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 felt my right side was tighter than the left. Though I am a right hander, the unequalness was so obvious that I started being aware of my daily standing and sitting posture. Anyhow, the relaxation and follower/leader exercise are no longer the only things we can do to explore our muscles; today was a special day as it was the very first time that Ondrej taught us a dancing sequence! The element of balance and fluency were emphasized in this work. Like Ondrej said, as we stretched our right hands’ finger tips, our body should followed the force that was pulling us. From the dropping and lifting moment, I realized I lost my balance easily whenever a turning phrase occurred. Therefore, I focused more on my body’s balance distribution and the way how we should stand (heels down and let the whole feet sticking to the ground). Then, after knowing I wouldn’t loose my balance, I added the “phrases” to let my performance looks smoother. I hoped there was a mirror so that I could see how I expressed. Was it the way that I thought I would look like? I do not know, but hopefully it was.

Proceeding to Trajal’s assignment (“Medea/Choral Leader’s costumes” and “what if in 1963 someone from the voguing community came to perform at Judson Church amongst the postmodernist dancers?”), there was a lot of moments that I thought I could be able to understand what that person was representing, but later turned out to be a different direction or topics that I did not expect it would appear. I felt this is the most fascinating part of these assignments: expecting to see the creativity and uniqueness from the next person. For my costume, I am actually proud of myself being able to put every element from the theme of “choral leader serving bad news with flower power.” I first considered about the overall color arrangement, intensionally having darker tone to understate choral leader’s existence in the play. And for each color, in a way they all represented a certain objects or messages. Dark red is the blood (Medea killing her sons, which can be considered as the “bad news” as well) or leader (the color of red normally symbolize as “power” or strength). Black interprets as the “bad news” and a mysterious sense of the choral leader (ghost-like character). Beige (or white) is more like a portrayal in “greek era’s” normal clothing color. Other than the color, I tend to choose a much loosing clothes that used organza (light-weight material that seems to be more like a ghost) and linen (fabric that ancient greek usually wore) as fabric. The flower hat with red silk ribbon dangling that somehow covering my face, it is a presentation of the “flower” and the “choral leader” (ancient greek actors usually covered with masks). Last but not least, the high heel is the clear sign of showing the “power.”

I felt this costume assignment has stimulated the artsy side of me, and I enjoy to do it so much. I love my other classmate’s costumes, and even thought about “stealing” some of their ideas to improve my work. I really can’t wait to perform, see, and discuss more voguer/postmodernist dancer pieces from others in the following two days. Yes, I found the readings and works were a bit hard and much, but the learning experience from this class is just so special and astonishing that I still love it.