Did two assignments for nothing!

Ballet was really fun, and a great workout. But in both Movement and Film, we didn't have to present the exercises/assignments that were due for today. So I worked hard to get them ready on time for nothing! At least now I'm ready and I just have to review for next week, but I'd much rather have done them today and have it all over with now.

I walked to the library at lunch to get some books I had on hold there, and got ogled by a gang of grade 10-ish highschool guys on their lunch break. It was flattering, since I was feeling grubby and not at my best.

We rented Closer and signed out the movie theatre downstairs, so I'm going to go watch it now...

Summer hibernation?

I somehow managed to sleep in til 4 today, which means I'll have a lot of trouble going to bed tonight. I watched the last half of Stepmom and all of Pretty Woman on TBS, and Ken and I did our film homework for tommorrow- we have to film each other doing a short, roughly two minute scene where we get woken up by a phone call, then call someone else immediately after. We have to work out certain points to change from a long shot to a medium to a close-up and vice versa. That was pretty easy to do, and since Ken has an old camcorder, we got to practice filming each other a couple times to get used to when we have to zoom in and out.

Yesterday I was at school for nearly two hours, since no one wanted the studio after the hour I had it signed out for. I finished up my movement biography, making sure that I have three Effort Elements in it, then choreographed about 6 counts of 8 of tap for Talia and my tap assignment. We only agreed to do a count of 8 or two, but I had a lot of time and got into it too much to stop at just two. I figured we didn't have to use everything that I made up, anyways. We're meeting tommorrow after film to put together what we've choreographed seperately and finish it up for tap on Wednesday.

That's about it...

Ah, the weekend...

I had a really good jazz class this morning, although I just couldn't get the combination we learned. Something about it wasn't sticking in my body, and I just looked awkward doing it. (Awkward is an awkward word... go figure!)

Then Shakespeare was the same as it always is... fun games that make the time go by so fast, seperated by looooong, slooooooow periods of sitting chatting about things that aren't really worth $77 (which is roughly what I (read: my parents) pay per day to be at Randolph. But at least we did some work on our monologues, even if it was just reading them out once and making a few comments on what clues the punctuation gives to us as the actor.

I had a studio signed out for an hour after Shakespeare to work on my Movement Biography, which I have to perform on Monday. "Students will be asked to prepare a short (maximum 2 minutes) autobiographical movement presentation. It can reflet any aspect of yourself that you choose. It might show your movement history and/or who you are now. No music or props should be used. It should contain use of three [Laban] Effort Elements and students should be able to clearly demonstrate these Elements."
I decided to do my movement history, which is pre-kinder ballet (I was no more than 6 years old and it involved a lot of waving of coloured chiffons), gymnastics, rock climbing, and dance (breakdancing, ballet, jazz, tap, and pointe). It was actually a lot of fun to do... I really had fun making up my little gymnastics routine! I have another studio booked for an hour tommorrow to finish it up and make sure I have the required three Effort Elements (something we've been doing in class, different ways to move- ie Light/Strong Weight, Slow/Quick Time, Indirect/Direct Space and Free/Bound Flow) somewhere in my movement piece. That shouldn't take me the whole hour, so I plan on just dancing for the rest of my time in the studio. It's so much fun to have such a big space to yourself to dance in.

Oh, Rosanna couldn't make it to school for the Scene Study coachings today, so we're going to have to reschedule. And since we're all supposed to do our final passes of our monologues next Wednesday and some of us haven't even done our first passes, I'm not sure how it's going to work. Plus, she was supposed to post up our scenes so that we know our groups and which scenes we're doing from which plays. I hate it when things are up in the air like this...

Okay, bed time!!

P.S. I forgot to mention that Talia and I have chosen to do our 8 bar tap assignment to Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. Yeah!! :D

Ginger cookies and old episodes of The O.C.

Ruth sent some ginger cookies, and I'm sitting here enjoying a few while watching the first episode of the second season of The O.C. (which is the season that just ended last week). And before that, I watched the last episode of the first season. Ah, it's nice not having any work to do for school tommorrow...

Ballet was really good, and challenging, which always makes me happy. Then Shakespeare was fun, although we've been playing the same game-exercises for a month now.

