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The crowd grew silent as the DJ abruptly stopped the beat of the song. The performers on stage froze and looked out at the audience. I swayed silently with the bodies around me wondering why there was this silence. Less than a millisecond later, the stage seemed to light up. Lights flashed everywhere and the music pumped through the speakers with ear-deafening volume. Suddenly, the whole place was on a huge high. The infectious beat, took over everywhere and soon I began jumping up and down, unable to resist the temptation to move. The bodies, smashed against me, seemed to heat up and we all moved together. Flailing around as the performers brought the hype to the concert hall. I screamed my head off as my fellow audience members joined me. We screamed as our performers approached us and sang into our faces.
I was on a high!
Then realization hit me. I was here, at the ISA concert, in the midst of my most favorite artists. On stage were my idols, FAR*EAST MOVEMENT! I WAS HERE!
I screamed louder as the song picked up pace and the beats grew louder and louder. The stage lights flashed even more maniacally, to the point, I was blinded and all I could do was just continue singing and dance to this song. My role models, QUEST CREW, were on stage as well. They too seemed to be overtaken by the infectious beat as they danced around, releasing all their adrenaline. I couldn’t help but scream louder. My favorite member Hok, danced over to the area of the stage where I was standing near. I was in awe as I realized he was dancing in front of my face. HOK WAS DANCING IN FRONT OF MY FACE! This could not be happening. I felt someone grab my hand and coming down from my high for a second, I realized it was my best friend grabbing onto me. Together we jumped higher and higher until out bodies hurt, but we refused to stop. I waved at Hok, and I didn’t think he’d stop, but in the midst of his dancing, he saw my wave and waved and winked back at me. NOW I WAS DEAD! I squeezed my friend’s hand even harder and screamed until my lungs hurt. I was in pain, I knew it, but I felt nothing. I was running on pure adrenaline and nothing was going to stop me from going buck wild.
The night somehow ended, and as though on autopilot, my body shut down. I was no longer jumping up and down and screaming, but I felt the hype in me slowly subduing. I couldn’t even walk out the concert hall properly. I was still in shock that I was in the presence of all these awesome performers and that I had touched every, single one of them. OHMYGOD! My friends and I walked the streets of Manhattan until 11pm, giggling, and recounting everything that happened. I wasn’t alone. All my friends were in awe and star struck just like me. We walked and walked until the high we had at the concert hall died down, somewhat.
Later that night, once in bed, I couldn’t help but compulsively smile and giggle. I had the best experience and this night was definitely going down as the best night of Summer 2010.
I so have to do this again!
ISA Concert
The sun was beating down on our uncovered heads as my best friend Nadiea and I impatiently stood behind a girl in high heels.
“Okay, the doors open at 6:30, only ten more minutes!” Nadeia squealed.
My legs felt worn from standing for two hours straight. People had opted to sit on the sidewalk, using the JC Penny catalogue to keep off dirt. However more and more people began to stand up as the clock started ticking down. The hype that had been missing just a few minutes more began building up.
The immobile line suddenly jolted forward as the doors open. I rushed forward , the ticket clutched tightly in my hand, the adrenaline slowly coursing through me.
The inside of Webster Hall was already half full. People crowded along the stage, making it nearly impossible for anyone to get through.
“Oh no,” I groaned. “ We won’t be able to see anything.”
“Not if I can help it,” Nadeia replied grabbing my hand and launching into the crowd.
After a few minutes of pushing and showing, we miraculously found ourselves up against the stage.
I felt excited, anxious and nervous at the same time. I couldn’t believe I was this close to the stage at my first ever concert!
The JC Penny theme started playing and whoots of excitement went off everywhere around me.
When Kevjumba, Ryan Higa, and Lydia Paek came onto stage that’s when my inner fandom emerged.
“OH MY GOD RYAN!” I screamed in excitement as both Ryan and Kevin launched their hand into the crowd.
