Hair Do's (515)

                It has come to the beginning of show choir season folks! That means getting to see all your opponents’ shows and costumes and, interestingly enough, their hair. One of the things show choir judges judge on is how uniform everyone looks, that means everyone has to have the same hair, although with the new fad of the themed show that seems not to be the case, but I will talk about that in a different blog. This can be trying for some people if the hair style the director chose is straight and your hair is naturally really curly, or vise versa, it might take you about three hours to do your hair but you have to, it kind of stinks but in the end it has a great outcome. So I just wanted to share some of my tips with you.

                First and foremost, do not dye your hair any unnatural color. By unnatural I mean purple, or green, or any other then some sort of blond, brown, or red. I know that it is a new fad and that it can look pretty great but on stage it would look very odd. Now I do not mean that if you are a natural brunette that you shouldn’t dye your hair bright blond, hey if you want to do that go for it!

                If it looks weird up close fix it. When I first started show choir I did the hair styles because that is how they told me too, looking back on it I’m thinking, “What in the world was I thinking?” You shouldn’t just do the hair because they told you to, yes everything does have to be uniform, but that doesn’t mean it all has to be exactly the same. Everyone has different hair, think, thin, short, long. I do suggest that if you do have short hair you grow it out, it will make the process of doing hair so much easier. At my school we have to sign a waiver saying that we will not cut our hair drastically.

                Don’t overdo bobby pins, do over do hair spray. This one will be short. Do not use too many bobby pins, yes it is a good idea to secure your hair but if you have upwards of fifty bobby pins in your pretty little head, I think you should just re do the do. A show choir girl’s best friend is hairspray.  Keep those fly away’s down and your hair locked down tight.

                One last thing, show choir is known for its poofs and honestly I love them. They look good from on stage, but some girls have a hard time deciding when their poof is high enough, and they just keep going, and going, and going. A pretty good rule is three fingers high, I believe that looks good on stage any less and it looks too small. But of course it’s not up for me to decide. I’m just saying I have seen some crazy big poofs, (seriously it was about the size of the girls head.)

you have to have confidence. (410)

If you are in show choir, you automatically have to have confidence for a good show, at least a little bit. On a scale of one to ten, one being no confidence at all, not even wanting to leave your room, and ten being, Victoria’s Secret models or people that streak at NFL football games, because let’s be honest, they have to have some guts to do that, you have to be at least a 7 to do everything we do in show choir. Higher than average, but you don’t have to be crazy out there.

First of all you have to be confident with your self and your body. A lot of the time, when we have costume changes we change with other people, sometimes all of the same sex, sometimes its mixed gender back stage and normally you don’t have enough time to make sure no one is looking at you  while you change.  I mean obviously you will be wearing under garments and girls normally wear spanks under their tights for a bit more innocence but its still just like being in a swim suit in front of a lot of people.

Another reason you have to have a lot of confidence is the fact that no matter where youre performing there will always be someone’s eyes on you. Maybe a judge and maybe not, but someone will be so you have to know what you’re doing and be confident in it. There will also be times when you make mistakes, once I fell down in the middle of a song, can you say embarrassing? You can imagine that the feeling after something like that would be to want to run off stage or hide, but you have to be confident enough to get back up and get right back into the dance, knowing full well that tons of people probably just saw you face plant.

One thing that I know I had trouble with when I first started show choir was partner dancing. What? A boy? He has to grab my waist? Oh my gosh this is awkward.  We have to be how close? Ew he is sweating. But you have to make it look like you have chemistry with this guy who could be your best friend or even a total stranger. You still have to have confidence that even if you feel weird you are doing the right move and so is your partner. 

