#upsince3

I feel like I'm floating in a bubble of happiness, so so thankful for everyone who helped out with this show, from my wonderful cast and hardworking crew (shoutout to Rachel, who amazed me with her resilience and creativity as assistant director - this was the first show she's ever been in!!), and to all the volunteers who helped set up the performance and art exhibition. And I'm especially thankful for my amazing mother, who stayed up the night before, baking food for the bake sale/concession stand, then manning the concession stand during the show along with Nina's mother!​​

After two months of hard work, everything came together in such an incredible way, I could not have asked for a more rewarding experience.

THE SHOW

In the two weeks leading up to the showcase, everything was flowing quite smoothly.

Rachel and I would spend a majority of our time in Design Lab either cutting out these huge snowflakes for decoration, or painting the flats and platforms for the set.

Priya would write up our blog posts for the class, and help us whenever we needed a hand.

Last week, I posted a reflection on rehearsals, specifically group song rehearsals, with a video attached of us learning the sign language for Song of Purple Summer. Go check that out!

I had a crap ton of loose ends to tie up.

I had to revise the entire show program/playbill because we made a bunch of changes to the scenes and lineup of acts at the last minute. So throughout the school day (during lunch and Design Lab), I sat down and rushed to make the necessary changes.

Rachel, darling that she is, made sure that the set was finished and then helped me make the programs look nice. We stayed after school so that we could print the programs (and boy did that take a lot of time) and set up the art show.

I'm going to bow down to *queen* Rachel because she is truly a powerhouse. She took charge of setting up the entire art show, and she did a fantastic job with it!

The art itself was abso-frickin-lutely amazing! We hung strings of lights around the auditorium lobby for decoration, and the entire exhibition looked breath-taking.

We had a cue-to-cue rehearsal yesterday from 5:30, before the show. 

We desperately needed it, because we hadn't run the show in its entirety yet. The actual cue-to-cue went well, credit to the cast and crew for working so well together and coming prepared - everyone knew when their scenes were, where to be, etc.

We had some technical issues as we were starting the cue-to-cue: at first NONE of the stage lights were working! 

RJ, who was doing lights and tech, ran an extension chord from the catwalk above the stage down to a table backstage, connecting the stage lights to his light board so that he could control them. For some reason, even though the extension chord was plugged and showed that it was working, the lights wouldn't respond when RJ put them on. This was happening less than an hour before the show started. We decided to run through the cue-to-cue regardless, using just the spotlight and making sure that the acts and scene changes ran smoothly.RJ went up to the catwalk to try and fix the light issue. (He did eventually, but we still don't know why they weren't working)

Then, another problem came up: we realized that we had gotten the wrong microphones. 

We had to borrow microphones from the school office (4 lapel mics and 2 handhelds), since we didn't have our own. (When we found out that lapel mics were an option, we were super excited, because they allow for a much greater range of motion and the user doesn't have to worry about how they're holding them.)

* Quick side note: I made an incredibly stupid mistake earlier that day - I forgot to get the mics from the office. I was setting up the stage for the cue-to-cue when RJ asked me, "hey Irina, where are the microphones?". 

I froze. 

The only thing running through my head was 'holy shit holy shit holy shit'. 

And I took off, running to find one of the janitors. The mics were locked in a safe in one of the office closets, and only the administrators knew the code to that safe. I nearly broke down when I remembered that. All of this planning and hard work, going up in flames because I was stupid enough to forget to get the microphones. Thankfully, it turned out that there was a basketball game going on at that exact time, and one of the administrators was there. She unlocked the safe, I got the microphones, and booked it back to the auditorium in record time. **

The sound board backstage could only have 3 mics on at a time - either 2 lapels and 1 handheld or vice versa. And only certain mics could be turned on at the same time (for example, only lapel 1 and 3 could be on at the same time, and only 2 and 4 could be put on together), same thing with the handheld mics.​​

During dress rehearsal on Wednesday, Rachel and RJ had made sure to connect each of our microphones to the correct channel in the sound system, and they could only work if they were synced to that channel. When we started to do the cue-to-cue, we realized that we had borrowed the wrong handheld microphone, and that it wouldn't work with any of the other mics that we had. Thankfully, Rachel figured out that we could just sync the microphone to one of the other channels, so we got back on track again. 