I felt the tips of Ryan’s and Kevin’s fingers touch mine and I nearly fainted from the excitement.
Ryan and Kevin introduced the act that Nadiea and I were anticipating from the beginning.
“Quest Crew.” We both breathed at the same time as our favorite dance group tumbled onto stage.
The legendary figures began dancing in sync to Britney Spear’s toxic, popping to ever beat, hitting every note perfectly with their bodies.
The crowd around me grew tighter in excitement, nearly suffocating me against the stage.
I barely had time to notice. The adrenaline pumped full fledged into my veins as my idol Victor Kim took the center of the stage.
I completely lost my senses and screamed my head off, cheering on Victor as he tutted, popped, housed and locked to the rhythm.
My head spun from exhaustion, my throat ached from nearly damaging my vocal chords to no end, and my face was shining with sweat.
Despite it all, I never felt so alive. My heart was beating a million beats per second, the blood rushed to my head as I jumped up and down, waving my hand frantically to feel Victor Kim’s as he high fived the crowd.
Nearly being crushed by the sea of arms was worth it- after all, I got to touch Victor Kim- not just once but three times.
This was hands down, one of the best and most memorable nights of my life.
The whole art class was silent, watching as Sister Anne slowly walked past each table. We were beginning a new topic, one that most students of this class dreaded- watercolor. Everyone has heard from past students of the difficulties, and how they have greatly affected their grade for the class. We were all already nervous, having watched a demonstration the day before. I remembered seeing several classmates observing, with open mouths, as Sister Anne easily created a realistic picture with just one color. I stared at my empty canvas as Sister Anne talked to us about using proper techniques with our brushes. Before I knew it, everyone had already begun painting the object placed before her. I couldn’t bring myself to touch my canvas. The blinding white paper screamed at me, and I was terrified I would ruin its perfect color. I looked around, sadly, as everyone worked intently on her paintings.
Suddenly, I felt someone placing her hands on my shoulders, and I turned around to see Sister Anne behind me. Instead of scolding me, she kindly asked why I haven’t started yet. I reluctantly admitted to her my irrational fear, and she reassured me that it was just a starting piece. She told me to trust my instincts and just to have fun with it. I waited until she walked away before I picked up my brush and canvas, and began to paint. The first burst of color was a shock for me, and I added more and more colors with a strange new thrill. I was amazed as my brush somehow controlled both the water and paint at the same time. Sister Anne’s words came back to me, comforting me over and over again, whenever I was afraid to continue painting.
The hands of the clock flew until I was looking, with surprise, at my finished painting. I turned to see Sister Anne observing my work, with a critical eye. I watched her, nervously, until she flashed me a big smile and held up my canvas for the class to see. I felt embarrassed as she praised my technique to everyone, but the feeling of happiness also began to spread within me. I finally found something that I enjoyed to do! I also felt relieved, and so glad that I trusted my instincts and in my teacher. Because of that, I was able to discover something I truly love to do.
i’m afraid mine’s a bit long…
Directions
Jeff Weisz
The round woman I asked for directions is still talking. I’m not entirely sure why. She’s speaking low enough that I can pretend she’s not talking to me, but not so low that I don’t feel bad doing so.
While looking out into the street she talks about her knees and her back. They hurt her a lot. She talks about how she can’t miss this last bus. Otherwise she’ll be stuck here all night. She talks about her pills she forgot at home.
“I forgot my meds too.” I can’t stand the one-sided conversation anymore and chime in.
“Oh. What do you take?” She turns towards me, and what I had thought was shadow turns out to be a light stubble.
I tighten my hand around the shoulder strap of my bag, even though I’ve just told her there aren’t any drugs inside. There is, however, my change of clothes for tomorrow and my laptop.
“Prozac, Wellbutrin, Melatonin.” At each drug I name she bobs her plump head in recognition.
