Does It Work?


These days, Ondrej’s relaxation/exploration exercise was more like a review on every thing we did for the last nine days. Although there were still a little variation within the exercises, the central part on where we should focus on was pretty much similar. I feel a bit ashamed of myself for not being able to […]

Breaking the Rules


“Unlike my other students that receive proper dancing training, you guys seemed to be more open-minded and not afraid of trying new things that made me feel… wow.” (not exactly the words that Professor Trajal said, but somehow close enough.) After watching all the people who performed in the class today, Professor Trajal put this […]

Self-Expression


I gradually felt my energy have been consumed more and more each day. It is not just physically tired because of my illness— we were all intellectually challenged. While doing some exercise that requires muscles strength, I felt both sides were pretty balance. However, coming into relaxing my body on the floor, I could clearly […]

Other Bodies


I am going to put a lot of assumptions and opinions of what I’ve thought about dance (or “art” as in general) in this paragraph. I assumed every artist creates their work through their “instinct” and just do whatever they “feel” that they want to do without further consideration or political and social historical content behind, especially […]

Referencing Other Sources


The relaxation exercises with Mr. Ondrej has slowly merged into a combination of the ones we did on the previous lessons. It was amazing that my body stretched with a larger angle as we repeated the exercise. The concept of “repetition” itself seemed to be pretty dry, but I found it meaningful since I could […]

Predictable and Unpredictable


Before, I thought Mr. Ondrej is the one who helps us “warm-up” for Professor Trajal’s class. But now, there is no doubt that Mr. Ondrej’s session is something I will look forward to every morning. Thinking the ball and other exercises were “predictable,” I was totally wrong. “Unpredictable” is one of the perfect words to […]

Exploration


Today’s “somatic and physical” dance lesson seemed to focus more on the relaxation part rather than the exploration of our body. “Remember to breathe. Breathe in, and then slowly breathe out.”  Mr. Ondrej emphasized “our breathe” multiple time throughout the exercises. This reminded me that my coach has told me the way how we breathe […]

Dancing


Before taking the course today, I want to say that I did not really look forward to it as the day approached to the end of winter break. Yes, there is no doubt for the fact that I enjoy dancing, and that is the reason why I picked this course. After I checked the syllabus […]