Senior Dance

Throughout our time at JCD, we have sporadically worked on our senior dance (mentioned in the first blog post). We thought we'd post a video for today's blog of a recent rehearsal. Keep in mind that there will be three more dancers in it, that we are improving the beginning, and that it was an extremely rough run-through. We hope you enjoy it!

First Day at Great Lakes Theater

So today was my first day for my senior project, and even though I was only there for a couple of hours because I had AP Calculus in the morning, I already know that I am really going to like it. I am working in the Education Department of Great Lakes Theater, or GLT. Some of the activities that I will be doing include managing the auditions for GLT's Student Residency Program (where GLT teaches classical plays, including Shakespeare, at different schools to supplement that school's English curriculum), shadowing the Actors/Teachers who go to the schools for the Student Residency Program, and helping organize GLT's Fundraiser Gala this weekend, among other things as well. Tomorrow, I will be shadowing two actors, named Andrew and Melissa, as they head out to Eastlake North High School to teach Much Ado About Nothing. I am really excited not only to see these professionals in action, but to also be introduced to other schools' English classes. I was also interested to learn that the Student Residency Program is actually at Hawken until next Wednesday teaching Macbeth to Mrs. Griffin and Mrs. Hagen's sophomore Humanities intensive. I am really looking forward to tomorrow, and the weeks ahead!

Reveiving Phone Calls

I have been working the phones a lot lately.  I spend my time in two locations, Twinsburg, and Painesville.  The Painesville Office has the 800 number, so the majority of constituent phone calls go there.  Anybody who has an issue with any federal agency, including Social Security, VA, Post Office, etc. can call in, and I have received many of these calls.  I have been answering the phones, and people describe issues they have often with the above mentioned agencies.  I take name, number, residence, and pass it on to the powers that be.  This senior project is not "political' per se, in that I'm not getting into the political debates going on in America, I am learning more about how an elected official can help constituents who need an advocate, or perhaps feel they've been mistreated by another area of government.  Unfortunately I cannot too much specific anecdotal information because the office has a confidentiality policy.  Going into senior project, I was not aware of the multiple responsibilities that a local representative has.  Also, this senior project requires one to be patient and polite, especially when talking on the phone, which my mom frequently reminds me is an important skill.  After a week of project, I am much more comfortable picking up the phone and making a phone call to anyone if necessary.

*This post was from last week, I posted it in the wrong place.*  Today was my first day at my Senior Project, shadowing Mr. Nick Ciofani, who runs the office of my local representative from Ohio district 14, David Joyce. I spent the day in the Twinsburg office which is located in the Twinsburg City Hall, and met some of the city employees including the mayor. my sponsor then went over the basic stuff that he does every day. He then left later in the morning. When he left I took inventory of the hundreds of business cards they have onto a spreadsheet. I also answered the phone for people who live in the district who have questions for the government. I got one interesting phone call from a woman who told me about an incident with the police and a possible wrongful arrest. I also met a guy the office has been working with who is a Marine veteran of Vietnam. They are working to raise money to make a veterans' memorial near Twinsburg High School. When you think of people in congress, you think of the really big stuff discussed on the news, but I saw today that they are really most important at the local level being an advocate for the people they represent. They can do a lot of good work at the local level, like remembering and honoring veterans, and helping people who have legal troubles.

Fourth Day at JCD

Yesterday we started off helping Ms. Mary put costume instructions into each individual costume bag. We organized them by size and labeled each with a dancer's name to be distributed before classes began at 4:00. We also reorganized the 'prop corner' - a corner of the largest studio where we store all of the props we use for our competition dances. We removed some unnecessary props so Jordan and Maddie could take those to the storage space while Mackenzie and I condensed what we still need. We worked a bit on the show lineup we started on Wednesday and decided that in order for the show to stay under 3 hours, the seniors would not do their whole solos, but instead, create a traditional solo block (because there are so many solos at our studio, we generally create four or five solo blocks, each with five to six soloists who perform under a minute of their solo). We realized that Ms. Mary and Jordan really had the final say on what performs when, so we decided to wait for their approval before moving forward. We then looked over our checklist (see day 1) with Jordan, and we decided to go to BJ's to buy candy for the gift bags we hand out at dress rehearsal every year. We finished the day off by cutting the music for the open tap dance for recital that I'm helping to choreograph (one of the classes incorporated into the dance is the junior tap class I teach). Next week we are planning to focus on picture day, dress rehearsal organization, and KAR regional dance competition, which is next weekend.

Sigal and Maddie

New perspective

The past two days have been real eye-openers for me. On Wednesday, Emma, my sponsor, taught me the basics of how to dance in a wheelchair. Although I didn't expect it to be easy, I wasn't aware of the technicalities that came with wheelchair dancing. Each move, whether it requires a partner or not, has its own challenges. Certain moves require the right arm to push its wheel forward while the left arm pushes its wheel back, or vice versa. Along with this, when one is dancing in a wheelchair, they have to maintain at all times a consciousness of the distribution of their weight, as their weight determines whether they can turn, lean back, etc.

Unbeknownst to me, Mary Verdi-Fletcher, the founder of Dancing Wheels Company and School, is internationally known as the first ever wheelchair dancer. It is fair to say that the majority of the wheelchair dancing technique was created by her. So, when a dancer "feathers" their wheelchair, it means that they are gliding their hands over the wheels to slowly stop the wheels from moving. I found it very interesting to learn the dancing techniques not only so I could get a better feel for the different styles, but also to put myself in the shoes of the sit-down dancers who, unlike me, don't have the ability to get up out of the chair when they are done dancing.

Throughout the past couple days, I have started to gain a lot of perspective on the adversity that the sit-down dancers face in their day-to-day lives. Mary, the founder of the company, as well as Jenni, were both born with a disease known as "Spina Bifida", a disease that almost guarantees you non-functionable spine/legs, resulting in a life spent in a wheelchair. On the other hand, Jason, the third sit-down company member, was shot about five years ago, leaving him paralyzed in his legs and feet. Once I was given a glimpse of each sit-down dancers' situation, I began to look at the way they dance and move in a different, more appreciative light. I'm hoping to hear more of their stories in the weeks to come.

Day 3 at Jordan Center Dance
Today, after cleaning the studio from last night, our primary focus is recital. The most difficult part of this task is the lineup for the show. The reason this is so challenging is due to the fact that there are multiple dancers on multiple teams and there has to be time for everybody to change in time for the their next number. This is exceptionally complicated due to the fact that some dancers are in twenty of the thirty numbers in the show. Moreover, our studio has about 90 numbers and only 30 of these are allowed to be in the show due to time constraints. This is problematic because we need to make sure each dancer has the same amount of stage times. So far, we have a running list of all the dances in recital, and tomorrow we need to put them in order. We plan to spend the rest of the afternoon preparing for the upcoming auditions tonight. We have been given the task of choreographing and teaching the younger dancers the numbers they will use to audition for the Jordan Center Dance Competition Team. So now we're going to go pick the music and prepare dances before the dancers arrive at 4!
Maddie and Sigal