“I work in a hospital,” she tells me with a puffed up chest and a smile. “I just get a nurse to fill my prescription if I forget my pills one night.” She also tells me what she takes but I don’t recognize it. “I tried Prozac a while ago, but it’d make my eyes roll up into my head. The first time I had an attack I was working at a little drug store. Another lady working there looked up and saw me drop right under the counter. After she’d called 911 and I was in the ambulance, I told them, ‘Take me off of that stuff. I’m not taking it anymore.’”
I scratch my head awkwardly and chew on my lower lip. “I got lucky, I guess. Prozac was the first stuff they put me on, and it worked fine for me.”
“That’s so funny,” she gets the same bewildered grin on her face that my mother gets when she’s been looking everywhere for a pair of earrings and then finds them on her ears. “You seem like such a…together, centered guy.”
At this, I can’t help guffawing, but quickly stifle it into a chuckle. I open my mouth to protest despite feeling somewhat good about it, but she starts gushing:
“Oh, god! Look at that cutie… A face only a mother could love.” She stumbles over her words a little bit, like a clumsy toddler trying to piece a sentence together, while some sort of terrier struts by on a leash. “They used to have that kind of dog when I was in the shelter.” She says this so plainly that I miss it at first. “They make great apartment dogs. Real good about holding it in.”
Right as she’s telling me about her Chihuahua that sits and waits at the door when he has to piss until she comes home, the B68 pulls up and hisses open. I dawdle on the curb for a bit while she steps down to the asphalt, one hand pressed on the small of her back, wincing. Once I see her get inside all right I get on too and swipe my metro card.
I glance around the interior of the bus. There’s a woman with shopping bags sitting with her back to the driver’s side window, and my new friend is sitting almost directly opposite her on the passenger side. The rest of the bus is empty. With a fleeting thought to Jordan, standing at Newkirk Avenue, waiting for the train I’m no longer on, I take a breath and slide into an open seat to my left, next to my late-night companion. She turns to me and begins to speak.
She’s bi-polar. A lot of people think that makes her abnormal in some way, but she always tells people she’s normal. She’s not, of course. Nobody’s normal. But she tells people she’s normal because she knows they’ll hear that and think of their kind of normal, which she’s closer to than most give her credit for. She has a job as a patient care orderly at a hospital, and every night she comes home to her very own apartment.
She takes care of her mother, who isn’t in the best shape at the moment, and comes over now and then to eat. She says her mother needs good, healthy, homemade food. Thank god she has running gas now. For two years, in her last apartment, the landlord wouldn’t turn on her gas because he thought she would hurt herself, because she has a mental illness. When she moved into this new apartment, she called up the gas company and said, “You had better make sure that I’ve got gas in this apartment. My mother’s an elderly lady, she needs me to cook for her.”
The gas company sent over not one or two guys, but three men to turn on her gas for her. They spent a whole hour and forty minutes cleaning the stove, too. It was a mess when she moved in. Whoever lived there last, she has no idea how they cooked on a stove like that. And the gas company men cleaned the whole thing. They said it was dangerous to be that unkempt, that there could be something blocking the gas or cutting into a pipe and nobody would know. Well, not until something blew. Then everybody would know.
I tell her that I cook. That I spent the entire first day at my dormitory going from store to store, because the Bronx only has these tiny little marts that only ever have some of what I need. So I’m going store-hopping to find flour, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, butter. Butter was a bitch to find. And then the day after, I go to the meat store to get 2 pounds of chicken breast and a couple steaks, and they have absolutely everything I needed right there in the store. I tell her how annoyed I would have been if it hadn’t been so funny.
She used to work at a nursing home, she says, before the hospital, cooking. She volunteered there, helped out with the old folks, making food for them. She also did bingo night, with the ones that still had motor functions, that were still lucid. It wasn’t a whole lot of them. She worked mostly with the dementia and Alzheimer’s patients. At the mention of the word “Alzheimer’s” I perk up a little bit.