We're supposed to be starting work on our monologues tommorrow... fingers crossed!

These ginger cookies aren't going to last very long...

A long but good day

We learned an SSA (Soprano I/Soprano II/Alto) arrangement of Abba's Fernando in Women's Chorus 2 today... it was awesome! Then in Choral, we sang When You Wish Upon a Star from Pinnochio. The alto part is really hard to get, especially since we a)were sight-reading and b)couldn't hear ourselves over the sopranos. We just sort of plugged on and sang what we thought were the right notes as Bob, the conductor, pushed on to do the whole song in the ~35 minutes that we had to work with. It was rather fun being terrible... :P

Scene Study was... I dunno. Nothing special, but it was a good class. I got some good ideas from people's monologues. Rosanna wants to start on scenes soon and do everyone's final pass of their monologue next class, so she's having private coachings for the first run of the people who haven't gone yet. Since I'm one of them, I get to work my monologue privately with Rosanna for a half hour on Friday - a real treat at Randolph, where spending 20 minutes in-class working mostly one-on-one with a teacher is a privilege.

Lunch with the ladies was, as always, a blast, and tap was really fun. We have to choreograph 8 bars of 8 counts to any song we want, in partners, for next Wednesday. I'm excited to choreograph a tap routine...

And now I'm off to bed...

Refreshing breakdown

Actors put themselves into a lot of weird emotional states and get in touch with weird, deep-down things inside of them. So sometimes, in the middle of something innocuous, you can burst into tears. I'm sure every actor has had it happen to them at least once. And singers and dancers too, maybe- I can't really divide the three into completely seperate things since they all intertwine for me. But at any rate, at Randolph it's a regular, well-known occurance. A student will be singing a song they've sung dozens of times, or performing a monologue they know top to bottom, or doing an in-class exercise trying to breath into their back, when suddenly they burst into tears. Sometimes it's not so sudden, and it's a by-product of whatever emotional state they're exploring in the particular exercise, monologue, etc.

It's happened to me working a monologue in Scene Study, and singing in MTP, and it happened to me today in Voice & Text. We were exploring the Four Humours of the body- Blood, Yellow Bile, Black Bile, Phlegm, a.k.a. Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic, a.k.a. Wind, Fire, Water, Earth. We had done Sanguine already- it's airy, generous, light-hearted. Sanguine is the clown, the person that wants to make everyone else as happy as they are. Then when Joy, our teacher, was talking us through into Choleric, the image she used was the throat. She said, "Now feel in your throat every time someone's told you you're not good enough, not tall enough, not thin enough, not old enough, not pretty enough, not..." etc and I just started to cry. She says that the throat can be a huge trigger for some people...

Then she had everybody walk around the room in Choleric, then speak lines of their sonnets in it. As soon as she told us to move around, I had to stand off to the side against the wall because I was so... in tears. I was breathing really quickly and shallowly, and I was sort of scared of the other people in the class. Choleric is violent, vengeful, firey, animal, and the sounds they were making and the way they were speaking to each other got to me. Then Joy came over while they were speaking lines to each other, and helped me work myself out of the state I was in. She had me connect my breath back down in my sacrum (lower back, lower belly, center of the body) and breathe out in big, long exhales on sound. (On sound means with some sort of sound, rather than just air.) I wasn't quite back, but she called everyone back in the circle and asked me to join them. She then pulled me back up a little more with more deep, connected breathing, then had me work the rest of the way through it with my sonnet. She pointed out my disconnected breath to the class and, as I got it connected and came back to myself, she talked me and the class through it. Then she had people speak a line of their sonnet to someone in the circle, in Choleric. After I did a line from mine, she said, "Wow, that was powerful. That was a good exercise for you!" I agreed, because I did feel a fire in my core and a bit of vengefulness on my tongue. The breakdown, wherever it came from, helped me find a really powerful Choleric/Fire feeling.

After those random breakdowns, you usually feel one of three things: rejuvenated, depressed, or sometimes confused. After mine, I felt really refreshed and lightened.

That was the highlight of my day. Besides that, Jazz was fun although I really want to move up- I don't feel at all challenged enough! I learned a lot of things to do and not to do in an audition in MTP, which I always like.

