because of the greater understanding of other dance forms and my experiences with them, I plan to take more diverse dance classes after college and into my adult life. The differences between ballroom styles the tango, salsa and swing were so much different from the other styles within each dance form. Varieties of dance differ across the world as well as within each style. The emotions and feelings that are incorporated in each style of dance also differ greatly. Experiencing some of the dance forms we studied in class with quest teachers were experiences I will never forget.
In Jurg's composition class, I felt that improvisation was emphasized too much. I did not see the point in having to go to contact improvisation jams after learning contact improv in class. We spent seven weeks on improvisation skills learned in class, and most of these I touched in other classes before this class. I feel like we could have jumped into composing dances sooner throughout the quarter and given more freedom to express what we want to express. Studio working days were important to finalize material, but the emphasis on it throughout the quarter was too great. I had to leave a studio day early and then Jurg sent a horrible e-mail to me about how I am not a true artist if I do not attend studio days when I was already done with my piece. With a lack of understanding my situation, he just pointed fingers at me and blamed me. This confrontation over e-mail with Jurg made me lose respect for him as a teacher.
In Jennifer Baxter's piece "Beyond" for the Dance Major's Concert, I learned that dedication is one of the most important aspects of preparing for a performance. When people in the piece were missing practices during the beginning of our collaboration, it was hard to move on through choreography not having everyone at rehearsals. Once Jennifer took charge and told us that she was going to kick out a dancer from the piece if they missed anymore rehearsals, everyone showed up for the rest of the rehearsals there after. It was beautiful how Jennifer took choreography we all created and molded it to her liking for her piece. Performing in Meany Studio Theatre was one of the greatest experiences of my life and I wish I was able to fit in more performances before my senior year.
For the MFA concert this quarter, I participated in crew and was the runner. My job was to get the dancers from the dressing rooms and bring them up to be backstage before they performed. The hardest part of crew was watching dance pieces I wanted to perform in, but having to work backstage and watch. Also, strike after all the shows was more work than I expected, but the full experience as a whole about everything that happens backstage for a dance performance was life changing.
Post a Comment