She has an aunt with Alzheimer’s. That’s why she started volunteering at the nursing home way back when. Her uncle, that same aunt’s husband, he had had dementia too, before he passed away. He was in the same hospital where her father had died. She’d sworn to never set foot in that hospital 19 years ago, when he finally stopped suffering, but there she was, with her uncle, fading away just like her father. I think of my grandmother.
And so this aunt of hers was in the old age home just a few years after her husband had passed. And she was visiting the aunt, who wasn’t really all there much anymore. She asks her questions, like if her aunt knows who she is, who her mother is, where she is. And when she asks that last one, her aunt sits up and says,
“Well, of course, I’m where Abie was.” And she was absolutely floored. She couldn’t believe her aunt had remembered Uncle Abe all of a sudden. One clear thought out of that cloud of murk and lethargy.
But I’m only half hearing what she’s saying to me; my thoughts still linger on my grandmother, the white hospital gown, the smell of sterility that scalds the inside of your nose, the unnoticed mementos sitting on the nightstand that were put there by someone else.
“My grandmother has Alzheimer’s. She’s in a home as well.”
Again, this odd woman sitting next to me looks up at my admission of kinship with her. Her eyes hold no sorrow, only comprehension and compassion.
“There’s not much there left of her,” is all I can think of to explain my grandmother’s situation.
“The next time you see your grandmother,” says my friend after a moment’s thought, “Don’t ask her about now, here. Talk to her about things from the past; they seem to remember those things the best.”
Hearing this, I think back to my grandmother’s eyes lighting up at songs from the old days, to her bouts of recognition when my brother or me perform some unknown trigger or minute action that rekindles a forgotten memory.
The bus has stopped, and we’re walking out. I vaguely hear the woman saying this is her stop too. And as she points me in the direction of the train station, I want to tell her so much. I want to tell her that my grandmother’s name is Iris, and she was beautiful, and she sang and danced and painted. I want to tell her that my mother and her father miss my grandmother terribly, and that they visit as often as they can.
I want to tell her that I’m just now realizing what my mother’s going through, losing her mother, and that I’m scared, terrified, of losing mine, of my kids having to worry about losing me. But there isn’t time to say all of that. I just open my mouth and grab the first thought that flits across my tongue and spit it out,
“I don’t remember her much at all. I hate that I never got to know her.”
The strange, fat, lovely woman in front of me, standing on this dark Coney Island street says to me, “But she got to see you grow up.”
I chew on my lower lip, trying to contain the pain in my chest, and then, after a long while, I reach out a hand.
“My name is Jeff, by the way.”
She takes it in her own, and I clasp our handhold with my left.
“Faith.”
And she steps onto another train and is gone.
I remember the subway that I didn’t plan to get off of here. The tree that fell across the track that made me need to take the bus instead. The Mets tickets for the game tonight sitting in my bag that, for some reason, I decided not to use. The woman I happened to meet at the very same bus stop, and who swept me up into her life with words in a way I’ve never experienced before.
And my wonderful friend, Jordan, who’s been waiting at Newkirk Avenue train station for 4 hours, who knows who I am, and who won’t forget anytime soon.
As I take the first step towards the station, a terrier on a leash passes me by. I smile to myself, choke up and start to cry.
On Bellydance…
Growing up in ballet studios and tightly secured buns, learning the languages of those contemporary artists such as Graham, Horton, Limon, and Taylor, I came to understand things in energy and movement. An ever-deepening connection with this concept sparked my interest in all forms of dance, including folk dances such as bellydance. At a festival on a Long Island beach, around two raging bonfires, twenty women adorned in beaded scarves so heavily draped around their hips that they could never be less than their arm’s reach from the next dancer. Some of them had tambourines and others had zills; the chorus created the music that their bodies followed. As the rhythm got faster and more complex, their hips bounced and their torsos contorted. I watched, losing my heartbeat in the jingles of the dance.