Results(423)

                    Show choir, to me is not all about winning. It's about getting up in front of tons of people, performing my little butt off , making great memories with my fellow members, and growing as a person. But I have to admit, winning doesn't hurt.
                    This weekend our freshman and prep show choir competed at Prairie High School. They both seemed to be in a good position for the very first competition of the show choir season. They had sharp choreography and good vocals. Of course there are things that need some practice time in each show. But competition is not just based on how well they do by them selves, but also by how well their competitors are prepared. And after seeing some of their competitors I still thought our prep had a good chance at first or second. Last year they went undefeated and I know many of them wanted to do the same this year.
                    After all the wonderful performances we waited in the gym to find out who won. We waited...and waited....and waited. It turns out we waited for an hour and a half because the judges had technical difficulties. After all that wait we learned that our freshman got first place and our prep got third, which was kind of a shock but it sparks the idea for this blog; how to deal with results, whether bad or good.
                    I would first like to start off by saying that winning is not everything, just as I mentioned before.
                    Okay let's start with worse case senerio, what do you do if you get 7th out of 7 groups? I'll tell you what you do. You accept the ward graciously. You do not act shocked, or insulted or anything. Other groups should applaud you just the same. That basically goes for all spots your particular group considers a "low" ranking. Then your group should go back to rehearsal and work hard to fix the things the critic judge told you after your show.  They shouldn't go around talking bad about other groups. It's bad etiquette.
                    After the announcer tells everyone who the second place winner is, everyone will know who the first place winner is because of process of deduction. But that doesn't mean the second place winner shouldn't get their own recognition. That means the winners should be gracious and give the second place winner their applause and not cheer that they one. They cam cheer after the announcer says they are the winner but not before that.
                   
         
                   

Funding(390)

Schools decreasing funding for arts and performing arts is a very common premise of movies and TV shows, the lead actor or actress would be greatly affected by this lack of money and get right on trying to save their beloved program with a, just crazy enough to work plane and quirky situations they get themselves into, such as someone being stuck in a tuba. These movies and shows are light hearted and in the end of course they get all their funding back and can restart their lives just as before. The unfortunate fact is that this situation of school officials taking away the Arts and Performing Arts budget is actually happening right now in many schools all across the nation.

            My school wasn’t affected as much as some schools. Basically we just had to do some extra fundraising to pay for our costumes for show choir. A lot of schools do not have as much money as we do to start with anyway. Some schools don’t have any art programs or any music programs either. And I think that that is such a sad thing because learning about, and making art is more than just listening to some lecture and putting some paint on a canvas.

            Art can help you express yourself, weather through photography, painting, dancing, drawing, or singing. If kids express themselves through art there is less of a chance of them becoming angry, and thus becoming violent. Without a way to express themselves students could also become sad and depressed. Which would lead to a bad school environment.

            Students also like extracurricular activities because it gives them a mental break from math…science…social studies…language…language, in a different language… all these classes require thinking inside the box and they have a structured lesson plan. I know, that kids can express themselves through written word like in Language arts classes, but most of the time it’s about learning the structure of a periodic sentence or listening the teacher talk about an essay they just read. It’s not so much about giving the students a chance to write their thoughts on paper just to get them out of their heads.

            This is why people should help and support performing arts and the arts in schools, it also why the school board shouldn’t take away funding from hard working kids. 

dealing with competition(427)

Dealing with competition in any form can be difficult. Other people can be ruthless and mean and spread rumors every which way.  Now In head to head sports you can be so mad you literally tackle the guy that you believe has started the rumor, or are your competition. Which is a perfectly fine way to deal with it; let it fuel you.  In show choir and other competitive performing arts we need to be a little more creative.

As you probably would have guessed, tackling someone on stage is a very frowned upon by coaches and many members of the audience. But so is talking about other show choirs badly.  My director makes it a point each year to tell us that we represent not only ourselves but also our show choir and our high school. That doesn’t stop people and performers from other schools from talking bad about us though. They may say things like they don’t like our costumes or that they thought we didn’t sing a certain part right. And when you hear that it is kind of like a blow to the chest, because you have been working your butt off to make a great performance, and all they noticed were the bad things. This is where the competitive nature comes in. You want to turn around and look that guy in the eyes and say “Listen here bud, that was a great performance.” And maybe add a few choice words. But, you can’t. It would reflect badly, and that’s how to get more fuel to the fire.

