Last Week of School part 1

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Singing Final

I've been taking singing lessons this semester from one of the opera students taking a pedigogy class.  It's been really cool, but somewhere about halfway through it Michelle informed me that part of her grade would be teaching me in front of her class.  That meant that I would have to sing in front of a room full of vocal performance majors (AHHH!!!). 

Don't get me wrong, I love to sing and I think I can do it fairly well in the shower or in my car, but I get the most horrible stage fright if I'm doing it by myself in front of people, especially in front of people I know.  I've had horribly embarassing experiences at professional auditions (for "dancers who sing") that have only solidified that feeling and therefore I have been dreading this experience all semester.

Monday was the big day.  The classroom in Gardner Hall was fairly small, filled with desks crammed close together with a very small space between the piano and the front row (at least from the perspective of a person very insecure about her singing).  When I came in I greeted several people I knew from working the opera last season--people I knew to be very strong singers, and who I was anxious to appear competent in front of, (especially since I hope to be working with them again this spring).  I sat in the front row with Michelle and tried to focus on good things.  When it was her turn to demonstrate her pedigogical skills we stood up and she warmed me up a bit with the exercises we'd been working on all semester.  I did pretty well, I think, though I got a little nervous when we started lower than I usually do, and didn't get high enough to go through my pissagio. 

Then it was time to sing my aria.

I started out ok, fairly strong, but about 8 bars in my throat started to close up (kinda like it does when you feel like crying).  The more I could hear the weakness in my voice the worse it got.  I tried to focus on my breathing and all the things we'd been working on, and I even brought some of my sports psych mental exercises in to try to calm myself down.  When I got to the climax, I hit my first "F" fairly well (at least on pitch), but the 2nd was just horrible.  I totally kaked it and just stopped singing.  My teacher rushed over and immediately tried to bolster my confidence.  We did some breathing and some onset exercises and my voice came back a little, but going back to the aria I still could barely sing.  I got so anxious I started feeling dizzy and lightheaded.  Eventually I had to completely turn away from the class and just focus on the music with my teacher standing behind me supporting my back in order to finish.  Quite embarassing.

Strangely, I still really love to sing, and I'm still excited about it.  I was elated that I had made it through this obsticle, even if it was with tons of help and by the skin of my teeth.  After I sat down someone sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder:  "keep singing!" he said "seriously, you have a beautiful voice".  Several people behind him agreed and a lot of the girls I'd worked with on Dialogues came up to me after class and complimented me too.  Whatever kind or quality of voice I do have, I hope someday I'll at least be able to use it in front of people the way I can just by myself.

Last Week of School part 2

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The Worst in Me

I am taking a class called "Pas de Deux Methodology" that has been an annoying thorn in my side since June. I signed up for the credit over the summer because I wanted to graduate this May, but fitting 62 credit hours into 4 semesters just isn't possible. It's one of those courses that is kind of independent study and is sort of supervised by the graduate advisor and sort of by whomever of the professors is teaching the Pas classes. That's where the problem starts. The graduate advisor went on sabbatical, one of the Pas professors retired, and the other one was fired, so there you go.

I had planned on finishing the course over the summer by observing classes at the Ballet West summer intensive, but I couldn't get anyone to explain to me what I needed to do. Eventually the supervision of my education in Pas work fell to *sigh* Bene, the department chair.

I was really not excited about this.  I decided to go to my committee for help and so put off really doing anything about the class until I could meet with them in the fall. When I finally got them all together, we put together a plan to propose to Bene that one of my committee members (who actually has extensive Pas experience) supervise me based on the requirements of the Pointe Methodology class.  Then came the bad news: the classes I was to observe had to all be in the same semester, be taught by the same professor, and there had to be 12 of them.  Though I had observed about 7 over the summer I had only done 2 in the fall (have I ever mentioned that I'm busy?)  There were only 10 classes left in the semester at that point, so I resolved to buckle down and just go to every one.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten that I would be missing one of those classes for Thanksgiving break, so I crossed my fingers that 11 would be ok.