The sun had dipped below the horizon so the only illumination came from the red light of the fires and the bright light of the waxing moon. A woman with the posture of a queen took the center of the two fires, her overflowing curves and deep crevices emphasized by the shallow light. She had long, dramatic dreadlocks and colorful tattoos. The winged skull occupying the center space below her belly button winked and smiled as she danced; the roses on her chest fluttered. Her hips flowed side-to-side, following a rhythm hidden behind the beat of the music. The taxseem turned into percussive combinations: hips and shoulders locking, rolling, and sliding; coins clanking; body jiggling. Her heavily shadowed eyelids looked at the audience but her romantic gaze modestly followed her fingertips, the point where energy flows outward. Her eyes only met the crowd once during her solo, as she turned to face her fellow dancers, looking back over her shoulder with the most intensely confident stare I have ever witnessed. Her hips locked – left, right, left, right. At each lock, a pause, where what must have been two hundred and fifty pounds shimmied twice as fast and twice as long as any movement before it. She kept her stare at the faces of the audience, whose faces were fixated on her largeness. Our mesmerized eyes fed her energy; a smile broke her graceful face as she shook harder. Energy moved down her spine and through her arms, in circles and in waves. She bent sideways and backwards in a serpentine fashion, making ninety-degree angles with incredible ease – her rolls of body meeting at a single point on one side of her body, and sleekly stretched in opposition on the other.
I had never seen such poise or such boldness as I did in this woman. She knew every inch of herself and every movement she could create with her body. I was captivated by her confidence and intensity in a way that I had never been before by any other dancer. I hoped to feel the way she moved and the way her energy exuded from her every limb. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
My Experience with Art: The Endless Play
When I was in my sophomore year in high school I had an English teacher who also taught drama. She was a very interesting person, because she taught like no one else I had ever seen. She used a lot of gestures and taught as if she was in stage all the time. From the beginning, my classmates and I saw that that class would be very different.
At one point during the class, we had to read “Hamlet”. Every night we were assigned some pages to read, but we never finished discussing the book in class. My teacher would makes us read parts of the book in class and would tell us how an actor could play that part of the story. The problem was that we would only get to read a about five pages everyday in class, and on the next day she would go back two pages from what we had read. According to her, we had to “feel the mood of the story”.
During the spring of that school year, some of my classmates who were in the Drama class told me that they had a play coming up. The premiere would be on a Thursday, but I decided to go with some friends on Friday.
As I arrived to school on Friday morning many people were yawning, saying that they did not get a lot of sleep. I found out that the play, which began at 7 PM, did not end until midnight, without having all of its scenes shown. During my English class that day the teacher explained that there was a problem with the timing of the play, but it should be fixed by that evening.
I got to school that evening and as all of my friends, I was excited to see my classmates perform and also to see why the play did not end on the previous evening. The play started at 7 PM as scheduled, but once again ended at midnight.
It was a comedy inspired by Shakespeare’s work and had over thirty students acting. As time passed, I started seeing people moving in their seats, trying to get comfortable in those auditorium chairs. As I looked to the side, one of my friends was laying her shoulder in another girl’s shoulder in order to take a nap. Despite the effort I was making to stay awake my eyes also started feeling heavy.
Even though they made some arrangements and cut some scenes, the play was TOO LONG!!! It was not a bad play; it was interesting. I even found out that some of the quieter people in my class were in fact very good actors.
The stories were very creative and funny, but there were too many of them. My teacher probably wrote this play in the same way she taught us Hamlet earlier in the year. She made a good script, and gave everyone a significant role, but she did not look at the whole picture and how the play would look once all the smaller pieces were put together.
When we left the play, we were all half asleep, trying to figure out what had just happened. I guess that by the end of the year we did not get to finish “Hamlet” or the play, but we learned that there is not way that we can have thirty protagonists in a story…
Observing, Not Observed.
Being a part of the audience so often makes one intrigued, intrigued to be the one looking back at an audience. She had been a spectator time and time again. From an early age, Madeline had been taken into the city to watch Broadway and off-Broadway shows, tour museums and observe art pieces. Growing up near New York City permitted a wide expanse of experiences, but even when traveling, her parents ensured that some form of art was visited. Whether the Coliseum in Rome, Longfellow’s house in Boston, or a Flamenco in Seville, she became accustomed to being an spectator.
