End of Class

How strange that ICAP is completely over! We performed at the middle school and now our banjar is dispersing and won't ever meet again...it was somehow anti-climactic...maybe because the performance at the middle school ended up being so frantic and much less prepared than I thought it would be. Honestly I thought that the Kimball performance would be less prepared, and yet we definitely were more put together for that performance. For the middle school we ended up without makeup, confusion with the costumes, no one knowing directions on how to get there, only one of the scenes out of three that we wanted to perform, and general chaos with everything going on. And yet, it totally worked and went really well. Part of the beauty of it truly was that even though it was chaotic, we have become such a community that people stepped up and everyone helped out and made it a fun and educational experience for these kids. The kids definitely seemed skeptical at first, but then started getting really into it - participating with the chucks and hand movements and stomping, getting into the dance, and overall just having a good time. I think that we stepped up despite the insanity and were able to pull off a good performance and a good time for all of these kids. I didn't know how they would respond - I remember middle school being that age where nothing is cool, everyone is self-conscious, everyone needs to try to be popular, etc...so I almost thought the performance would be a total failure with the kids not responding to the performance or wanting to participate. But I was conmpletey wrong! They absolutely loved it, and loved dancing along and looking at the costumes and saying the chucks, and overall just seemed to have a really great time! So despite the insanity and the confusion on our part, it went well. I just know that we could have had such a better, more solid performance, and wish we could have stepped up and really brought it for the finale to our class.

Kimball Performance!

We had our GRAND performance at the Kimball this past Friday, and I would call it overall a success! I really didn't know what to expect from the gig as a whole - what other kinds of groups would be there and how prepared they would be...But I actually felt like our banjar performance fit well into the mix of performances and brought some different flavor to the entirety of performances. Although we practiced it a bunch of times on Wednesday, as our group was about to go on and perform I felt so unprepared...where exactly was I walking? How should I walk? Walk normally or dance to my spot? When should I enter? What should my hands be doing? Last second we decided to enter with our arms up and ready in ala padma (I think that is the one we did...), and I think this was a great idea because it made the entrance seem more professional, more put together.

Most of our performance went well, and I think it was overall pretty solid. I had some friends come to the show, and they were extremely complimentary and thought our performance really stuck out from all the others. I kept asking them, "No, honestly, really, what did you think?" etc...and they kept telling me that truthfully they were impressed and thought it went really well. I felt that overall we rushed it as a whole, our beat was pretty fast and people cut short their little scenes, but this is definitely to be expected - I think this always tends to happen when you get in front of an audience and your nerves take over. Everything also felt really different because we were in our costumes and makeup. Movements were more restricted in the tight skirts, and I had wings in addition, which were something that I had never had before and just wasn't used to. Some of the chaks got out of control - I think that each side couldn't hear the opposite side of the circle as well as we had in the room, so it was harder to coordinate and make the two sides work together. Also, with Francis on the microphone it added a whole other level to the chak circle that I think threw some of us off as well. Although we got through the motions of the dance as a whole, I think that in practicing we were actually more cohesive as a group.

I enjoyed watching the other performers as well. Kalyani was sooo amazing in her bangrah dance group and it really made me want to join something like that! The fact that they had just figured out the dance that same week really showed me how good they are - as compared to our group that was working on our dance for such a longer time and really weren't as prepared or had as complex of moves...and then the bangrah team that was able to put that together in such a short amount of time. It was great...the Irish dancers were impressive as well - they all had that stiff unfeeling facial expression on for the entire dance. The stage presence of most of the groups was truly inspiring - everyone took their performances very seriously and gave it their best.

This week we've been focusing on our performance for the Kimball Theater next week. I'm really not sure how it's going to turn out...I am playing the part of Ravana, which is pretty exciting, and yet intimidating as well. Kalyani is doing a great time with giving us some guidance as to what we should be doing as to movements in general, but also keeping things very open to suggestions and letting us play around with what we want to do with our own parts. I feel pretty good about my opening movements and walking around, I am just struggling a lot with the part where I have a conversation with the uncle. I just feel so awkward trying to say "chhuck sic chuck chuk" or wahtever on beat with the banjar circle around me, while simultaneously stomping and trying to look menacing, while simultaneously using only hand movements to try to tell the story that I am angry and want him to turn into a deer for me so that I can capture Sita. I mean, seriously...how can I portray all of that within mere moments and no spoken words? I am working on just being confident in whatever movements I choose to do, because I know that half of what makes a performance good, actually, what makes an okay performance Great, is confident deliverance from the characters. If the actors and dancers themselves become involved and confident in what they are doing, the audience reads this and feeds off of it, even if the person really has no idea what they are doing.