Wednesday was the day before the last Pas class.  I was sitting in the new grad office finishing up some e-mails before leaving for another class when another of my fellow grads walked in.  This particular grad is amazingly experienced.  I really have no idea why he is a graduate student rather than teaching somewhere at a prestigious school.  He has so many qualifications I figure that the diploma is just a formality to allow him to apply for university positions.  He's a very good teacher--though he does get nervous sometimes--and it is obvious he's recieved very good training.  He's teaching a ton of classes for the U as part of his TA-ship and among them are the Pas de Deux classes. 

He sat down at the desk next to mine and greeted me.  We chit-chatted and joked for a while and then he non-chalantly mentioned that I didn't need to come to class the next day, that he would just sign my paper for me.  I was a little bit confused, and I thanked him but said that I needed to come because I needed to get 12 observations in .  "You don't understand" he said "I'll just sign for you".  I tried to explain my situation to him and to tell him that coming and observing was as much for my advisor as for my own benefit in learning things I would eventually be writing about.  Again he insisted that I didn't need to come, that if it was papers I needed, he'd just sign one for me. 

Long story short, that was the beginning of a hugely confusing, frustrating conversation turned shouting match in which the worst in me met the worst in him.  He accused me of being stubborn, disrespectful, and dishonest and told me that if I wanted to come to his class I'd have to get the chair to make him let me.  I shouted back at him that he was the one being stubborn; that I was not dishonest, I had a great repect for him as a teacher, I had no idea why he was being so mean to me, and I wasn't going to talk to him any more.  Then I left. 

I was so upset I was shaking.  I had no idea why he was trying to close his class to me (which he technically can't do according to university policy) and he seemed to mis-understand my motives in coming to the class at all.  I could barely see through the tears in my eyes and I had no idea what to do or where to go.  In my ramblings I ran into two of my professors.  One of them suggested that perhaps my fellow grad was intimidated by having to present his final project in front of the class and his professor while I was there, that it might be better if I just didn't go and petitioned the advisor to the course to accept fewer observations.  The other one said I that my fellow grad was absolutely wrong, that I was definately going to his the class the next day and that she was going to talk to him about it.

An hour later, I got a phone call from the second professor who said that my fellow grad was afraid that I would be disrespectful during his presentation as I had been throughout the whole semester and that was why he didn't want me there.  Though I was hurt and offended at this, I was only mildly suprised. 

The previous week he and another student and I had been having a conversation in which he told me that he felt I had been disrespectful to him all semester and sighted a list of reasons why.  The things he said I had done were valid, I had done all of them only once or twice in the 10 days I had attended his class, but I had not considered them to be offensive (such as eating in front of him and the class, or not letting him know which days I would be coming in advance).  I had told him I was sorry I had offended him, that it was not my intention, and that I would not do it again.  That is why I was suprised that he sighted my potential disrespectful behavior as his reason for barring me from his class.  I was also fairly saddened that if he had felt so disrespected he had not talked to me about it earlier.  I had considered him a friend and do truly have a respect for him and his experience as an artist and teacher, now I'm not sure if I will be able to have the same relationship with him I once thought I did.

I know I have a tendency to give offense to people without realizing.  Many times the things I say come out in a way I don't intend them to, or I say things without thinking first, but I never intend to actually be offensive.  I'm just thoughtless; spacey.  I hope that once people get to know me they understand that I am just oblivious to things sometimes and choose not to take offense when they realize I don't mean it.  At the very least I thought--until wednesday--that people would confront me with their issues and give me a chance to apologize and change.  (I hope anyone reading this who has been offended by me will accept my heartfelt apology as well).  I guess everyone is different.  I need to just try harder to be sensitive to everyone else's perspective. 

My professor (who is on my committee) then told me that she wouldn't require that I have 12 observations, that 10 would be ok if I didn't want to go to the class the next day.  She then offered to be a mediator between the other student and I to assure that there would be not further misunderstandings and to clear the air between us.  I told her that I would rather not go to his class if it would be ok and that I would like to meet with the two of them to settle things between us, but that I didn't think I could calm down enough to do it before the end of the semester.

This is just another reason why I will be so glad to graduate.  This has been a very stressful week.

Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot...

