elements.

An absolutely amazing experience working with Patti Wilcox for an industrial show at the Fairmount Royal York. I had never felt so sore in my life. I remember not being able to sit down or walk without feeling any pain. But it was all worth it.
I learned so much in rehearsals and saw some mind blowing circus acts that were in the show as well!

I'm really sad that we didn't get the chance to take many pictures in all our costumes or see a video of our performance afterwards. We did four elemental pieces: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. All the costumes were made wonderfully and with a low budget too. I think she said it cost only $1400 for the costumes. It sounds like a lot, but when you look at how it's for 6 dancers and each dancer had 5 costumes, it's actually really cheap for a legit dance costume.

In our live statues opening costumes
I really wanted to keep that romper =(


Earth costume




Shots at Jack Astors after the show. Good timessss.

I am so lucky to have been chosen for this job back in April. I think this was my first official paid dance gig! :D

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choreo.

a tidbit of choreo.

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choreography and lomography

Update since I've been dead for like two weeks. Actually.

The last two weeks were the most physically and mentally tiring that I've ever experienced! Which would be a weird to say since the first two weeks back at school aren't usually to be like that for most people at least. Choreo auditions were soon after school startedso it meant rehearsals x 2049582094029384! Out of the 100 pieces that enter, only 40 get in. Yeahhh. The stress just progressed throughout the weeks to a point where everyone was pissed at each other. I neglected all my academic readings because I would collapse on my bed as soon as I got home each night. I had like no social life and didn't even see Bryan for the whole week... which really didn't make the week go any better. But death week is over now! Thank god. It'll be somewhat calm until the casting list goes up. Heh. I feel like it will take a lot longer for the faculty to decide this year because there were SO many good entries from what I saw during people's rehearsals.

Here is one group piece I choreographed. It was originally for my Creative Performance class, but I decided to add music, make some changes, and audition it for Choreo.

Dorothy

It was one of the latest run throughs the day before the audition that I got on film. There's no music in beginning because it's supposed to start in silence, in case you're wondering why you can't hear anything. The ending was cut off too xP
I did post this facebook, but set to private for those associated with this piece. But because you bother to read my blog, you get to see it! :D yayyyyyy

The music was actually made by a good friend of mine from high school, Marvin. It's called Loves Interlude. I came across it when he showed me his music site where he has all his different song recordings. It really spoke to me at the time and I remembered it later on when I was thinking of potential songs for my choreography. Yeah, so I asked him if I could use it and he said yes =] Thanks Marvin! Check out his stuff here!

Photography wise.
I got a Diana Mini over the Christmas break! I got the Alice in Wonderland version though I was only planning on getting the regular one. I just couldn't resist because it was so cute! :D And also it came with a Diana Flash that I could use when I do get the regular sized Diana + some time in the future. I decided to start off with the mini first mostly because it uses 35mm film which is way easier to find and cheaper than 120mm film. I know you can buy 120 film at Urban Outfitters, but I'm not sure which places process the film. Wal Mart maybe? Dunno. I've only gone through one roll of film for the Diana Mini that I mostly experimented with. I haven't gotten it developed yet though. I do have a feeling that I may have accidentally overlapped images with the way the film winded at some points. Using this type of camera definitely brings me back to Photography class in high school minus the developing process.

I think the line on the back of the camera is clever. "Through this lens is wonderland"

I also finally got myself a Polaroid SX 70 aka. the camera that unfolds!!! I wanted one so badly after watching the Mijonju show on Youtube. Mijonju definitely got me back into photography. I love how this camera transforms! I was so tripped out the first time I saw him open it.

TRANSFORM! >:D

I got a good deal on Kijiji. The prices I've seen around on ebay and such were like $120 + for the camera and a case. Or even just the camera sometimes.
Buuuut I found someone selling it for $60 which included the case and another case with a whole bunch of accessories for the camera that most people do not include. It just has a scratch on the leather on the top, but other than that, it's in good condition. The guy selling it was this old man who had the camera for 20 years, but hardly used it. So, the camera is just as old as me! He said he was happy knowing that his camera was going into good hands.
Now the only thing I need now is SX 70 film =( Not cheap at all.

Next on my list
Fujifilm 210
Because it's awesome too... and film is available :D
Until next time.

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Cathedrals

The results and videos are finally posted on the Hall of Fame website
Watch Cathedrals here if you're bored. I am in it, but I guarantee you will not find me in this one.

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Behind the skin and the muscles

I see you now.

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on your leg.