Our banjar has truly come such a long way! Everyone is stepping up and making suggestions for sounds, movements, actions, blocking, facial expressions...etc. We are finally gelling as a group and I think it really shows. We are able to encourage one another while still giving constructive criticism to help the group as a whole. Taking glances over at the other banjar working on their piece shows a similar scene. And everyone seems to be having fun too! I also feel like every time we do (wow I am completely blanking on what it is called right now...the opening and closing ritual where we ask forgiveness of the earth for stamping on it???) - it has more and more meaning for me. I love it, I just love that it brings us all into a mindset at the beginning and gives closure to class at the end. And I love the meaning of it, and think that it should permeate other parts of our days - thinking about the earth before we do anything to it, or not even just the earth but to other people or animals or moments. It's something I think about now before all my actions - who or what all is this going to affect?

This week we began working on our scene for the Kimball performance. It is pretty overwhelming since the scene is so open and we pretty much have free reign to do whatever we want. Without a single person leading the group (although Kalyani is doing a great job stepping up for us when we really need help and explaining basic moves that we can then play around with and add to), everyone seems pretty shy and unsure about stepping up for the main roles and directing people on what to do. I think this makes sense at this point in our rehearsing, since we aren't used to just watching a given leader and repeating the dance steps to the best of our ability. Now, we are the ones who have to come up with the moves that are correct for the scene and create a congruent artistic scene.



A lot of the class on Wednesday we worked to figure out different rhythms and ways of making the background sounds and music to different scenes. While spending a lot of the class sitting in a circle, experimenting with different combinations and ways to make our 'chuck's work together fluidly in an interesting pattern, our banjar really stepped up and worked together as a community. Everyone was participating and putting their own ideas in to the group to help us work out a way to make the music work. People stepped up and offered different ways to try singing the chucks in order to make it work. It was hard figuring out how to make two different groups, the two mini banjars, have separate rhythms that worked and sounded right together, while making both of them unique, and yet also getting in the correct number of beats and the gong that are necessary for the sound to be from Bali. I definitely enjoyed today;s class!

I am really excited to begin working on a show for the Kimball Theater for Nov 14. I am nervous because of the very short amount of time we have to create a show and perform it, but I am excited to see what we come up with. I thought it was great that people stepped up in class this week, on their own, to help convince others of the pros of putting on a performance at the Kimball. I think it will be a great growing experience for the banjar and help make us even more of a community.

Along those same lines...I have been feeling much more of a community within our banjar recently. We all seem to be getting more comfortable with one another, and I know for certain that I am feeling more comfortable. I see more people speaking up in class and offering contributions. I have also felt more comfortable stepping up and taking leading roles at times in class. This is still something I am a little wary to do...because I don't want to be that person who jumps up to take control all the time, but I feel like everyone is volunteering for roles and characters that they are interested in, and aren't holding back as much. It's great!

Working on expressions through specific movements with a partner has been a great experience as well. The fact that Francis could leave the class for a day and everyone stayed and still gave their attention and respect to Kalyani shows how our banjar has really grown into a community of respect. We are all taking this class together to learn and grow in our knowledge of Asian Performance. Anyways, the movements with expression were a great new addition to the class, it was somewhat difficult for me, because the movements that express the certain emotions just are not movements that I would ever do in trying to portray that moment, but I did understand them and see the beauty in them, I just didn't actually feel them at all. I guess this is where the rasa boxes really come more into play and I will have to work more on getting mentally into the box, the role of that emotion and movement. It is something that I want to keep working on in the future.

This past weekend/week was fall break, so we only had one class this week. Unfortunately, I was feeling very under the weather and also had a midterm to complete, so I didn't make it to class on Wednesday. I've talked to people from the class about what we did, but I am planning on reading some other people's blogs to find out more about what I missed in class.

