Hi everyone!

Hope you’re all doing well and are enjoying your last days of February. Well, this has certainly been an eventful weekend for me. This past week we had our MFA Concert, which went very well, and my fiancé, mother, and grandma were all here to support me. My fiancé, Chester, had a very difficult time flying into the city due to the snow storm last Thursday and Friday, but after a whole 20 hours of traveling and diverting to Chicago he finally made it here Friday afternoon. I was so glad because he can only stay for 3 days!

Anyway, they were all here to see my first group piece choreographed at Tisch and I was so glad. I felt like I received a lot of positive feedback from my colleagues and faculty. I actually didn’t think I was going to be choreographing much when I first came to Tisch, but after being inspired by my colleagues and my composition teacher I really felt up for the challenge. I am so glad that I took the chance to produce some work because it was very fulfilling. Here’s a link to a video of the piece:

I’m going to be submitting this piece to the Raw Festival for the Dance Now Organization of NYC. It’s a studio series designed to promote emerging choreographic voices and artists previously unseen by the Producers of DanceNOW[NYC]. This is what the site says, “While serving as a means to identify works for the Fall Festival at the Dance Theater Workshop, this program provides valuable exposure for artists, as well as access to a rich peer network, subsidized photographers, videographers, and producers from other dance presenters in New York City.” This will be a great way to try and begin to market myself outside of the school and in NYC. I’m hoping this will be a good starting point for myself not only as a dance, but as a choreographer as well.

Other than the performance it has been absolutely amazing having my family and fiancé here with me in the city. My fiancé, Chester, has never even seen my whole get up here in the city yet so it has been exciting to show him my tiny apartment and my school. I wish he could stay longer, but he of course has to go back to work.

During this past weekend I also got to go wedding dress shopping with my mom and grandma!!! I knew this would be the only time they would both be in NYC together so I thought this was a perfect opportunity to schedule an appointment at Kleinfeld. I found the PERFECT dress. Actually, there were 2. I loved the bodice from one dress and the skirt from another. Since they both were created by the same designer (Pnina Tornai) AND since she was in town for her trunk show I was able to personally ask her if she could combine the two designs together for me. She was delighted and loved the idea! It was quite a fun experience trying on dresses and so much fun. To try and get the idea of the look of both the designs together I actually got to wear BOTH dresses. You could see the bodice from one and the skirt from the other OVER the one I had on. It was quite heavy with all that material on me, but I definitely got to see the real picture of how it would look like. Everyone in the store who walked by were “ooh-ing and ah-ing” at the dress. The designer especially loved it. They all told me that I absolutely HAD to send pictures of my dress from my wedding. The dress is absolutely PERFECT and I can’t wait to see Chester’s face when he sees it at the ceremony . If you’d like to see a picture of the dress you’ll have to email me personally: fishortyfi@gmail.com. It has to be a surprise for Chester!

…..

Some disheartening news…our puppy, Ernie has been diagnosed with glaucoma and for those of you who are unfamiliar with this – it’s a disease that eventually leads to blindness. We’ve known about this for 3 weeks now, but we are still hoping that since he is only  a year old that it can be reversed. He’s currently receiving eye drops (very expensive ones) 4 times a day to try and reduce the pressure that is forming behind his eye. Without the drops he would be suffering from terrible migraines constantly due to the pressure behind his eye. At this point we are hoping that the pressure will decrease in both eyes. The right one seems to be back to normal, but the left is still having issues. If the pressure doesn’t go down then he will need major surgery to remove the eye. And since the dogs are in Juneau Ernie would have to be driven through Canada down to Seattle because there aren’t any eye dog specialists in Juneau. There isn’t an option to send him by plane either because of the pressure in his eyes. Chester and I are still hoping that by some miracle our puppy will make it through and will only have to deal with eye drops. However, we’ve been very stressed about the situation and are both fearing the financial ramifications that come along with this disease. Everyone keep Ernie in your prayers and hope that he can somehow get better. We both can’t stand to see our puppy suffer. This disease is apparently hereditary, but our breeder says that Ernie’s parents have no history of glaucoma. There’s no way we could have anticipated this.

Anyway, we are trying to stay hopeful and positive. I will be flying to Juneau in 2 weeks during my spring break to help take care of Ernie and to visit Chester and our other baby, Emma. Right now I’m trying to enjoy the time I have to spend with Chester.