Decided to steal some vids from facebook of dances from Choreo back in March since people only posted them up not too long ago.

Both videos are from dress rehearsals, which explains some mistakes you might or might not notice. Ahah.

Hyperballad


Clusterfuck

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Frost

Guess who's on the Hall of Fame Dance Challenge website?? :D
At the competition I went to last weekend in Niagra, one of my dance groups won first in the Senior Large Group category and was also chosen to be posted on the website. It's there now so you can watch if you're bored.

Click Here and go to the second last video

yayyyyy

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Choreo Madness!

Pic heavy posts yeah!

I'm pretty sad that Choreographic Works is over. It went by sooo fast! I spent a lot more time than usual with my classmates because we still had to go to dance classes in the morning and we had to stay at the theatre for a run through of the show or the actual show until very late every day... actually. It wasn't really the dancing that was the hardest part out of the whole experience, it was the traveling back home and then back to school the next morning. I wish I lived closer to a subway station. That way, I'd save more money because GO passes are more expensive and I'd have to walk less to go to school. Oh well. Exercise is good?

Naps were always needed.

I went to the Opening Night party with everybody after the first show (which went well by the way). First, we went to one of our classmate's place to pre-drink and stuff, just as a second year class. Then after wards, we all headed out as a group to the official party with the rest of the 3rd and 4th year dancers, as well as all the Tech students. It wasn't held at a bar or a club though. The place we went to seemed more like a party room that can be rented out. Who goes partying on a Wednesday night anyway? Ahah.

Had no idea this picture was taken.

No, I wasn't dancing.
I got elbowed in the head VERY hard by Rodney (aka. the guy behind me, who has the longest arms), out of all people. And Crystal decided to take a picture right after it happened T_T

Some ( x 98357349583) behind the scenes pictures because I'm lazy to talk =] Oh, and yes, we had to share change rooms with guys. It's not a big deal really.

Second Years yayyy!!

Ji Won's Phone Cam =]

ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
(that's how you laugh in Korean)

Clusterfuck!
(The name of Rodney's piece... Yes, they actually wrote that in the program)


Not that fierce look!

[Insert super awesome group pictures of other pieces I'm in here whenever they get posted up on facebook for me to steal! >:D]

Rodney took a lot of really nice pictures during the show from back stage

While Choreo was running, I had another little performance to do with Crystal's Carribean piece for a Multi Cultural Show in the Business Department at school. We had to do it like right before one of the matinee shows for Choreo. It's funny how it worked out so well. We didn't have to rush right after to get ready for Choreo, because we already had make up done and we were stretched. I didn't think this performance was that big of a deal at first until I went there and heard that we were gonna be on TV and also saw how business like the audience was dressed x_X. But anyway, it went well =] Our group got to try on the full carnival costumes from Barbados!

They had a hip hop group perform as well as a Filipino group, who did tinikling! Funny thing was that I knew one of them: Pearce! (aka. the amazing art student from high school) I was pretty surprised to see him there and I almost didn't recognize him for some reason. Another funny thing, I was walking by them and their coach asked me if I wanted to join their group and do folk dancing. I could not tell if he was being serious or not, but he was. Ahah. He got my email address so that he could message me with their site? Yeah... Still haven't gotten it. But oh wells. I don't know if I'll have time to do it though.

The rest of Choreo just got better and better as the week went on. I still felt tired as hell and slacked off in my classes, especially ones where I get to sit down and go on my lap top... and take a bajillion webcam pictures with friends :D

Hot.

By the end of that cam whoring session, there were about 75 taken! Yes, I had to delete some. Ahah.

Thank god we didn't really have any major assignments due during the two weeks. That would have been REALLY evil because all our professors know we have Choreo going on. I'm pretty sure they watched it themselves! Ahah.
I was unable to go and party with the dancers for the Closing Night Party, which was at the Brunny. But I did get to hang out with all of them at another pre-drink. Ahah. No I didn't drink anything.

love your show.

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if you're bored.

So remember that performance I did for Miss Pakistan World that I mentioned on my blog back in June? Yeah, it's on Youtube now if you're interested.

CLICK HERE

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retarded

By the way, he is improving the entire thing.

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a little bit of choreo...

My two random shows that I have mentioned on an earlier post went very well

The first one which was for The Music Scene was a lot of fun even though it was just a small open house thing and weren't that many people. I think maybe up 30 -40 people? Unfortunately, I do not have pictures from the actual show and I haven't seen any videos yet either. However, we did take some pics after one rehearsal.

yeahhhh...