It was an odd week without going to this class - I've found I sort of depend on it as a release during the week. I tried to do some yoga and breathing on my own but found that it's a lot harder when you don't have an instructor and a room full of people pushing you to do it and telling you what steps to do next.

Letter to Our Banjar

Dear Banjar-

I have enjoyed all of our efforts thus far in working together to create a community to learn about Asian culture and dance. I feel like our journey is just beginning, although we are now halfway through the semester. For the remainder of the semester, I want to work on taking what we’ve learned and worked on in class to outside the classroom as well. I want to put in effort (other than reading the Ramayana and doing my blog) on my own time to practice the dances, learn the chants, work on my breathing, and concentrate on the placement of my voice and breath. It’s a lot more challenging trying to do the dance steps by yourself in your room, so I think I am going to try to make time with some friends outside of class where we can get together and exchange questions and concerns, and work on our dancing. I feel like this is one of the only ways our banjar can move forward at this point – if people don’t put effort in outside of class time, we will just keep repeating how to do the steps that we’ve learned. More so than the dances outside of class, I want to work on stretching and breathing. I feel like this part of class – the beginning, when we walk in and stretch as a group – is one of the most spiritual times of the class for me. It’s one of the only times of the day where I am focused internally on myself, and what my body is doing. I feel like this is a simple thing to do on my own and thus get more in touch with my own body.

As for the final performance, I am open to many things. I definitely want to work in a smaller group of just a few people in order to really accomplish some unity and coherence. I would love to work on musical or theatre aspects, rather than just dance, whether it is some kind of rhythm and chanting or something else. I am envisioning a small group making intricate rhythms through different chants while simultaneously incorporating some dance or theatre aspects to act out a scene. I picture one person in the group standing up and performing while the rest of the group continues the chant and then switching as the story progresses. Or something like this…

Anyways – thanks to everyone for such a great year thus far, and I hope the rest of the semester continues to be this rewarding.

Ellie

Things I'm struggling with in this class right now: staying on top of the reading (while the Ramayana is a fascinating and wonderful book, I find it hard to make time to read this when I have so many readings for other classes...), my thighs constantly being sore (but hey, since I haven't gone to the gym once this year, this class has pretty much become my workout for the day), but mostly I've been struggling with letting loose in class and really delving into the exercises. It's interesting because right before this class I have a Beginning Acting for Majors class in the same room for two and a half hours. That class has about 12 people in it, and most of them are pretty serious about their acting and what they are doing. We do acting exercises where we yell at each other and roll around on the floor and contort and seduce, etc etc. Anyways, coming from that environment every day to an environment where I still don't think people feel free to let completely loose, is quite a shift. I've never really been one to be self-conscious or hold myself back from getting into an acting exercise, but for some reason in this ICAP class I haven't really felt able to get out of my body and just do it and not worry what everyone else is thinking. I have a feeling that once one person in the class steps up and just puts it all out there, that we will all feel more comfortable letting loose, but right now this is something that is on my mind a lot and really frustrates my personal growth as an actor. Why can't I get over that self-consciousness??

On another note, I've been wanting to perfect the chant we do...and I always change the syllables a little bit every time I do it, so I thought I would write down phonetically as close to what I think the chant is right now, and maybe people could comment on what I have correct and incorrect. I think it will help to learn it by seeing it written down as well:

See ah vah rey rama jaya jaya ram
Mon geh leh huh vuh neyah
Mon geh luh hari
D____ Dasarata ah ji dah bihari

What a great week of class this past week! What with tests and papers and all sorts of horrible things in other classes, Asian Performance is such a release. It's interesting that in my theatre class we have been working on muscular release exercises, which consist a lot of relaxation and talking through your tension in your muscles. In Asian Performance we do quite the opposite, with all sorts or difficult poses to hold, and straining our muscles, and pushing our limits...and yet somehow I come out of Asian Performance feeling just as relaxed and released as I do after the acting exercises. I think that it must be the mental part and the getting in touch with my body and all those unused muscles that really makes me feel this way...