All in all a good, albeit long, day. However, tommorrow's the longest day of the week by far, with 6 hours of class from 8 to 2:30, then tap from 5:40 to 7. But I have lunch at White Spot with the ladies to look forward to. All my classes on Wednesdays are fun, though, it's just by the end of tap class I just want to crash.

Oh, I've chosen a monologue from Helena in All's Well That Ends Well, I,iii,184-210.

Female Shakespearean monologues

I need to find a 2 minute monologue for Shakespeare class, so I've been looking through my book of the complete works. Sadly, there's an annoying abundance of powerful male monologues, and a distinct lack of good female ones. There are, of course, a handful of really good ones, like Lady Macbeth's 'Unsex me now' and Juliet's 'Gallop a pace you fiery footed steeds'. But compared to the monologues the men in his plays speak, us women seem to be slighted. Of course, the parts weren't written for women, since the actors were all men, but Shakespeare seems to have spurned his female characters of the really meaty emotional stuff. I'm thinking of doing Juliet's well-known 'Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?' just to be obstinate.

Bah.

A weekend of cleaning

I spent yesterday relaxing and reading, and did a bit of homework. Then today, I cleaned my room, including my computer desk and the tops of my dressers which are perpetually covered in miscellaneous stuff, and cleaned the kitchen and living room, since it's my day to clean them. Then I watched Braveheart while doing my nails, and sewed myself a little drawstring bag to put my cards in.

I'm planning on doing some more homework tommorrow and sorting through and organizing my dressers.

TGIF!!

Jazz class was really fun this morning, but I really want to move up. The teachers were given strict orders not to move anyone up for a couple weeks, so at the beginning of the first class I asked Natalie, my teacher, to keep an eye on me in terms of maybe moving up, and then left it alone. I'm planning on talking to her after class on Tuesday, though, cause it'll have been 7 classes and over 3 weeks. Hopefully she'll a) be able to move me up, and b) feel that I should move up, because I just don't feel challenged enough in Elementary 2. It's still really fun, but it's just too easy. I want the challenge of Intermediate. And watching the combinations the Intermediate class, I always think, "I can do that!" So I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to move up.

Shakespeare class was really interesting, because at one point Peter had us all walk around in our usual, neutral walk and pick someone to observe. We had to look at exactly how they moved, where they lead their body from, how their arms swing etc, and then he had us emulate them. Then we all stood in a circle and he had Michael come forward and do his copied walk. Then we all had to guess who it was he had watched. It was Talia; Peter had Talia walk just in front of Michael and he really did have the little peculiarities of her walk! It was really neat. Then Michael stepped back and Talia did her walk, and so on. It turned out that Scott had been copying me, but his emulation of me was so off that it took ages for us to figure out that it was me- we basically named everyone until we found the right name. He was walking really oddly, picking his knees way up and swinging his arms forward, almost like a robot. It was definitely not close to my walk at all. Oddly enough, around 3 people did Talia, and about 6 or 7 people did Justine. They both have really interesting, unique walks and it was really neat to see each person's version of their walk.

I'm really looking forward to sleeping in tommorrow...

Almost the weekend...

Ballet this morning was really good, but it went a little bit over time and I had to duck out because I had a vocal tutorial 5 minutes after class ended. The vocal tutorial went well, but I feel like I'm stuck at a wall vocally and I'm just not improving. Singing is definitely the weakest of the three disciplines, and I feel like while my dancing and acting are steadily improving by leaps and bounds, my singing is flatlining. Ugh.

Shakespeare class was also really good. I seem to have no words with which I can describe today except 'good'... It wasn't exceptional but it wasn't bad.

just one of those bad mornings...

I've been having trouble sleeping lately, and lay awake in bed last night until around 3 AM. Therefore I slept in for my 8am theory class this morning and didn't have time for a shower or a proper breakfast. I basically just threw some clothes on, grabbed my school stuff, my metropass and my keys and headed out the door. I grabbed a coffee and a muffin from Tim Hortons cause it's fast and on the way to the subway station. However, when I got to the station, I realised that somewhere along the way I had dropped my metropass (which gives a month of unlimited travel on the subway, buses and streetcars and would cost me $100 to replace)! I crossed my fingers that perhaps I dropped it at home. I payed the fare of $2.50 (luckily I had change or I'd have been even more royally screwed than I am), which aggravated me further.