We ended up pushing opening back 15 minutes; instead of letting people in at 6:30, we let them in at 6:45. Everyone was rushing around backstage, making final touches to their makeup, making sure the mics were in order, and getting in their places.

And then the show started.

The curtains open with me standing center stage, on the square platform. 

My heart is pounding, my stomach in knots. I let out a slow breath, trying to calm my pulse. I close my eyes for a second, blinded by the spotlight, then look out at the audience. Vague black shapes can be seen in the audience, with faces peeking out here and there. My eyes immediately find Gillian, sitting down in the audience. My muscles relax, and I start speaking.

"This is for the fat girls.This is for the little brothers.This is for the schoolyard wimps and the childhood bullies that tormented them.For the former prom queen and for the milk crate ball players,for the nighttime cereal eaters and for the retired elderly Walmart storefront door greeters. Shake the dust."

After that opening poem (Shake the Dust by Anis Mojgani), the entire night was a blur.

At first I was really worried, rushing around to make sure that everyone was at their places and had their mics, that the crew knew what set change was next and that everyone was quiet backstage. But after a while I realized that I didn't need to micro-manage it all.

I stepped back and let everyone do their thing, and guess what - it went perfectly! 

I stood behind the flats that hid the backstage area and watched each act, tearing up a little at a sad poem, laughing when Ivy went out to read a Shakespearean soliloquy. And I was amazed at how wonderful each act was, how well the audience responded, how everything just fell into place.

At the end of the show, everyone took their bows and waved to the audience. Then Nina stepped forward as the curtains were closing, telling everyone to wait a second. She was holding a bouquet of roses, and pulled me, bumbling mess I was, forward with her. And as she thanked me for organizing the showcase, I looked around at all my friends, surrounding me on stage, and I thought "this is why I do theater. This is what makes it all worth it".

And now, just a day later, post-show depression is hitting me, hard.

this was an interesting two marking periods. I learned a lot: about myself, the design process, our education system. We started the year with our classroom design, and honestly, I think I enjoyed that more than the second half of the year. It felt more structured, and we had an actual end goal and an actual deadline. There was constant feedback, and we were always working. We were able to change the design at least a few times a week, and we refined it as much as we could. And we were successful in the end, so that’s a plus. :)

The second half of the class was a lot more independent learning based. I worked with Irina and Rachel on COMMotion, but to be honest, I felt like I wasn’t doing much, and maybe I should’ve picked a different project but also helped Irina and Rachel. What ended up happening was Rachel helped a lot with the art stuff, and obviously Irina was running the whole thing. I dance, and I was dancing in an act, and I helped out when they needed me, but to be totally honest, there wasn’t much I could do. I ended up being the designated blog writer because the others were too busy to, understandably, and I cut out snowflakes. I really really enjoyed dancing in the showcase, but I was definitely more of a performer than anything else. 

I’m working with an organization called My Little Patient which is based in D.C. as a student intern. We’re working on organizing fundraisers for a ‘Kid Doctor’ Program which is a hygiene education program for students in third-world countries. Maybe working on that as my project would have been a more productive use of my time? I don’t know. I stuck with COMMotion because we’d already gotten so far, and I didn’t want to agree to work with them and then let them down.

Check it out at http://irinakoleva15.wixsite.com/commotion/single-post/2016/12/23/Another-week-done

It would be so awesome, even if the physics of the thing would puzzle the heck out of me.

If there's one thing I've learned during the 4 months I've been a junior, it's resiliency.

I'm not the most stressed high school student by any means, nor the most work-loaded, but I've dabbled a bit in the crazy 2-hours-of-sleep-a-night, turning-in-assignments-in-at-the-last-minute-and-freaking-out-when-technology-doesn't-work-in-my-favor schedule.