A way to deal with competition for show choir is to put one hundred percent of your energy into your performance. More than likely there would be a moody or dark song that one could act totally mad at the world, and use the competition to drive that anger. But how do you use anger, during a happy song? Well, I’ll tell you! You obviously can’t let that emotion show on your face, or it would ruin that whole song, which would just make you even angrier, which might ruin another song; it is a cruel cycle really. Well using anger in a happy song just takes a little bit of thought. First, you think how angry they made you, then you think about how good it would feel to get a score better than their group, then you think about how to do that, and then you realize that you have to at least act totally happy to win. And there you go.

Acapella(320)

                By now most people have probably heard of the latest craze of performing arts; acapella. Thanks to new shows like the sing-off and movies like pitch perfect acapella is now very very popular. The meaning of the word acapella, from Webster’s dictionary, is; without instrumental accompaniment.  Because it had no accompaniment vocalist need to be able to recreate sounds of instruments with their voices, such as a drum hit, a high hat, or even a tambourine. These people are known as beat boxers and vocal percussionists, they are normally men who can sing very low and keep time very well. Actually everyone needs to be able to keep time very well. There are large acapella groups like of twenty to twenty five people, and there are smaller groups. One of the best known smaller groups is called Pentatonix. They have 5 members, hence the Penta part of the name. There are acapella groups that are all men, or all women, or mixed.

Many schools have acapella groups, which is the premise of Pitch Perfect.  In Pitch Perfect they practice with an all girls group to compete at three different levels of competition. Their biggest rival is the all men group at their same school. Although I do find the singing and the movie in general very entertaining I do not think that this is much like real life at all.

One of the college acapella groups I know about is called BYU vocal point, standing for Brigham Young University. They are an all male group and very talented. They competed on the Sing Off against the above mentioned, Pentatonix.

My personal opinion about acapella is that it can be very interesting and beautiful type of music. I like to listen to many singers on YouTube in my spare time.

If you would like to listen to some acapella here are the links to some of my favorites;

https://www.youtube.com/user/PTXofficial

https://www.youtube.com/user/vocalpointbyu

Lifts(414)

            One of the moves you have to get used to early in show choir life is a lift. In the early stages of show choir (Like middle school, freshman choirs, or even elementary schools) they don’t normally choreograph in lifts because you are not experienced enough to do it safely. So you tend to see lifts in show choirs made up of older kids, like varsities, that are made up of mostly seniors..

            The most basic type of lift takes three counts. It has the girl standing in front of her partner. On whatever their first count is they bend their knees, also known as a prep, on the second count the girl jumps straight in the air, keeping her hands on the guys, which are around her waist, and her legs straight. Also on the second count the boy lifts, just as if he was picking something up (hence the name of the move) and put it down, and on the third count the girl lands. My choreographer makes it a point to tell us that girls should be able to do this kind of lift motion by themselves. The boy is just there for a little more air time.

            One lift that my choreographer particularly likes to add into dances is called a shoulder sit. It’s pretty self-explanatory, the end product would be the girl sitting on her partners shoulder. This is a little more difficult than the aforementioned lift because it involves staying in that position for a certain amount of counts, also our choreographer likes to make couples that do shoulder sits turn in a circle. It has the same beginning as a normal lift; bending your knees on the first count. But on the second count the girl tucks her feet into the boy’s side and, after establishing balance, she puts her hands up in a “v.” The boy would grab the girl’s waist on one and on two he pulls her up and re-grabs onto her legs to help her balance.

If you have a lift, or a lot of lifts, in a song it would probably be a good idea to like your partner, at least a little bit. If you don’t like them it may make the lift a bit awkward. You also have to rely on your partner to know when to start the lift, how long to hold it, and when to end it. They are also relying on you to remember the counts.