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I cannot begin to count the ways in which my life is stressful right now, but somehow all my squishy insides are still feeling warm and fuzzy.  It isn't like this every year, but this year I am really loving the joys of the season.  I'm listening to Christmas music and not getting sick of it, (shocker!) and I love all the little reminders that people are putting up everywhere; lights and garlands and ribbons and sparkleys....(you know how much I love sparkleys).  In years past these things were only reminders of how much work I had left to do before the break, or how I had to come up with things to give everyone and then shove my way through hours of claustrophobic lines at the mall to buy them.  Those years I was being a little bit Grinchy.  This year, I'm totally living in Whoville.

I'm looking forward to being with my family, going to see my friends' performances, listening to spontaneous musicians on street corners, standing open-mouthed and awestruck under huge and sparkling pine trees, snow, and hot chocolate, and cuddling, and spending time with my dear friends doing unabashedly cheesy wonderful things.  I hope I get to go sledding this year!!

All these little signs of Christmas are reminding me of the reasons why I love humanity.  People can be really loving and solidly supportive--even of strangers, and they seem to be walking around looking for excuses to be nice.  I love the way I feel when I'm in the "Christmas spirit".  It's easier to see how much my friends mean to me, and how awesome people are, and I feel a little more communal with my fellow humans.  Even sitting on the bus and slushing through the snow, I still exchange looks with people around me that say "yeah, we're all in this together".

I feel a little like I'm living in a Disney movie.  It's called "Shaun's Life" subtitled "Enchanted Christmas".  Talk about cheesy!!

Don't worry.  I'll come down off my glowy sugary high just in time for the sucking black nothingness that is Valentine's day, but right now I'm sparkling and happy and blowing my who-hooer as loud as I can!!

I know it's a little early but I can't help myself:
In honor of second advent, Merry Christmas!!!

Pecan Pie!

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It doesn't take a whole lot to make me happy.  I really enjoy the simple things: a puffy quilt to wrap up in, striped socks, the smell of mountains in the morning, and food!  Pretty much any downer moment is made better by good food, and any good moment must have its comestible component.  It is now the season of Thanksgiving, and so I am craving my favorite pie.  I don't think there's anything that has butter, sugar, and eggs in it that I don't like, but when it's just butter, sugar, and eggs....oh. 



Make the pies. mmmm.


My sister and her husband got a turkey from their work for Thanksgiving and they invited us over for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner so I had a good excuse to indulge in butter/sugar/egg bliss.  It was just a normal, easy, eat-food-and-hang-with-the-fam kind of afternoon, but those are the days you want to remember.  My 3mo-old nephew is learning how to squawk (he sounds like a little alligator) and we spent most of the time trying to get him to laugh.  We talked, we laughed...did the dishes, played a board game...Mal played the piano for me so I could practice my singing...
 

Eat the pies.  Mmmm!



Headed to Texas tomorrow to visit my nieces and nephews down there for actual Thanksgiving.  Yay for more food, more family time, and warmer weather! 

I think I'm actually looking forward to listening to Christmas songs on Friday, but maybe that's because I've been able to avoid them for the most part until the appropriate day-after-Thanksgiving barrier.  (People who listen to carols before then are like people who wear white pants after Labor day.  Sheesh.)  I kinda wish I had a Nutcracker to take up my time this season, but I'll be able to spend a lot of time with family and friends this Christmas.  That is something I haven't had in a while.

Life is good. :)



Take a nap.  Mmmmmm!







Speed Post: Gratitude

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Normally it takes me about 2 hours to get a blog fully posted (I'm a perfectionist, what can I tell you?)  I have 23 min....GO!

My family (awesome-ness) has brunch every saturday and sunday morning (frieking awesome-ness).  I don't always get to go and savor the delectible breakfast treats I remember from my grade school years at home, but this last week I did and for some reason had a Total Meltdown.  Really.  Yelling and throwing things tantrum-like meltdown.

I can't really explain it, it was like this huge wave of emotion crashed over me for about an hour and then went away pretty much as quickly as it came.  I'd like to blame my ginormous over-reaction on the stress in my life, and hormones (of course), and hope that my family will just let that one slide under the rug.  Still, that wasn't entirely it. 

