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!