I spent my subway ride juggling the hot coffee cup cause I didn't think to grab an insulating sleeve or a second cup, gingerly sipping to avoid spilling hot coffee in my lap or burning my tongue or throat, and wrestling with the little tab you rip off the lid to open it, which wouldn't stay down and kept poking me in the nose.

And then in my first class, I had to hand in a photocopy of my homework, and after I handed it in I realised that I had done a good 75% of it wrong. And then I opened the paper bag to have my muffin and saw that it was the wrong kind. AAAAARGH!!

After that, though, my day got better. Theory went well, and in Women's Chorus 2 we found out that we'll be starting on two Abba songs, probably Fernando and Waterloo, next week. In Choral we continued to work on the opera song we've been working for the last couple weeks, and while Bob, the conductor, was working with the sopranos on the high solo part, I sang along even though I can't really hit those notes and laughed to myself. The opera piece is a rather well-known Italian 'drinking song' commonly heard in commercials, called La Traviata.

Scene Study was really, really good and I learned a lot and got a lot of ideas and things to work on in my monologue although I didn't go. Then Justine, Kat, Meaghan and I went on our Wednesday lunch to Swiss Chalet. We chatted about life, as usual, then went back to school for tap. Tap was fun, although I didn't learn anything I don't already know. The class I'm in is a little easy for me, but it's good for me to work on the more basic steps because I tend to get flustered at a more advanced level and even my basic steps get muddled.

Then I came home, paying another $2.50 that I shouldn't have to spend, and searched for my metropass. I can't find it, so I'm assuming it's gone for good. I calculated how much I'm going to have to spend on commuting for the rest of the month, and if I only use transit to go to and from school during the week and either walk anywhere else or just stay in, I'm going to be spending $40. That's a lot for a relatively broke student! I'm just angry at myself for not being more careful with my metropass, even though I was in a rush to leave this morning to be on time for class.

Tommorrow I have ballet class from 9:30-10:50, a vocal tutorial at 10:55, and Shakespeare class from 1-4:50.

it's been a long day..

We found out last week that Danielle, a girl in 5th term at school, has been diagnosed with leukemia. Apparently she has a 70% chance of recovery, and started chemo treatments on Friday, so we're all rooting for her. She's such a ball of energy and a hugely positive person- it's really hard to imagine her beaten by anything. But she's got well over a hundred people sending her love and prayers, and I know she's going to be strong and not let this thing bring her down no matter how sick she gets.

Danielle's supposed to be in my jazz class, so our teacher Natalie suggested that we tape the two combinations that we've been doing to show her what we've been up to. I can just imagine Danielle eagerly learning the combo's off the tape...

After working hard to dance my hardest for Danielle's tape, I had 5 minutes to quickly change and rush to Voice & Text. Today Joy (our teacher) wanted to concentrate on finding our inner abs, because they're a hard muscle group to feel. You can pick something up and feel your arm muscles work, and when you take a step you can tell which muscles in your leg are doing what, but it's really hard to pinpoint where your inner ab muscles are and what they do.

So we did some exercises moving our bodies in little ways, concentrating on the muscles in our core and feeling which ones were working. At first I had a hard time not using other muscles to move, but after a while I got the hang of it, and 'found' my inner abs.

Then, however, we did a loooong exercise on the ground to relax our bodies and breathe deeply, also helping to target the inner abs. Since I'm very flexible and have naturally open, loose hip joints I have to grip muscles in my hips to keep my legs up when on my back with my legs bent and feet on the floor. The exercise, however, was about relaxing and breathing, which I couldn't do if I had to tense my body to stay in position. As Joy led us through the exercise, lifting our legs in different ways and using our arms to passively add weight to our legs to further the stretch (which I also couldn't do, because the second I tried to relax my arms to let them passively stretch rather than actively pull my legs towards my chest, they flopped to the ground) I was getting more and more frustrated, and when I asked her how to fix my problem, she answered in a way that didn't really give me an answer to my question, and continued talking the class through the exercise. I was really frustrated by the time we finished - rather than being relaxed and loose with my breath nice and deep, I was stiff and confused, with a sore back and a tense, clenched jaw.

