Speech (575)

            Well speech season Is coming up and I think that’s it’s about time to explain this type of performance art, which might take a while because speech is actually not just standing at a podium, talking to a lot of people. There are all kinds of categories for acting and singing to being totally silent. 

            Ensemble acting is when a small group does a small play, their only props being a table and some chairs. They are not allowed to wear costumes but are expected to look nice. In one school you can have multiple ensembles doing different shows.

            Musical Theater is kind of like ensemble acting in the way that there is a small group of performers and they put on a show. In musical theater though they have very little lines to speak it is mostly the song they sing that keep the show going.

            Choral Reading is a little more difficult to explain. It is a bigger group of students, with more speaking and singing then ensemble acting and musical theater. The lines are spoke either as solo lines, duet, a small group within the larger group, or the whole ensemble speaks as one. The whole choral reading show can be fifteen minutes long. Now and then the ensemble sings songs that go with their theme.  They also put on a show, but with more of a mystery to it. They are allowed to wear costumes and have multiple props; they also have to have their script on stage with them.

             Now Mimes. I think everyone knows what a mime is. The creepy people who wear white face paint and pretend to be trapped in a box on the streets of Paris right? No? Oh. Well in speech mime can be a group performance or a solo event. You have to act out a scene, either serious or funny, while not using any props or any words. Just facials and your body. You’re not allowed to have costumes, in fact our director makes us wear all black so we don’t distract from the performance.

            Now the competitions you take all these performances too,(I didn't talk about all of them by the way, if you would like to read more about the different categories click here, http://www.ihssa.org/) the first competition is called Districts. This competition is held in a high school, the gym is the “homeroom” for performers from all schools to warm up, or relax, or meet up with coaches. It is also where many props are stored. The performances take place in classrooms and the auditorium. There is one judge per room who will rate the performance. After districts if you get a one rating the performance will move on to state competition, held on a different day at a different high school. The premise is the same, the gym is the homeroom and the performances go on in class rooms. There are more judges per room and it is harder to get a one rating but if the performance does, and it gets recommended for it, it moves on to the highest competition; All State. All State is held at Iowa State University and the performers still have to perform in smaller spaces but they are bigger then class rooms. The top performance, chosen by one critic, is given the banner to hold on to for the rest of the year. The banner is the top prize from all state.  

Winter Guard (414)

If you have read my blog before you will see a lot of show choir, color guard and marching band, but there is also one activity that gets a lot less recognition; winter guard. Winter guard is just like color guard in the way that you dance some and spin flags and it’s a performance for people to watch. The differences are that there is no band any more, just a recorded track to play, they also perform on a big “floor” set in the middle of a gym. The winter guard performs just as the dance team would, like in a gym or arena to a short song, about a minute to two minutes long. At my school participants in winter guard have the choice of performing a solo at state or MA solo drill competition.  In their solo participants can wear and perform whatever they want as long as it abides by the set rules.

            I believe that winter guard doesn’t get as much recognition as it should. The people on the teams practice a lot, but if you ask any random student if they like it they might react with “What’s winter guard, bro?” Winter guard performs at some basketball games at half time. Basketball is not as big of a spectator sport as football games though so not as many people see it.

            Their performance starts with them and their helpers (coaches and parents) bringing out the mat and equipment. After everything is placed the announcer presents them and their performance starts. Judges give points for performance, technique, and overall presentation. They also take away points for moves not being together, bad technique, if you break the rules, etc. Some rules are pretty normal like, no curse words in the song, but some are odd like, no roller blades, no pole dancing and so on. Once the performance is over the performers pull their mat off the performance area and the next group would come up or the basketball game would restart.

            When we performed winter guard for the student body two years ago, you could say it wasn’t our best performance, we missed our beginning cue, no one was performing, and we were all nervous for our peers to be watching us.  Yet we still got a standing ovation. From this reaction I think that if people could see more of winter guard that they would enjoy it and then the performers would get more recognition for their hard work. 

Miley (266)

I just want to take a few moments to talk about a performer that EVERYONE has been talking about; Miley Cyrus. She was once the lovable Miley with long brown hair and a crooked front tooth, but she was also Hannah Montana, pop star.  In her younger years she appealed to a crowd much younger but as she grew up so did her music. People saw her starting to dress more provocatively and she even pole danced at the teen Choice Awards. (if you want to see that; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCpHGPnz1fI) when you compare those rebellious acts to her performances and music videos as of lately ,they look like child play.

                I may be a little late to comment on this, but I was just trying to get over the death of the innocence of my once favorite singer. Now Miley has short blond hair, and barely wears clothes.  In her music video for her single “We Can’t Stop” it shows Miley dancing around inappropriately, doing inappropriate things.  It really turned me off from listening to the rest of her songs because I thought the rest of them would just be party hard songs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrUvu1mlWco

                Then we come to her Video Music Award performance. Now I just hate this “performance”. I put that in air quotes because it was just bad.  Now maybe if her singing was on pitch it would be bearable but that wasn’t even good. Don’t get me wrong. I believe Miley is actually a talented singer, but being off pitch while barely wearing clothes, and gyrating in odd patterns do not a performance make.

                

characteristics (425)

Performers of any kind, dance, color guard, cheer, acting, show choir, and choir, have many different characteristics. Some are bold with their choices, some are on the shy side and tend not to say a lot, some are so outgoing they never stop talking, but all of them have to be dependable, consistent and trustworthy people to be involved in such activities.