Hope everyone had a great February! Keep Ernie in your prayers!

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all entering a great 2nd week into February. I’m about to embark on my 4th week of school, and the semester has been so busy already! I mentioned in the last blog some of the projects I’m working on this semester so I thought I’d update you all regarding them.

First, I’m performing in “Showing 4″, which is one out of the 5 “showings” we have featuring work by student choreographers. I’m in a piece choreographed by Mandarin Wu, who is a 2nd year MFA and graduated from UCI for her undergrad. We actually know each other through mutual people including my future sister-in-law, Genevieve, because they worked together in LA this past summer. Anyway, Mandy (short for Mandarin) is choreographing a pointe piece, and I’m very excited and scared to perform it all at the same time. It’s been a long while since I’ve performed pointe on stage so I hope that I don’t fall on my face! We will be performing this piece next week – Feb. 18th and 19th. Wish me luck!

My next project I’m working on is a piece I’m choreographing for the MFA 1 concert. All 1st year MFAs get their own concert to feature choreographic works if they wish. I am choreographing a piece set on 6 women, and it is going to be FIERCE. Here’s a little preview of their costumes (still a work in progress…and was custom made and sewn by my MOM, Monica Chua – my Mom is the best!!! :

Don’t they look so awesome! The piece is also set to music composed by Elias Constantopedos (who also composed my solo from last semester) – the music is a fusion of a Baroque fugue mixed in with electronic sound. I wanted to have this regal and courtship look to the piece, and the music suits the choreography perfectly. You can preview a rehearsal video here – just remember it’s still a work in progress:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP5voHFwoWU

This piece will be premiering in 2 weeks – Feb. 25, 26, 27th. The show is FREE so if any of you readers are in NYC and would like to come to this performance or the one above then come to 111 2nd Ave, 5th floor. Both shows are FREE! I am so looking forward to this performance because not only are my mother, her boyfriend, and my grandmother coming to see the show, but my fiancé, Chester, will be here too! This will be the first time Chester has come to see me here in NYC so I’m so excited!!!

Lastly, the third project I’m working on is for my Choreographers, Composers and Designers class. I’m working with two other ladies, Julia and Wen-Jen, and we are collaborating with set designers, a costume designer, and music composer to choreograph and produce a work. It’s been such a brain-filled experience so far because everyone has such great creative input and ideas that when I walk away from our meetings my brain hurts! Our concept deals with technology, and how it affects our communication – whether it helps or leads us to miscommunication. We are working within that realm, and if you start thinking about technology and how it is taking over our lives this can become a very broad and deep topic. However, we want to keep this piece light-hearted and somewhat humorous. We will be scaling down and concentrating on specific communication through the use of social networking like Facebook and Myspace and how that can affect relationships between 2 or even 3 people. We have 1 female and 2 males in our cast so we might try to work out some kind of love triangle or something to that extent. We are still in the very beginning stages of this project so I will keep you all updated. Here’s a poem that we found that inspired our concept for this piece (it’s actually really funny):

http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/rememberwhen.htm

I will keep you all updated on my many projects coming up this semester. Hope you enjoyed reading and hope you have a great week. Thanks!!!

Hello everyone!!!

I’ve had a very fulfilling and busy 2 weeks back home teaching and designing costumes and now I am back to school! Going back home to CA to teach was great because I definitely missed teaching and it’s really nice to know how much the kids have missed me. I have definitely missed them!

I’m done with my first week back to school and I am sore! I didn’t think I would be as sore because at least I was teaching and taking a few classes during my visit, but I guess it wasn’t enough. I have to comment on one my teachers, Jolinda. She’s probably one of the best ballet and pointe teachers I have ever had. Great teachers are very hard to come by, and she’s definitely one of them. I’ve had so many fabulous teachers in CA, but to find one here in NYC and at my school is just amazing. She pushes me, is really articulate about what she wants to see, definitely gives you great corrections and positive feedback when you do something good . I fortunately get to have her for ballet and pointe 3 times a week (I wish I had more!). I just had to say something about her because she’s a great teacher, and I hope to be able to teach and inspire students like her one day, especially in the ballet and pointe field.

It’s back to work with my choreography, and I have a few projects underway. I’m working a solo for my composition class, and every week we are to choreograph about 40 seconds to a minute to experience the choreographic and creative process. My teacher, Phyllis, doesn’t want us to whip out the entire solo right away. She wants us to add on a little bit every week so we can edit, and continue to think about our creative process as we’re doing it.