I managed to let that go a little while we sat and discussed meter and rhythm in the sonnets that we're currently working on, but left the class in a fairly bad mood.

I treated myself to lunch at Tim Hortons and tried their new triple chocolate muffin, which is extreemly tasty and cheered me up a bit. Also, I looked in my mailbox on the way back from Tim Hortons and found that my vocal teacher Jill had copied some music that I actually needed later on for a vocal coaching with Lona, the accompanist for our MTP class. I had a version of the song already, but it was in the wrong key, and Jill was nice enough to make a copy for me of her version, which is in the right key. That helped my mood a bit as well.

My coaching with Lona went well, although I didn't know the song well enough to feel at all ready to sing it in MTP. Luckily I sang last week, and therefore there was roughly a 1% chance that I'd have to sing today, which I didn't.

After class ended (at 5:20), I headed home, still in a bit of a bad mood. I had a nice, hot bath when I came home and lay in bed a bit with a heating pad on my back, and felt much better.

Then I watched Wal Redro: UVS (not as good as the original one, Ruth, but still good) (for those of you who don't speak Ruthish, Wal Redro is Law & Order, Wal Redro: UVS being Law & Order: SVU {Special Victims Unit}) and got on the computer to catch you all up with my fairly unsatisfying day.

Ta-da!

The Report

Alright, let's see...

Right now I'm in my third term at Randolph and I'm loving it. It's what's called a triple threat (technically quadruple, but I'll get to that...) school, because they teach singing, acting and dancing, putting an equal emphasis on all three disciplines. The main focus is musical theatre, but we study plays too, as well as Shakespeare (3rd term is all about the Bard).

Let me try and describe the classes...
Each student has two 1 hour 20 minute dance classes each in ballet and jazz every week, and in 3rd through 6th term, a 1 and a half hour tap dance class each week. There are around 7 levels of difficulty of ballet and jazz, and around 5 in tap, so the likelihood of being placed in a class that's too easy or too hard because it's the one that suits best is small, so that students can have fun but still be challenged.

In the vocal department, each student gets a half-hour vocal tutorial with a coach they're assigned in term one and who they stick with until they graduate after 6th term. Depending on the student's level of training and skill, their coach will work with them on proper technique as well as helping them work any songs they need to have for class or an audition. Also, there's an hour-long Chorus, divided into three Women's Choruses based on skill level, and one Men's Chorus (the ratio of women to men is at least 4-1, so there aren't enough guys to make more than one chorus) each week. In Chorus, the students learn songs as a chorus and rehearse them, presenting them to the rest of the school at the end of term. In addition, there's an hour-long class each week called Randolph Choral, in which the entire student body (roughly 100-150 people) get together and sing choral pieces. (Don't get the wrong impression by the use of the word 'choral'- it's really fun stuff. For instance, this term we're doing 'Come Sail Away' as one of our songs.) At the end of the term, the Choral presents their rehearsed songs at the same presentation with the Choruses, showing the faculty what talented students they have the honour of teaching (hehe..).

Also in the vocal department, but mixing acting and singing, is a class called Musical Theatre Presentation, or MTP. MTP is a class which basically teaches students how to prepare and present a song for audition. A lot of people simply assume that if they sing the notes properly and with a nice voice, they'll get the part. However, directors are looking for someone who has a story behind their song, who plays some sort of intention and storyline rather than standing and belting out notes. So MTP shows students how to stand out in an audition as a great person to cast who would be able to both sing well AND play a role with skill. With MTP, you get a 15 minute coaching every second week to work on the song you're presenting next class. MTP starts in 2nd term (with a few introductory classes at the end of 1st term) and goes straight through 6th term.