I can't believe we were able to learn so many routines in such a short period of time. And it's not like they were just simple ones that are easy to catch on to. Kara, the choreographer of the show, would be like Okay, now a little bit of choreo... and it would be a huge ass section x_X I was pretty stressed about remembering all the dances, but we went over them a bajillion times before we actually went on, which helped A LOT.

At the end of the show, Kara gave us all roses and a Starbucks giftcard! She also wrote me a very sweet card saying how she wanted me to be in her dances after she saw me perform at a dance competition. Awww...
Anyways, I'm not done dancing with these people yet. I get to audition two of the pieces we did for next years Choreo show! ... which is not until a couple of months from now, but I'm still excited.

Next!
For the Miss Pakistan World Pageant I wasn't stressed out about because I did one dance whereas everyone else did two and I knew my dance very well. The people there really loved our group. They thought we were so talented and everything.
The stage was so small. So most of the time during our performance we felt like we were gonna fall off the stage. The bright blinding lights didn't help too much with that either. We talked to these singers from Chicago who also performed, and they are interested in getting us to dance in one of their music videos in the future. Yay for connections!

I didn't realize til that day that our group was called Adje. I still don't know what that means.

Oh yeah, one other thing that happened before we performed... There was a whole hallway with these ladies doing make up for all the people part of the show, and we were asked if we wanted to get our make up done too. So we were like why not? The majority of our group got our make up done by these two girls who were at the end of the hall because they were the closest and asked us first. I already had some make up on from my show in the afternoon and the lady told me I did a good job, but she still removed it anyway because she told me she wanted to do a gold look on me. I thought it was a good idea too because it would compliment my skin tone I guess. I couldn't tell what she was doing because there was no mirror or anything around. And then she gave me a mirror after she did my eyes... It was so bad. She extended the eye shadow too high and it was sooo close to my eye brows. It's a bit hard to explain but she also cut my eyes shorter. Like she didn't exactly do my eye shadow with my eye shape. She did not follow my crease or anything xP I even told her that I feel that the eye shadow should extend more on the sides, but then she told me that it will make my eyes look smaller. I don't know. She talked to me as if my eyes were so hard to do because I was asian. I do not have a monolid and it's not like my eyes are really small to begin with. And why was she complaining about my eyes in the first place. If she really wants to be a make up artist, she should be able to apply to any types of eyes? Afterwards, she drew in my eye brows too dark, and made an actual line on my face when doing my blush. I asked her if she was gonna blend it more, and she was like "No, I just contoured your face." But there was a LINE x_X. If she really was contouring my face, it wasn't right because it did not look natural at all. Then for my lips she did them too big and told me that it's my natural lip line. Whatever.
I wasn't the only one who had problems with my make up. Everyone pretty much had something to complain about. It was not until later that I realized that all the make up artists down the hall were wearing the same shirt that said some sort of make up school or company written on the back, except for the two girls that did our make up. No wonder.
We all went back and fixed our make up. I pretty much took off all the lipstick and blush, and redid it myself. I was trying to just fix the shape of my eye shadow with the eye shadows that I brought with me, but I ended up just overlapping it all. There was still a little bit of copper in it though. Oh wells, it went with my dress later on.

We watched the rest of the pageant. We all agreed with the Top 3 Winners.They picked out a judge from a hat and the judge would ask them a question. I was quite surprised with the girl who won the title because she answered the worse

We are quite multi cultural

Toodlez~

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Diamond girl

I feel like blogging a bit about the dance competition that I went to two weeks ago .. just because I have pictures and good news XD
There are a few highlights from the whole weekend.

So first thing. Both of my solos (lyrical and jazz) were scheduled on the first day of the competition as well as one of my trios and another small group. Usually going on the first day isn't the greatest because the judges tend to be more easier as the weekend passes and routines that perform in the last days of the competition usually get higher marks.

In this competition the scoring was
Diamond. 94 and above
Emerald 91 - 93
High Gold ... I dunno
Gold ... I dunno lol
etc... I don't remember the names

Pretty much people were getting from High Golds to Diamonds the entire competition
However, on the first day before I started, no one in the competition had gotten a Diamond. That really says that they mark incredibly hard at this competition because I started in the early evening o_o But thennnn... the trio I did that day got the first Diamond of the competition D: I was sooo happy. And then later on I had both my solos in the last session of the day. My jazz one, I got an Emerald. But then I got a Diamond for my lyrical solo. So pretty much. Only two Diamond awards were given out the first day of the competition and I was in both of them.
So after that, I had a lot of people calling me Diamond Girl... even people from other studios who I didn't know.