Another project I’m working on is a choreography piece for the 1st year MFA concert. It’s a concert that is only open to the 1st year MFA’s and we’re able to choreograph a piece if we like. Almost everyone is choreographing with the exception 1 or 2 people. I have 6 female dancers, and have already started rehearsals. I am working with the same composer I worked with last semester so I’m just waiting on the music so I can put the movement vocabulary in and tweak from there.

Lastly, my Composers, Choreographers, and Designers (CC&D) class requires that we choreograph a piece that utilizes a strong relationship with set designers, costume designers, and composers for music. We are allowed to think BIG. So this concert is normally very exciting and creative. I have 2 other partners in this project – Wen-Jen and Julia. We’ve come up with a great idea, but now we have to solidify our concept and think about how we’re going to try and portray that through movement.

Those are the projects I’m working on this semester! I will keep you all updated on the creative process and hopefully it’ll all work out!

Happy New Year everyone and thanks for reading!!!

Hi Danceworld readers!

So sorry I have been MIA for the past couple of weeks. I’ve been traveling all over the place during this holiday season and now I am finally back home in California.

I’ve been teaching almost everyday since I’ve been here and it has been absolutely GREAT. I’ve missed teaching very much and missed seeing my students. It’s so great to see how TALL everyone has gotten. Either that or I’m shrinking . I’ve had such a great holiday and there’s no better way than to finish it up by teaching some great dance classes.

For those of you who are interested here is a picture from my trip to Juneau, Alaska. I never made it to Florida due to the unforeseen circumstances at the Delta terminal, but I was able to spend more time with my fiancé and dogs.

Here is a picture of Chester and Me, Emma and Ernie our 2 samoyed dogs.

I’m here for one more week and am going to teach almost everyday. Here’s the rest of my schedule for those of you who are interested in taking class. I would love to have you there and would love to see you!

Monday, Jan. 11th

Teaching Blocks 4, 5, and 6 at OCHSA

Teaching at South County Dance 8:00-9:00pm Adv Contemp. Jazz

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Tuesday, Jan. 12th

Teaching at Elevation Studios 8:30-10:00pm Adv Contemp. Jazz

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Wednesday, Jan. 13th

Teaching at Boogiezone Contemporary classes at Focus Dance Center

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Thursday, Jan. 14th

Teaching at South County Dance 8:30-9:30pm Adv. Lyrical

Actually that’s a lie. I won’t actually be home for Christmas, but I WILL be home after the New Year from January 4-14th!!! I’m so excited to see everyone and to teach some classes again! I still have 2 days of school left, a rehearsal on Wednesday, and a music final on Thursday, but I leave on Friday, Dec. 18th! Just incase some of you are interested here is what I’ll be doing during my winter travels.

First, I fly into LAX where I’ll be greeted by my mother and then we will drive to the Huntington Beach Hyatt where we’ll check out the location for my wedding!!! I have the date set to August 6th, 2011. My mom has already seen the hotel and loves it, but once I give it the official “ok” then Chester and I can send out save the dates! I’m so very excited!!!

Next, I will drive to south county to have dinner with my South County Dance girls! I’ll only be visiting for just that one night, but I will get to spend lots more time with them when I’m back in January.

Saturday, Dec. 19th I get to attend the wedding of Andrea Hosfod and Kevin Oberlander. Andrea is part of BARE Dance Company of which I was a part of for the past 3 years so I will be celebrating their marriage with them. Yay!

Sunday, Dec. 20th I fly out to West Palm Beach, Florida! My Aunt has a timeshare so I will be spending just a couple of days with my mom, aunt, grandma, and sister.

THEN on Wednesday, Dec. 23rd I fly into Juneau, Alaska where I’ll FINALLY get to see my fiancé, his parents and my dogs!!! I’ve missed them so very much and I can’t wait!!! I’ll get to spend Christmas and New Years with them. I will also be freezing my butt off, but it’ll all be worth it.

Saturday, Jan. 2nd I then fly to CA!!! I get to spend a good two weeks there and I will be teaching all over the place! I’m so very excited to share all the things I’ve been learning over here at Tisch. Can’t wait!!! For those of you who are interested here’s a sneak peek to my schedule in my CA visit:

Monday, Jan. 4th
Subbing for Clarisse at South County Dance
2:30-10pm

Tuesday, Jan. 5th
Taking and observing classes/dances at South County Dance

Wednesday, Jan. 6th
Taking class somewhere most likely Jazz 4 with Mike Esperanza at Jimmy Defore!
Work on Jerome’s solo costumes!!!

