King Louis XIV even played the lead in all the ballets that his court performed. France was the origin of what is now known as ballet and soon other European countries began their own companies. The nature of work for any dancer is being creative and being able to express words and emotion into body movement. Even though dancers have the one of the highest rates of nonfatal on-the-job injury (United States Department of Labor, USDL), dancers enjoy the thrill of performing in front of an audience. The art of dancing is mostly sought out for entertainment and exercise.
The large white home with brown doors centered the stage surrounded by colorful characters in their 80’s attire. The colors of the clothing set a fun mood and new outlook on Shakespeare’s play. In addition to the 80’s era, they entire cast performed Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” dance as Chris Trimble took center stage and stole the show. The performance was absolutely fabulous and complemented by the original nature of the play itself. Ramirez and Forrester do a fabulous job of conveying their tricky ways to the audience while maintaining their character “innocence”.
The dancers come along the sides of the audience in the aisles and begin to cheer to ‘pump up’ the audience. They try doing this by raising their hands in a pumping motion, and vocally encouraging the audience to chime into the yelling and cheering. After cheering and creating movements that can almost only be described as “silly dance movements” (they were waving their arms around above their head in the air while clapping, or waving their bodies back and forth in the horizontal and vertical plane), they use a rubber launcher to pass out the t-shirts. They make the idea of receiving a t-shirt extremely exciting and valuable! The t-shirts read “dance dance dance”.
They began to mimic their owners in the pompous manners they used to dance and added kicks among other things as they did it. This became so popular that many plantations began to have competitions showing one group of slaves dance against another. The winner usually was awarded with a cake and these dances became known as the cakewalk. Eventually these dances reached
The dancers launch the dance with walking up and down the stage in two lines of four and interchanging through each other, followed by a hop every time the direction of their walks and runs is changed. They all hold hands with each other, even a man holding the hand of another man, to symbolize their unity and equality as human beings. The dancers continue running around the large circumference of the stage, repeating the intertwining motions within themselves in lines. An occasional soloist separates his or herself from the group to demonstrate his or her individuality by showing off a unique movement that is not repeated by the other
The sense I got was that this is community directed theatre – people experimenting together, with various levels of rehearsal but consistently high levels of slap-stick humor. For example, the deeply-in-love stage duo of Esme Rodriguez and Hank the Heat included a disgusting yet hysterical set of false deformed teeth. The tactics that were used to achieve their goal of making us laugh included a raunchy scene where Esme licks Hank’s face while singing a cheesy 80s rock balled. I observed many performance elements at play. For example the characters primarily used inductive tactics, charming and seducing not only their performance partners but the audience as well.
The lifestyle in Chicago featured jazz, sex, and crime. More importantly, Chicago had beautiful, young women with the dream of having their own Vaudeville act. The two main female characters in the show, Velma and Roxie, had hopes of capturing the public’s attention. It is apparent that there are numerous ways in which a musical can successfully move a narrative forward. The audience becomes aware of the
Ballet Dancers: The Graceful Mathematicians For centuries, audiences worldwide have been gathering in grand theatres, watching in awe of dancers and absorbing the art and beauty of their movement. Ballet is the most intricate and in depth form of dancing and has molded into the minds of many people. Ballet dancers are known for their grace and talent, but what most do not know is that Ballet dancers are also quick thinking mathematicians. There are many mathematical aspects of dance, from positions and angles, to concepts such as speed, counts and half timings. The ability of a ballet dancer is not only to dance with their body, but to train with their mind just as a great mathematician would.
These scenes were very touching and emotional for the audience. The show ended with a powerful short film called "One Billion Rising" followed by everyone dancing. Majority of the audience stood up and danced for the remainder of the show. All
I had the privilege of attending Spooktacular Concert. The concert consisted of the Wildcat Fiddlers and the Symphony Orchestra playing spooky, dark pieces. The concert concluded with a joyful parade of children in their costumes marching to Pirate Dance by Leroy Anderson. The concert is a very unique experience. The piece In the Hall of the Mountain King has a very familiar melody, so it was very enjoyable to listen to.