But you just have to keep forging on, even though you're majorly sleep deprived (pretty much all the time).

Your hard work will pay off (at some point).​​

Life is darn exhausting, and most days everything you do may seem like shit to you. You're going to feel negative. You're going to feel like you're doing nothing right.

But the MOST important thing you need to learn as you grow up is to believe in your own worth. ​

The entire world is going to be against you, knocking you down on your ass every single day.

You're going to get caught up in a whirlwind of tasks, deadlines, assignments, and a plethora of other stress-causing activities, and you're going to be fudging overwhelmed.​​

But keep your head up. Hold on to what you believe in with an iron grasp, and the storm will die down. Tell yourself, "just a little more", and you'll find that when you open your eyes you will have survived. 

Congrats! You're still alive! That's awesome, because there's still so much crap that you have to get through. Yay.​​

that’s a Miles Davis quote by the way...

Last week was interesting, we’ve accomplished a lot and learned a lot, and we have a solid objective to work towards now, which is good. We’ve decided to do our latest dance, Medicine, during the Winter Showcase and actually talk about our project. We want to provide support to people who are affected by certain social issues while also encouraging conversation about the issues themselves. Conversation leads to change, and we want to do a small part to facilitate that. 

We all play a different part in this project, it’s kind of like we’re all doing our pieces and it all factors in to this collective goal. Irina and I are part of a our second dance together now for COMMotion. The first dance was called Kaleidoscope. We were all of different backgrounds in respect to dance and ethnicity, but by dancing together we were trying to show that diversity is beautiful. We had a photoshoot for this dance beforehand and the photos were incorporated in a video. Here’s a picture of the four of us who were in the dance, Nikki, Moraine, myself (Priya), and Irina, left to right, laughing at who-knows-what. 

As you can see, we’re all different looking, but we can still collectively do really cool things. The rehearsals were/are different than regular dance rehearsals, because rather than copying choreography, we’re figuring out how to incorporate our original styles of dance into the group dance to make it flow seamlessly while still being unique. We want to be able to differentiate our styles of dance while still having the dance fit together. It was a challenge, but the final product was gorgeous. 

Here’s a pose from one of our rehearsals. I’m doing a traditional bharatanatyam pose, especially my hands. And that’s the thing, not all of us have contemporary backgrounds.

I’m trained in classical Indian dance called Bharatanatyam. Compared to western dance, it involves a lot more direct storytelling and footwork. It’s a different kind of graceful. And our costumes are incredibly elaborate and tiring to put on. 

In this pose, I’m supposed to be talking about how much I admire a goddess and how badly I wish to see her. I’m trying to show the expression on my face, but dear god it takes years to develop.

This pose is honestly just cool. It’s usually supposed to be a pose done in the “snake dance.” I’m literally supposed to a snake. It’s wonderful :)

Irina does traditional Bulgarian dance. I don’t know too too much about it, but the costumes are beautiful, and I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of energetic footwork. I feel like you’d get a huge adrenaline rush while dancing as you move to the same beat as other people. I made her give me a couple pictures, here they are. 

LOOK HOW CUTE!!!

So our next dance is called Medicine. It’s about drug addiction. It starts out with one girl being addicted and how she slowly drags everybody into her addiction with her. We all get addicted by different means, one is peer pressure and another is curiosity, with the third being literally dragged into it with no other option. It’s super cool, and I think it’s going to turn out to really move people. 

OKAY

So I’ve been researching a brain response called neural entrainment. It’s the first of many many aspects of neural responses that I want to look into. Basically, the human body is capable of registering a beat, or a rhythm. Some people are better at it than others. For example, if you play a loud beat on a drum, people can usually internalize it and tap it out on their own. They can essentially feel the beat. When people get better at it, they can recognize beats with syncopation, which is when there is silence in place of the beat. Being able to recognize the beat whether or not there is a distinct sound to tap it out is what makes people good dancers. You have to be able to feel the eight count even when it’s not obvious to stay in sync. I think it’s really cool that the body naturally does that though. That’s why I titled it with that quote, “in music, silence is more important than sound.”