I think I've been bottling up a lot of little hurts--little times when my family did or said something slightly insensitive--and they all came out in a gush saturday.  I had ignored the slight hurts at the time because if you make something big out of a little thing you often do a great deal more hurt to the person who only minimally hurt you.  No one is perfect, and we're all trying.  I know my family loves me, so I put my hurt feelings away.

What I did wrong was not let them go.  Sure, it is appropriate to swallow things sometimes, but if you let them stay there they only fester.  I didn't realize it until saturday, but I was remembering all of those little things every time there was a new little thing.  I would take them all out and look at them, decide it wasn't worth the hurt talking about it would cause and put them all back.  I guess on saturday the jagged, festering, pile was just too putrid to put back.  I had let it become a "thing".

My mom, my sister, and I had a long talk about it.  They were so patient with me, as they always are.  They helped resolve a lot of my issues and balance my perspective on what reality really looks like.  Since then, I've really been noticing and remembering all the little (and big) good things that my family does for me.  I have been amazed.  I really and truly love each person in my family (yes! that's you too step-family!) because they are great people.  And they love me too.  They laugh with me, and come to my shows, and brag about my silly accomplishments to their co-workers.  They invite me to girly-parties and game-nights and movies and dinners.  They help me move and help me get over ex-boyfriends, help me find a new style or a pair of jeans that actually fit.  They set me up on dates (as painful as blind dates are, I still appreciate the sentiment, family :) and tell me that I'm too uniquely wonderful for most of they guys out there (and actually mean it).  They talk to me about my problems, and tell me when I'm being an idiot, and put up with my odd way of saying the exact wrong thing all the time.

Today I woke up with an enormous sense of gratitude.  Before I had kind of been looking for bad things to match up with the ones I already had stored away.  The past few days, I've been remembering all the good things, and it's amazing how many of them I've found.  It's too bad that the little nice things people do for you don't get stored away in your memory as easily as the bad things, but they do have a way of growing on you if you take the time to notice them. 

It's scary to believe someone loves you.  It's a lot easier to believe that you are disliked.  It feels safer, but in the long run, is it really?  If you trust that someone loves you, a lot of mis-communication is avoided, and a lot of worry and time are saved.  It's easier to forgive people and salvage relationships that might be in jeopardy when you operate under the assumption that you are loved.  I've been worrying so much in my life whether or not my friend/family relationships are strong enough that I haven't been taking the time to be happy in them.  Letting myself be happy in them. 

I think I know now why they say that to truly love someone, you can't expect anything back.  I think that maybe we get back much more than we ever realize, because it's harder to see (and remember) all the things the other person does for you.  We keep the love alive by always giving (back).

Thanks family.  I love you.

 

 

I only wish I had pictures of everyone! sorry!

"It makes your cheeks all rosey, and your eyes bright as stars..."

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OK.  Anyone who can name the movie quoted in the title gets a free....something...from me.  You pick.  :D

It is now Autuminter.  That strange hybrid of summer and February that Utah seems to favor during november.  It is only here at the crossroads of the west that you get 70 degrees in the same weekend as 3" of snow.  Though my old battle wounds may be complaining about it, I think it's just beautiful.  I love the surprise every morning.  It might be a gothically foggy day building up for a storm, or a bright, breezy autumn morning so crisp the sky looks like someone just washed it in tide with color guard.  Then there is the serenity of a wintery morning just brushed with a bit of snow.  I love it all.  It's all beautiful to me.

Today was a good day.  I started out a little grumpy as things just didn't seem to be working right.  Then I got to go to my weekly singing lesson with the amazing, gorgeous, and incredibly talented Michelle Alexander, and something sort of... well... magical... happened.

We've been working on my voice for a few weeks now, covering this and that in classical singing technique.  Michelle gave me "Ombra Mai Fu" to work on.  It's a beautiful little Handel aria, but it's been so hard for me to connect to it.  Throghout our lessons, I could tell that Michelle just wasn't quite pleased with the work I was doing, and neither was I, frankly.  She kept trying to get me to do this, or that..."vomit out your eyeballs" she'd say, or "smell the cookies before you sing" or "try to make the sound more boyant".

