When I first saw the syllabus, this was something I definitely looked forward to. I always loved to watch people dance. Whether it was the street performers on the subway or impressive YouTube videos. Despite all of that, I was really exposed to dance by my friend who majored in Dance throughout high school and now a Theater major in Taiwan. She loved to dance and took master classes during her whole entire stay in the U.S. with my family. She is trained in modern, ballet, classical, Chinese opera, lyrical and jazz, and even choreographed many of her dance troupe’s performances. She would take any opportunity to dance. We would walk down the street and turn around to she her pirouette-ing or leaping or just moving her body in anyway that doesn’t resemble normal walking.

She taught me a lot about how disciplined dancers have to be. She would start classes at 7:00am and leave at around 9:00pm, or even later if there was a performance approaching. For the entire performance, even if I didn’t understand what the dancers were trying to portray, I was utterly amazed at what they could do with their bodies and thinking back to what my friend told me. These dancers pushed their bodies past breaking points and have achieved so much to be on the stage.

Dance is very much intertwined with the dances and choreography styles of each performance. The music that left the most impact on me was Lucinda Childs Dance Company’s Concerto performance. It had really jarring music that wasn’t my taste, but I can understand why the choreographers had chosen them. The music I enjoyed the most accompanied Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s performance of Minus 16. The music was fun, simple, and soulful.

What I also learned from my friend is the importance of lighting. Her dance troupe would always hire a different lighting designer to come and create the lighting for their specific dance. The way body movements looked in different lightings were extremely important, and even the mood of the dance is partially through the lighting. This was clearly seen in Minus 16, it was bright and well-lighted when they took audience members on-stage to dance with them, creating a really cheerful mood along with their ridiculous body movement. But in the dance when they were chanting, the lighting was from above and cast a shadow over their bodies as they were crouched over, because they wanted to create an intense mood.

The highlight of that night was seeing Sebastian Ramirez and Honji Wang outside the building after their performance. The large crowd was already gone and Sebastian Ramirez and Honji Wang were just talking to their friends. I had to get a picture with them, so I did!

and then the rest of the class decided to photobomb.

And a shoutout to my friend Sarah who came with us to the performance!