Thursday, Jan. 7th
Taking class somewhere…
Work on Jerome’s solo costumes!!!

Friday, Jan. 8th
Privates at South County
***Teaching at Lovett Dance Center 6:00-8:30pm*** Come take!!!

Saturday, Jan. 9th
Observing at South County Dance/helping Jerome with his privates

Sunday, Jan. 10th
Privates ALL DAY at South County

Monday, Jan. 11th
Teaching at OCHSA – ALL of Brenda’s Jazz 3 classes Blocks 4,5, and 6!!!

Sub for Alexa at South County Dance??? 8-9pm

Tuesday, Jan. 12th
***Teaching at Elevation Studios 8:30-10:00pm*** COME TAKE!!!

Wednesday, Jan. 13th
Possibly teaching Boogiezone class???

Thursday, Jan. 14th
Subbing for Clarisse at South County Dance 3:00-9:30pm

Well, I’m counting down the days. It will be so nice to be around familiar surroundings and people again. Can’t wait!!!

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving break! Only about 3 more weeks until Christmas!!!

I just had a great two weeks with my mom visiting here. It’s been so nice having someone around when I come home, especially if that someone is a mother who cooks you great home-cooked meals! I love you, mom!

So one of the performances we saw over the Thanksgiving break was Complexions Contemporary Ballet. I remember first seeing this company perform at the Laguna Beach Dance Festival, and seeing Desmond Richardson dance was absolutely breath-taking. Unfortunately, the night we went did not have any of his dancing in the program, which left me quite sad. However, the dancers are very amazing and it was nice getting to see such strong modern and pointe dancers with such elegance and control. Here is a different review than the one I provided before:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/arts/dance/23complexions.html?ref=dance

I have to say that I was a bit disappointed with the program that I saw. I wasn’t expecting to see ground-breaking choreography, but I was expecting pieces with a little more richness to it. The pieces that were shown were excerpts of longer works, but even still, I felt there could have been more depth to the choreography than simply showing off beautiful legs and tilts. Even though I am a HUGE fan of beautiful legs, if it isn’t shown off in an interesting way one can get very bored with it and not think anything of it’s greatness. So I guess the lesson learned here is that next time I see Complexions I should probably check to make sure that Desmond Richardson is dancing. Here are some videos on youtube that I found of him dancing, however, nothing is quite as strong unless you see him dance live.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6qihxWsylE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0ab0Qbh1Lk

Hope you enjoy the videos and thanks for reading!!!

Hi everyone!

I’m so sorry I haven’t been blogging lately. These last couple of weeks have been super busy! First, I have to give you my response to the Karole Armitage concert. It definitely was not what I expected at all! The dancers were beautiful and the one African singer and two dancers were phenomenal, but the way Ms. Armitage incorporated the two kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Don’t get me wrong I think the dancers are very talented and definitely have great technique, but they were not meant to be African dancers. They were meant to be contemporary dancers. I realize that Ms. Armitage might have simply wanted to try something new with her company, but I personally don’t think that was a great match. It’s kind of difficult to mix culture into contemporary dance unless that’s what the company specializes in, otherwise, it just looks as if the dancers are trying to be African dancers when they’re not. So there’s my two cents about that show.

Okay, so the reason I’ve been out of my blogging loop for so long because these past couple of weeks I have had two different concerts at Tisch. The first one was a student choreography showing that included a solo piece that I choreographed myself. It was the first time my choreography premiered at Tisch…yay! It was also great working with a composer – another student from NYU’s Steinhardt Music School – and he played live piano on top of electronic music while I danced. I got a lot of positive feedback on the solo, and it felt great to premier my work.

This past week we had the Faculty Performance Workshop, which is basically a concert to feature 5 of our faculty’s work that they’ve been working on since the beginning of the semester. I was in Renee Redding-Jones’s piece, and it was a big hit! We closed the show every night, and Renee got a lot of positive feedback. I’m really glad I got to work with her, and got to know her better she really is a great teacher.