I had no idea what she was talking about.

I tried to do all these things, and had sort of built for myself a voice that sounded OK, that I could get through the piece with when I was properly warmed up, but it just wasn't comfortable.  It wasn't me.

Today when we sat down, Michelle explained that we were going to really work on the shape of my vowels, that the tone I was using was just a little too dark.  (too heavy, I thought)  Then she said "I think that your true voice might be just a little more brilliant than the one you're using". 

We sang through an excercise, and all of a sudden it was there.  My voice.  I was singing.  It sounded like me.  It was so much more comfortable to use, and more expressive.  We sang through the Handel and I really felt the beauty of the music.  It was so much fun to sing.  I didn't want to stop.  "This is the voice I want to work on" I thought.  Michelle seemed to be as excited as I was.  Before I left for the day she said

"The best part about studying music is that you are really learning about yourself."

So true.  I feel like I've found a part of myself today that I always wanted to be there, but didn't think I'd be lucky enough to have.  Now I just have to learn to trust it.

Le Cour Jeune #3

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I am a graduate student. 

I feel like there is enough said in this one statement to excuse (almost) all the craziness, offensiveness, spaciness, rudeness, hyperness, absent-ness, and any other ness-ss-es you may have observed in me lately.  I'm so stressed it's oozing out of my pores; yet strangely I'm pretty happy.  Even though I have 8X more things to do that time to do them in, I really enjoy doing all of them.  And as everyone knows...busy keeps the blues away :)

So I think I should finally get around to talking about this project that I hope will be the culminating point of my career to date.

I've endeavored to create a piece which speaks to those of us who haven't fully grown up yet; who are still trying to discover who we are, what we want to do with our lives, and what is the thing called Love.  I imagine that most of us who might be "grown-ups" on paper might still feel like we belong to this group, so I've titled it "The Young Heart" as much to describe the subject of the piece as to include the "young-at-heart".  The title of the ballet (if we can call it that) and it's four movements are in french because the words spoken were originally written in french; but I'm getting ahead of myself.  Right now I'm only going to be able to talk about the one of the movements (*grad student*).  Concept and explanation to follow in subsequent posts...(stay with us!)

Le Fardeau de L'Amour

(in english: The Burden of Love).  Tonight we had our first rehearsal for the quintet in the 3rd movement. This is the longest movement in the piece (6:37min) and pretty heavy stuff.  It's basically an abbreviated version of the 7th letter set to music that took me forever to find. (It has a pretty specific emotional journey.)  The soloist (when we add her in) begins the piece dancing diagonally across the stage, onto the apron, and up to the edge of the proscenium.  As she dances her thoughts and feelings about love, the stage right pillar becomes her imaginary partner.  It is supportive and fills her imaginative need in these musings, but ultimately it is (as all inanimate prosceniums are) unresponsive, and again she finds herself alone.  She then turns away from it to find the quintet scattered across the stage.

The girls in the quintet (at least for the 3 min that we went over today) embody different kinds of "love", or more acurately, the different situations which feelings we often call "love" lead us to fall into. 
There is the girl comfortably married in a rather "business-like" relationship with her husband;
the girl who has yet to be married who is still joyously captivated by the object of her love;
the girl imprisoned in a marriage with someone she thought she knew;
the girl who gave everything in the name of love, only to be left abandoned;
the girl working to learn how to be yourself in a relationship with another person...

As the movement progresses, we realize the danger of making a poor choice in your partner in life, how much can be lost...

I have an amazing cast.  As I was watching them develop the movements that try to explain all this and explore what could actually be expressed through the choreography, I started getting chills.    The gravity of the subject matter sat hollowly in the pit of my stomach, and I could see similar reactions in the dancers.  It's a little odd to describe such a rehearsal as "successful" when the emotions the girls were trying to express were so dark, but they were so good at expressing them.  We had to quit an hour and 1/2 into rehearsal because we were all too emotionally drained to keep working.

The movement does pick up a little and end on an enlightened, hopeful note.  When we finish the choreography for the movement the rehearsals shouldn't be as down, but if they can continue to be this powerful, I will be very pleased with the final product.

Today, I feel like an artist.