Oh yeah the same night I was also awarded Star Performer of the last session. They gave out a Star Performer Award to a single dancer after each session. The judge said that I was flawless. I had nice lines. I was dedicated to the music and I didn't have to be at the front of the stage to project to the audience. I didn't get a ribbon or anything for this, I got a free movie for Famous Players. (I still have two free movies from my birthday that I haven't used yet o_o)

The days after, the judges were being easier and gave a lot more Diamonds. And most of the routines that went in the last two days of the competition were in the overalls and such.

One last thing. In the last awards session, they were giving all the extra special awards and such. Some not for specific routines but the people the judges have noticed through out the competition. On the competition program, there are 3 dancers that they featured on the cover and throughout the pages of the program. They were chosen last year to do a photoshoot with a well known choreographer and the pictures were to be put on the website, programs, etc. This year I was chosen along with another guy from my studio and this other little girl! So I get to do a photoshoot with them and I get to be in the program and on banners! I'm so excited! Even though my solos didn't win any overalls, I figured they noticed me from the first day because I was "Diamond Girl" ahah.

Anyways. My mom got a bargain when she bought pictures from the competition. So we ended up getting ALL the pictures from all my dances on CDs. Here are some of the best ones lol.









K well there's a lot more good ones, but I don't wanna turn this into a photo album.
Toodlez~

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Spring Contest Entry

Finally done! I obviously put more effort into this one than in my last contest entry. It was a lot of fun doing this =]
Special thanks to Bryan for helping me film and borrowing his tripod ^^

Oh and if you could, can you rate it on youtube? Just because I know there's people who are purposely rating horribly on everyone's videos... in the Happiness contest people rated high for each other hahah. So that must mean something. I already got one rating and it was a 2/5. All the other contest entries are low as well. Oh wells. I guess the ratings don't really matter in the end, but it is good to have a high one lol.

Toodlez~

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relationship.

Amazing.

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Jazz Review Class

Our whole class is split into 6 groups so that's why I'm always dancing with the same people. These are the 4 dance combos we have to do for our assessment. I personally like the 1st and 2nd one the best. It won't be hard to figure out which one I am. Hope you enjoy!

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feel the rain on your skin.

So, I was looking through all my old files and I came across this.
I miss this ahah. It's probably like my only performance that I did at school that was filmed... that I know of. I love this version of Unwritten =] Acoustics yayyy!
I realize how much my dancing style has changed compared to back then. If I choreographed to this song again it would be completely different. No one really knows how I dance now.

Artsfest May 2008

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slow dancing in a burning room

I'm really big on downloading music and finding out the meanings of the lyrics. I do this usually for songs that I could possibly dance to. I have no idea how to define this type of music especially when people ask me, "So! What kind of music do you listen to?"...so I shall just call it 'contemporary music'? meh.
Every so often special songs come to me that I download and listen to like all the time. Most of these songs are heard from dance ahah and most likely no one else but dancers will know them.. yayyy. So I thought it'd be an awesome idea to share whatever new songs come to me in the future with you!.. who ever you are D: don't know why you're here! XD

Anyways, I shall be sharing this song that I've actually known for a while from So You Think You Can Dance. Katee and Joshua danced to this song, but I wasn't really into it until I saw Pam Chu and Ben Susak do the exact same routine on youtube. They were actually the original dancers for this routine and they danced to the whole song.



They are sooo amazing! I really like the choreography because it's more human? For some reason, those kind of movements appeal to me more as a dancer. There were so many powerful moments. I felt they were more intense and more passionate than Katee and Joshua.
I also found it kinda funny how both girls are asian! (asian pride yayyy ^^v)

So, after seeing this dance, I obviously had to go and download this song and look up the lyrics! XD I'm sure it's obvious that its by John Mayer. A very familiar voice. I don't actually have that many of his songs on my ipod. I guess this would be my THIRD John Mayer song I've ever downloaded. I love the lyrics. Even the title itself is beautiful on its own. (Not sure if beautiful is the word ahah but you know what I mean) These lyrics stand out the most to me.

"It's not a silly little moment
It's not the storm before the calm
This is the deep and dying breath of
This love we've been working on"

"I was the one you always dreamed of
You were the one I tried to draw
How dare you say it's nothing to me
Baby, you're the only light I ever saw"

"Go cry about it, why don't you?
My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room"

I find that these songs always come to me at the right time in my life.

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