Performers need to be dependable because a director can only do so much, unless you want him or her feeding you lines from behind stage or yelling out moves in the middle of a show. The performer is the only one who can make themselves learn what they have to and have it locked in their brain, leaving the director to make the whole ensemble come together. Another reason it is good for a performer to be dependable is because the director will depend on you for a lot of things like, being on time, having everything you need to work and being ready for the day. Some directors depend on their performers so much they will have them run practice for a while, or give them keys to go unlock a door.

Consistency is something very useful in the world of performing arts because Directors expect that if you did it once you will do it again exactly like the way you just did it. In practice if you ran a show three times and the first one was good, everyone hit their marks or hit that back bend at the right place, the second one was awful, no one knew their lines and everyone was off pitch, and the third one was amazing, even after the third one a director wouldn’t be very happy because none of those were the same performance. Consistency also deals with being on time and how often you show up to practice, a director loves people who are early and almost never skip.

Trustworthy kind of goes with dependable. A director has to be able to trust that you won’t take those keys and unlock every door in the building or if you’re running rehearsal, they have to trust that you will actually be going over lines or hit points not just sitting around on break. Directors also have to trust that you will get your work done, if you are supposed to have such and such lines memorized then they trust that you will by the time they tell you to. These three characteristics make a good performer but talent and hard work help too.

Stress(431)

Being a teenager is a hard job in itself, with the growing up, losing friends and loved ones, new emotions, and trying to be decently behaved in public. Not even mentioning school, or jobs, or family life, or extracurricular activities, or even friendships. Adults tend to ask a lot of teenagers now-a-days, but when does it become too much? I believe that it is good to push kids to be the best they can be, but if people push too hard it will cause stress and emotional damage to someone who is still learning to be a functional human being.

            At school I’m busy from 7 am until 3 pm. 8 hours of just absorbing new information, each night I would say I have a few hours of homework, probably about three hours. And after school I have practice for show choir, which isn’t that bad now, because it is preseason practice, but once we hit the competition season it will be chaotic. I feel bad for people in cross country or swimming because a lot of the time two practices will overlap and they would have to go one to the next. And of course jobs. After school jobs are great but they just add another activity that you need to fit into a schedule. With all this time taken up where do you put hanging out with friends or spending time with family?

            I believe that one of the reasons people who work a lot, or people who are super busy get more stressed out, and tent to have anxiety, is because they don’t have time to just talk with their friends or tell their parents or siblings about their day. Because of this lack of communication there can be conflicts in homes, causing more stress then before.

            A good friend of mine told me she had a conversation with her vocal teacher about just this subject. Her vocal teacher, Mrs. Elliot, had told her that in today’s society there is too much pressure put on kids to pick the right college, hang out with the right friends, join all sorts of clubs, and get a job. Mrs. Elliot said that when she was a teenager they let you be kids. I’ve read before that teenage students today have the same stress levels as psych ward patients did in 1950. And I totally believe it. It seems to me that in the 50s kids worried more about what poodle skirt they were going to wear then what college they were going to attend. Read more about stress here: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/01/its_not_the_job_market.html

 

directors

                There is a large variety of directors in performing arts, and with that comes a large variety of relationships students and actors have with their directors. Many of these relationships are good but some can be not so good. I think that these relationships depend on two characteristics. How nice or mean the director is to the students and if their group wins or puts of a good performance or if they don’t.

                First there is the student director who is very helpful but sadly gets over looked when it comes to directors. I think that relationships with student directors are tricky because in school and in everyday life they are your equal and you have to treat them as such, but when you’re the actor and he/she is the student director he/she suddenly has more authority then you and that is hard for a teenager to understand and respect.

                Then there are directors that are rude to the kids and don’t put on good shows. By “rude to the kids” I mean during practice. Don’t get me wrong. They could be the nicest person when you talk to them one on one, but during practice all they do is call out mistakes and say that nothing is ever good enough. Students dislike these types of directors because a lot of the time directors that are rude don’t produce good shows because the kids just feel belittled.

                The second kind of rude directors are the ones that are rude in rehearsal, call out people singularly, nothing is ever good enough, but they win and put on good shows. Performers feel like they can put up with this type of director because winning is the payoff.

                Its always nice to get a nice director. It is also nice to win.  There is one kind of director that is so nice, he makes rehearsals fun, he never gets mad at the kids, and he never wins. That is a big letdown for the performers because he never would have told them what they were doing wrong because he is too nice.

                Personally I think a rude director that wins is preferable over a nice director who doesn’t.

                Last but not least is the nice director who puts on a good show. These directors are the most likeable because they make practices a good time  but get down to business when they need to and they create a good show.  So the performers are happy a lot of the time and it would be just a generally good environment to be in. 

dance moms

“Dance Moms” is a reality TV show about seven little girls, around the ages of 6 to 9, who dance at Abby Lee Miller’s dance company.  Abby Lee is the owner and choreographer of this competition dance team. Each week the girls learn a new group dance and some of them are given solos, duets, or trios. While the show fallows the girls learning and practicing their dances it also fallows the mothers of the girls and the drama that happened between them, thus the name “dance moms.”

All of the drama stems from one central area, that area is Abby Lee herself. She is very picky about how the girls dance and she isn’t afraid to express it, she shows favoritism to Maddie, one of the girls, because Abby believes she is a more talented dancer then the other girls.  In one of the episodes she gives Maddie and another one of the girls the same dance solo just to show that Maddie could do it better.

This show is what I like to call, my guilty pleasure. The way Abby treats the young dancers and their mothers is just horrible. She nitpicks at everything the girls do, which makes then better dancers but at the same time makes their childhood horrible. When she treats the girls this way it makes me feel bad that I even support her show and Dance Company, but the show it so addicting! Once you start watching you just can’t stop watching.  It doesn’t help that the dances that they do are so beautiful and well performed.