She grew to love the arts…and found that art not only existed in painting, sculpture, acting or singing, but also in the simplest everyday forms…nature, constantly surrounding her; that too was art. Nature became her much loved form of art, it was something that could never be duplicated, never copied, never made exactly the same and though it was always constant, always there, it was forever changing. The way the ocean rose and fell varied minute by minute, the purple-gray streaks across the sky faded to a dusky blue-black before the purple-gray could even register… the fascination with the sky and numerous other parts of nature captivated her.
After discovering her love for observing, whether nature (her favorite) or actual shows, she decided to make her own show. Jacob, Madeline’s uncle who was only three weeks her senior, and her decided to put on Cinderella for the neighborhood children, and Madeline was assigned the task of writing the script. Though only eleven at the time, Madeline, Jacob, and three other good friends- Sam, Emily and Charlotte, were determined, and together worked to memorize their lines and coordinate time to put on rehearsals.
Playbills were made using the old program “paint” on the computer, and a shaky eleven-year-old hand drew a glass slipper and a rose, using the mouse. Invitations were sent out, with a carefully selected fancy font; each address written in painstakingly neat calligraphy. The big day was rapidly approaching.
The day finally arrived for the five cast members to make their debut, and shock was etched across all their faces- the audience was bigger than expected. Huddling backstage (the kitchen), they shook off last minute jitters and Madeline stepped out to take her spot as Cinderella…a role she wasn’t so sure she wanted anymore.
However, the pressure pushed them all to do their best, and instead of shying away, each came out of their shell and performed as well as eleven year olds bereft of acting experience could possibly perform.
Cinderella was a success; the months of line memorization and rehearsals had paid off…and on top of that, all had been privileged to have the experience of being ‘on stage.’
After, Madeline continued to view forms of art, but this time with a greater understanding (for those who were acting), and a heightened appreciation for all art around her. Although the experience had been beneficial, she preferred being where she belonged- in the audience. From there, she could observe, without feeling observed, something she was less comfortable with.
ART EXPERIENCE
It started in a circle. Four colored girls like myself were assembled during Drama studio class brainstorming. It was senior year and time for One Act Play productions. They were ensemble pieces that gave the students freedom to do something they always wanted to. What play should we do? Brainstorm. What one-act play should we do? Silence. Another senior teacher entered the room and stopped at our circle. He gasped playfully but was seriously stunned. “Four talented black girls in ONE drama class! Girls, do you understand how infrequent this is?!? Take advantage,” he said. We were taken aback. We glanced at each other and now the brainstorming really began.
Then it dawned on me. What was that play- that poem thing I read…? It was something about a rainbow and ladies. I shouted a bit too excitedly, “Lets do For Colored Girls!” No one knew what I was talking about but I knew it would be the perfect play for us to put on. I ran upstairs from my school basement to the sixth floor library in my socks – well actually I ran up the escalators but that still proved to be a feat for me. Luckily, the play was available in the drama book room. That’s it! For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange. I ran back down to our studio room, we cracked open the choreopoem/play and began our very first table read. And this was the beginning of one the greatest art experiences I had ever been apart of.
In 1975, Ntozake Shange, a playwright, a poet, and an author, produced For Colored Girls… play in a women’s bar. It went on to grace both Broadway and Off-Broadway stages. It consists of about 20 poems centered on identity, rape, abuse, violence, culture, music, abortion, life, freedom, voice, etc. It is spoken as monologues and some dialogue in the voice of 7 women named after colors; for example, Lady in Blue, Lady in Red, etc. She titled it a choreopoem because it is lyrically written in poetic form and incorporated dance and choreography. The play captures the voice of black women in a way no other piece hard. It speaks of struggles that have become taboo in mainstream society. It is outspoken and fearless. More than anything, it is revolutionary. She ends the play with a mantra I will never forget, “I found god in myself/and I loved her/I loved her fiercly.”
