If you're not my teacher, you can ignore this...

There's a link on my sidebar to a page that consists of my weekly comments.

Sorry for any confusion!

Pas à Pas - Week 2

The song I've chosen is... Drumroll please... "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" by Pentatonix!

I've already cut the music into smaller, more choreographable (pretty sure that's not a word but oh well) sections. This will also help with pacing myself and keeping up with my goals. I haven't actually made the song shorter (it's about 2 minutes) since most of the songs we do in dance are much longer. But then again, we don't do solos at dance so I don't have to dance for the entire song either. We'll see about the length of the song once I get towards the end of my choreographing.

As for the choreographing, or the step by step (get it? Pas à pas? Because that's the French translation and... Okay nevermind), I haven't done as much as I'd like mainly because it's Chinese New Year and my family is busy celebrating and going to parties. (And I'm busy getting money from the 红包, or red envelopes, that are traditionally given to children on this holiday.) However, I did manage to sneak into an empty room and get some footage. Here's a peek at what I've been working on:

labanotation - so fancy it could be art by itself

While choreographing the beginning part of the dance, I realized that I would need to write it down but that I had no idea how to do that. I came across super fancy notations while doing research, like labanotation, but I eventually settled for simply writing the steps down and occasionally making (really bad) sketches underneath a score of the song. 





Luckily, ballet already comes with a whole dictionary of words and phrases for each step. So basically, it's time to brush up on my French vocabulary! Unluckily, I couldn't find sheet music for the Pentatonix version of "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" anywhere. So what do I do? I make one myself. This wasn't one of my better decisions. I could've done my math homework 3 times in the time it took me to roughly transcribe the song, and that's even with the help of the sheet music of the Tchaikovsky version. But still, it was nice to dust the cobwebs off of my old music theory books and tinker away at the piano.  

Time to get back to dancing! (And homework D:)

~Nicole

P.S  You would not believe how weird it is to wear socks with pointe shoes...

Photo credit:
rickjonesprojects.wordpress.com

First (Pos)i(t)ion - Week 1

Hey guys, guess what? I’m gonna spend the next couple weeks choreographing a dance! (Yaaaayyyy!)

So I’ve been toying with this idea for awhile, but I've never really gotten around to really doing anything about it. I figured I might as well take advantage of this project and finally do it. I know I want to do something on pointe because in my opinion it's the style that requires the most technique and looks the most graceful. I just don't have anything concrete yet.

I’ve already talked to a couple friends about the idea and brainstormed some potential songs, but I don’t have anything concrete yet.

Here my list of potential songs:

• Days of Roses by Martha Marlow - pretty much the only happy song on the list. I think it’d be really cute as a ballet dance, and I already have the first couple measures sorta mapped out. The song is pretty long, so I’d have to cut it before finishing the dance.
• Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy by Pentatonix - suggested by a friend, really cool cover. The dance, like the song, would probably end up being an interesting blend between the classical and modern styles. If I do this, I’d probably have to perfect my pirouettes and learn this step which I don’t know the name of. (Here’s a video of Miko Fogarty doing it: http://youtu.be/rkkQax95_ZE She starts at 1:01 and does it 7.5 times.) It’s really hard, but the whole point of this was to challenge myself right?
• Fair Game by Sia - much more emotional. If I do this, it might end up more similar to some of her music videos. It’ll be less ballet, but that might make it appeal to a larger audience. I’d have to be really careful when doing this or it might look disjointed.

For my final product, I’ll be filming a video with the help of a friend. Hopefully it’ll turn out something like this… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-tW0CkvdDI

Here’s my timeline for the next couple weeks.

Week 1: brainstorm and research (Basically the content of this blog)

Week 2: cut song and find repeating phrases to make it easier to choreograph

Week 3: choreograph at least 1 minute

Week 4: finish choreographing

Week 5: final touches (practice, practice, practice!)

Week 6: film and edit

So, what do you guys think? Which song do you think I should do? Any other suggestions?

See you next week!

~Nicole