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!