Also, my mom came into town a few days ago! She’s staying here until Dec. 1st and she’ll be here with me during Thanksgiving. It’s been so nice to have mom around, and I definitely do appreciate her taking care of me while she’s been here. It’s definitely been such a treat to have home cooked meals that weren’t the same old, same old that I’ve been cooking myself for the past 3 months. We’ve been running errands, and taking care of business so it feels great to get things done. I have school until Wednesday afternoon and then the Thanksgiving holiday begins. We plan on seeing Complexions Ballet on the 28th so I’ll make sure I’ll give you my feedback on that concert as well. Here is their review from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/arts/dance/20comp.html

Anyway, so since I have a holiday coming up I will be sure to keep blogging and keeping you all updated! Thanks so for reading!

So instead of watching a performance and giving you feedback I’m going to read the review first and then see the show on Saturday. Here’s a link to the review in the NY Times.

From reading this review her work sounds very interesting. I’m anxious to see what she means by “pop-ness” because we all know that LA dance has the stigma of being very commercial and “pop” music oriented even though there are many modern and contemporary choreographers and dancers trying to make it out there. I hope that Ms. Armitage can express what contemporary dance mixed with commerical or pop music would be like. I’ve always struggled with that fusion – well not struggled, but have always TRIED to fuse the two together since those are the best of both worlds for me. I’m excited to see the performance this Saturday, however, I may now be partial because of that awesome picture of the woman tilting. Such beauty! Just incase you missed it here it is again:

A scene from her “Itutu,” with Luke Manley and Kristina Bethel-Blunt. The African ballet is coming to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Here’s a link to their website and to view some videos of Ms. Armitage’s work:

I don’t want to watch too much of her work just yet so I don’t get too biased before seeing her work so let me know what you think! Thanks for reading and I will keep you updated after I see the performance

Yesterday was my first experience of Halloween in NYC. It was such a trip! There is an annual Halloween parade every year in the village and unfortunately I didn’t attend, but walking around in my neighborhood is more than enough parading of costumes for me! There were massive amounts of people dressed up in very creative costumes and it was also raining! Not very hard, but it did get a little too wet at times. Here’s a link to read more info about the parade:

http://manhattan.about.com/od/eventsandattractions/a/halloweenparade_2.htm

And here are some pictures of last year’s parade:

http://manhattan.about.com/od/eventsandattractions/ig/2008-Village-Halloween-Parade-/

It’s quite exciting! It’s also very crowded so it was a very interesting and fun experience all at the same time. The only bummer of the night was when I left my purple sunglasses in the cab ride home . Good thing they were only $8, but still, they were purple. Many of you who read my blogs know that is my favorite color. Here’s a picture of me and Wen-Jen, one of my other MFA Tisch classmates (and yes that’s a purple wig…living close to St. Marks has it’s perks!):

Earlier that day we went and saw, “This is It”, and of course I enjoyed it because I am a MJ fan. It might not be the greatest artistic film in the world, but as a dancer who grew up aspiring to one day dance for Michael, I enjoyed it quite thoroughly. It was such an honor to see the creative process that went into that concert. I actually wish that I could see more footage because I can only imagine how much work goes into making a production that large.  Anyway, I’m not a movie reviewer like my fiancé, but I am a fan so if you are too then I would recommend seeing it. If you’re not then…don’t bother.

So Halloween in New York City…it was definitely unlike one I’ve ever had in California! Hope everyone had a safe and fun one this year!

I saw another show today – the Companhia de Danca Deborah Colker under the direction of Deborah Colker at the New York City Center. I enjoyed the show, but this reviewer thought a little differently:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/arts/dance/24colker.html

However, you can read the description of the show. Deborah Colker uses a lot of props and, personally, I enjoyed it because of how she used the props. As I said in my previous blog I’m a huge fan of dancers with great athleticism and physicality. This show definitely required a lot of strength and control to make it look so easy. Here’s their promo video where you can see some of her previous works and a snippet of the work I saw today (with the vases):

http://www.nycitycenter.org/content/misc/dc10.aspx

I am truly inspired by these amazing choreographers and dancers that I’ve been seeing and am only reminded of exactly why I chose to leave my comfort zone and come out here to dance. The question is if I will be able to pull it off, but I can only die trying!

This next week we get a new technique teacher for our ballet and modern classes so it’s kind of like a new semester or quarter. It will be interesting learning a different style and teaching pedagogy that we’ve been getting for the past 7 weeks. I will keep you all updated.

Thanks for reading my short blog and check out the Companhia de Danca Deborah Colker.