Graduation essay, Djungelboken.
About 4 months now, my class and I have been working on our ending production which is a project every student has to do before graduation. In our case, we put up a whole production with dance and theatre to show what we learned and developed during these 3 years. It is a fun way to get the last and most important grade so you can graduate.
I’m going to analyse these 4 months and talk about how my experience and teamwork were, and how we or I proceeded with the positive atmosphere and all the work.
The first month were quite difficult to do anything for me as a dancer. We waited to get information about the dance routines, so we were not able do much and when we tried we had the wrong idea kind of. I also had a hard time understanding the script. I never understood if we were animals or humans even if my classmates tried to explain that we played people. And because of that I didn’t get the message of this play. This made me quite stressed.
When it comes to costume work we were able to start almost immediately. We shared the roles and I got Baloo and Thuu. I then talked to the actors about their ideas and thoughts so I could come up with something.
Otherwise we had dance classes as usual.
The second month we had some meetings about how stressed we dancers were and that some of us didn’t understood the play. That smoothly cleared out.
We worked a lot with Bagheeras dance and started with dancehall and soldier choreography. I were in the dancehall group and it was so fun, it went smoothly and everybody were happy with the result. I remember I wanted to do a dance with my class but nobody else wanted so I got to do it with Jorge, so I started my search for music.
During this month the process in costume went slow and it was hard to find work. All the costumes for the roles were done, so it was time to work with the dance routines. But we didn’t have much information yet so we chilled a lot which we shouldn’t have done. Instead we could have helped other groups that needed help. I helped marketing group once and the scenography twice.
Everything started to fall into place during the third month. I got my dances and could start practicing my role as Gorillis, a cool doorman. And more and more dances were done. I ended up doing a dance by myself, I guess Jorge had a lot to do himself and didn’t have the time. The first part of that dance were a piece of cake, it all just came. But the other part were a bit harder, it were hard to find a suitable song and the beat were the same during those seconds. So it was hard to find a beat in the background of the melody to go after. But in the end it turned out great! I’m happy that my muscle memory is sharp. Everything got stuck easily so I could focus on details.
In the costume group, we got more to do know when we knew which performance we should have wolf clothes and so on. It was hard for us to proceed our work when the schedule continued to fall behind. Sometimes we were not clear and sometimes people didn’t take responsibility. It was hard to get everybody happy with so many different options. But in the end of the month we were done with everything except jazz dresses and plumes.
Now we moved in to auditorium. We had rehearsal almost every day and it went slow at first but the closer we got to the premier the faster it went. Easter break were in this rush we had but it was a very nice and relaxing break for me. When we were back it was full roll again. We stayed in school on evenings and the weekend before our first performance.
I think we all were tired but the positive spirit were on top. I were pumped to show up our work and how awesome we are. Almost every one of us dancers helped out to do the plumes and had a really enjoyable time.
Then we had premier and it went really good! In my opinion every show went really well except for the penultimate. I fell and others told me about their failure on stage so you got a good laugh behind the scene. Otherwise I felt like we got good respond from the audience.
In my opinion the best performance were the last one. Everybody were in such a good mood and hype for the last show together.
My conclusion to this are: that it’s hard to be an ensemble when everybody’s opinion shall take a part of the play and that in turn can have a negative effect when you try to compromise. It is also difficult to know how determined you can be without hurting someone especially in costume work and choose the right words in general.
I tried to do a lot of things that I were asked for in group project and take my part to learn what I missed, so my classmates wouldn’t suffer because of me.
How I kept the positive energy were by hugging someone that were sad or mad.
I find this big project a lift for me as a person. It was really fun even with some downfalls, but it ended up great and I am proud of myself and I am proud of my classmates and I am grateful to my teacher that went through it with us.
THANKS FOR THESE 3 AMAZING YEARS!
LOVE TINA.
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