Monday's class was fabulous - it was a gorgeous day outside and being able to do the exercises outside made everyone have to focus more and was just a lot of fun. I liked knowing that people were probably looking at us and saying, "What are they doing??" and wondering what class it was. I think it made us all try harder to do the steps right so that we wouldn't look like fools not knowing what was going on.

I really enjoy the singing/chanting parts of class. It becomes so mesmorizing, and I can't wait until we get good enough to try out different rhythms and make some cool music. It makes me think a lot about my choir back home, sitting around doing circle songs and everyone contributing to make some awesome musical chant.

I've been thinking a lot about when we talked about humor in class on Wednesday, and although I agree to an extent, I think there is a lot more to things being funny than it solely being people laughing at desperation. I think that yes, some humor comes from desperation and making fun of ourselves, but other humor comes from exaggeration, awkward situations, puns, etc. I think that humor coming from human pain and desperation is only a portion of what we find amusing.

Balance

I feel like a lot of the skills we have been working on in class focus on finding a balance. Whether it is finding an internal balance of your body weight to maintain a pose, or balancing a cup on our heads, or balancing two different rhthyms of a chant against each other, finding that balance takes a central role. I have been struggling with finding ways to keep an internal balance in order to correctly mimic the dance steps we have been doing. Having a cup on my head was a great physical reminder of needing to strive to find that balance. The cup made me constantly think about my posture, the flow of my movements, and whether I was staying composed. It has also made me start thinking about my posture outside of the class...this is something that I don't think about that much, but really makes such a difference in the way that people perceive you, as well as the airflow throughout your body. Sitting in front of computers all day, or hunched over books really does not help me have good posture. But now that I am thinking about it more, I am making an effort to always think about having a plastic cup on my head, and help out my body by keeping as good of posture as possible.

I think my favorite part of class this week was when we learned the song/chant. Truthfully, I don't really remember it at all right now, but I'm sure if I heard it I would pick it right back up again. I am a very visual learner, so when we work on it again I am going to write it down. Music from these kinds of cultures is one of the aspects that really captivated me and made me want to be in this class. I also think the language itself is beautiful and sounds very meditative and pensive to me. When we watched the recording of the Ramayana, I liked how there was a character who was a kind of mediator, looking down at all the characters and singing out the story of Rama. This character seemed very Godly to me, as if he was conducting the whole show with his unveiling of the action through song.

Ramayana Performance

In class on wednesday we watched the WM performance of the Ramayana. I hadn't realized that there wasn't any talking in the show, so it kind of threw me off at first. I think also the fact I haven't finished reading the whole Ramayana made some of the action confusing in the show. I really really liked in the beginning how all of the monkeys were speaking in different languages, and I'm pretty sure they were speaking languages that they themselves speak fluently. I didn't catch on at first as to what was going on, but after a little bit I figured it out and thought it was really neat. I am a little unsure as to why exactly it was decided to do that. Was it because the story being told is something that we can all learn from and grow from, and is not only for people from a certain country? Was it that the story crosses all time and all places and thus all languages? I am not quite sure

I found myself paying special attention to the playing of the gamelon during the show. I took a WOrlds of Music class last year, and we spent a section learning all about the gamelon and its significance and how it is played. I was fascinated by this section of the music class, and we all went to see a gamelon show at WM, which was also great. I thought it was great how all of the instruments were displayed right up there on stage, rather than Americanize it and put them in an orchestra pit or something.

I was a little thrown off since I have a version of a theatrical Ramayana in my head since my choir back home premiered a version of it with Lookingglass Theatre. I keep meaning to meet with you, Francis, during office hours to talk about my experience and I want to give you a copy of our CD. We performed a musical, entitled Sita Ram, and it focused on the love story between Sita and Rama. It was such a phenomenal experience and I learned so much about the Ramayana and the culture. The choir performed the parts of the monkeys and sang as the chorus throughout the show, while professionals played the major roles, but on our CD it is all kids in the choir singing. I want to write more about my experience another time and track down that music!

Frustrated...

I would think that after having blogged in another one of Francis's classes last year that I would have this completely figured out....unfortunately I somehow pushed a wrong button when trying to post my previous blog ('First blog!') and nothing was posted...very frustrating. I am not going to spend time at the moment rewriting the entire thing but tomorrow after class I will post another, more thorough blog.

First blog!