The course load at Randolph also includes lessons in musical theory. You see, to be a successful singing performer in "the biz", you need to be able to read music fairly well, and sight read with a certain amount of skill. You might have a terrific voice and incredible acting skills, but if you're handed a song you've never even heard of at an audition and given 5 minutes to learn it before singing it before the audition panel, your voice means nothing unless you can read the music. So Theory class comes in handy. It's divided into 4 difficulty levels, starting with the very basics in Thoery 1 (the first day of Theory 1 my teacher drew 5 parallel horizontal lines on the board and said 'this is a staff'...).

In the acting department... there's Improv{isation} (working on your ability to create believable, honest scenes on the spot and to be present and interesting on stage), Scene Study (working monologues and two- and three-person scenes), Voice & Text (focusing on the way you hold your body and how you speak your text, rather than how you act it), and Shakespeare (two 4 hour classes each week in 3rd term). There's also Film class, which is what makes the school technically Quadruple Threat (singing, dancing, stage acting and film acting), in 3rd and 4th term.

There's also Movement class, which is designed to "aide the student in expanding his/her range of emotional expression through physical techniques". In first term, Movement is stage combat; you learn how to convincingly appear to punch and kick fellow actors, as well as drag them across the floor by the hair and many other audience-gasp-enducing moves, all without leaving a mark or causing any pain. It's a blast! In later terms, you do assorted movement courses, like Somatic explorations and Laban Movement.

In the academic department, as well as Musical Theory, there's Theatre History in 1st term, and Dance History in 2nd term.

As far as presentations go at the end of term, the 1st terms do a Theatre History presentation of scenes from classic historical plays (Brecht, Waiting for Godot, Ubu Roi, Medea, etc), the 2nd terms do a Dance History showcase of dance types through the ages as well as a Cabaret performance of various songs and dances, the 3rd terms do a performance of scenes from different Shakespeare plays, the 4th terms do a bigger, bolder Cabaret, the 5th terms do a play, and the 6th terms do a musical. The presentations in 1st-4th term are in-house only, meaning only students and faculty can watch, and the 5th and 6th term shows are open to the public.

That's all I can think of to say on the courses...


As far as my life goes right now, school takes up a HUGE portion of it. You probably understand better why now that you've seen how much they try to cram into your brain doing a 3 year course in 2 years.

This morning I had ballet class, which was really good. I've moved up to Intermediate ballet, which is the second most advanced class. It's fun but quite challenging, and I'm really enjoying the concentration and effort required. Then, after some lunch, I joined some other 3rd term ladies for a game of soccer in the field across the street from our school. It was really fun, and I scored a goal but I obviously have a lot to learn about soccer. (I also let two goals in in quick succession, within a minute of going on goal. Whoops. :P) I'm glad we're planning on making this a weekly Monday activity, cause it's good cardio, and extremely fun! Although hopefully next time we have more than 6 people playing...

Then after returning to school, I finished up a bit of homework for Film class and went to Movement. We played around with the different Laban efforts today, doing Light and Strong Weight, Indirect and Direct Space, Quick and Sustained/Slow Time, and Free Flow, running out of time before we could do Bound Flow. After each Effort, we had to draw a picture of how it felt to move in the different effort. It was really energising.

Then on to Film. I was expecting to do the exercise that Peter, our teacher, had assigned for homework but instead we watched a couple peoples' tapes of last week's exercise and talked about how we did. We watched mine (last week's exercise was to wait, on camera, for something for 2 minutes) and I found it boring but I'm just being critical of myself as everyone tends to be, and was told that it was really interesting. I think the camera does add ten pounds, and I definitely wasn't wearing a good shirt to have ten pounds added in. But all vanity aside, I look really different on film. I mean, when you look at yourself in a mirror you don't see yourself as others see you. You're selective in what you see and already have a set picture of yourself that alters what you actually see in front of you. but on film, there's no way to alter that because the image is there in front of you, moving around exactly like you do but not quite you, the way you feel you are. It's weird.

Why blog?

I'm not sure why I chose to start a blog when I've been happily using my livejournal for nearly a year now. I guess I like the wider variety of settings, and the fact that you can post pictures in each post. On livejournal you have to upgrade to a pay account to get features like different templates and in-post pictures.

So, now I've moved to a blog. Maybe I'll be more faithful blogging than I was with my livejournal.

I'd say more, but it's late and I have school tommorrow.

Adios!