4th Class Wrap Up

Tuesday’s class went very well, if not a little chaotic. We started off with a quick game and a vocal warm up as per usual.

With Amanda & Mubeen’s class, we delved right into making some decisions about the style of their opera and some starting places for movement. We made the following decisions:

-their opera would be based on a rock, hip hop and r & b base
-we would create different themes for the different contests in the story and for all the different characters
-we would create movement for the winner’s dance as well as incorporating movement through out the piece

We then broke down into three groups: movement, text and song to work on those aspects of the piece. I challenged Amanda or Mubeen to work on the text and pare it down as it was quite lengthy. I worked with the movement group to come up with some movement vocabulary. We came up with the beginnings of a dance and some movements to represent the goddesses and gods in the story. Adam worked with the music group to begin a lyric creation process.
My only concern for this A & M’s class is the story is a bit confusing and needs to be ironed out. If I can give them the task of doing this next week, then I think we will be well on our way.

Sona’s class went very well. We started off with a warm up game and some singing. I really got them to over exaggerate the vowels and open their mouths and this helped their sound immensely.

They wrote some great lyrics which Adam will work on music for next week. We also had a brainstorming session with this class for some starting ideas from the story for movement and music. We broke down into smaller groups like we did for A & M’s classes, but I gave Sona the task of creating some dialogue and narration bits as this story didn’t have much dialogue at all. For Sona’s class, Adam and I already have some ideas of character breakdowns and how the final piece might shape up. I am thinking, we will have a narrative chorus of about 10 - 12 students, a movement chorus of about 10 – 12 students and Anansi and other character might be played by 3 different students and then another 6 students providing instrumentation. This is just an idea however and I will flesh out more in the next few days.

Next week, I have the daunting task of piecing all of the work together...These operas are really shaping up!