We researched and we read. Then we read some more. We selected the monologues that resonated with us and the parts that had to be left untouched. We discussed meaning and thoughts and reason and purpose. I was getting excited. I had a gut feeling that this was going to be worthwhile and incredible. But there were hurdles. First and foremost, there were 7 characters, seven ladies, seven colors, but there were only four of us. Then there were time contrains. We had to cut down and cut out. We realized we would be disassembling Shange work because there was no way to cut monologues and dialogue without disrupting the flow. So we had to replace and add transitions. Then there was staging and blocking to worry about. We were essentially directing ourselves as our studio teacher allowed us that freedom, but just as luck goes, we chose one of the hardest plays to stage. We saw all this hard work before us but we were more that ready to undertake it. We felt as though this show needed to be seen at LaGuardia High School. Nothing like it had ever graced the stage before. Though the department’s curriculum was fulfilling, truth be told, African American playwrights were hardly ever covered. We would be reaching an audience and opening them up to a new experience. This was what art was meant for.
We finally came up with a rough draft of our adaptation. I still flinch when I realize we adapted Shange’s masterpiece but it needed to be done for the parameters of this high school production. However, this initial adaptation was nothing compared to what went on in rehearsal. Because the play was written in the 70s, there was still a dialect barrier to note. Some of the terms were archaic and we wanted to make the play as ambiguous, time and setting wise, as possible. We wanted it to be the voices of colored girls anywhere anytime in this country. Then we had to stage. We took full liberty in adding our own direction. Ultimately, the stage consisted of nothing but four stools scattered downstage representing the disjointed locations of these women. We decided early on that our costumes would be all black with colored chiffon scarves tied somewhere on our bodies. We wrote up our own light cues and designed the lighting for it to fit the mood of each scene; for example, the lighting for the 4-person scene about rape included one red spotlight on each stool while a monologue about an abortion experience had a stark white rectangle center stage to represent the clinic room. While many ideas were sparked during these rehearsal sessions, some rehearsals were also very tense and emotional. Some consisted of trial-and-error and frustration. Sometimes we couldn’t get the opening interpretive dance to sync with my monologue and make sense. Sometimes our creativity was on cruise control and we weren’t inspired. Sometimes we just sat and talked. We spoke about any and everything. We spoke about the play, our lives, what we draw from the characters, our agreements and disagreement, and what the show meant to us. We were all invested heavily into the project but for different reasons and in different way. Though unbeknownst at the time, we were building chemistry and connection.
January 12th came, opening day. And, lo and behold, I couldn’t find black socks. I thought I put them in my bag the night before but there were no black socks. I panicked, as usual. Just my luck, no one in my house owned black socks. I couldn’t go barefoot on stage because my toes weren’t done. I panicked, again, as usual. So I skipped all my morning academic classes to go shopping for black socks. Where on earth do they sell black socks? I searched Midtown Manhattan, the Upper West Side (no, I was not paying $12 for black socks), and finally Chinatown. I am now convinced Chinatown sells everything. Honestly. I finally got to school but I kept quiet about my little black-sock-catastrophe. No one needed to know.
Showtime came around. We worked so hard for months and this would be the culmination of our work and the telling of our experience. We dissected, we adapted, we directed, we staged, we set designed, we light designed, and we acted. This was finally it. I learned so much throughout the experience. I learned what it meant to work in an ensemble, to collaborate, and experiment. We were artists. This was our art. How would we color the stage with it? What will be remembered from tonight? Four colored girls, for colored girls….
The opening music for our one act played. The house lights dimmed. We took our places amid the audience on the stairs, where we would descend from unto the stage. All the flashbacks from rehearsals came to my head. I smiled. What a journey! Who would have thought….focus, Renisha. One. Two. Three. Chant begins. “Whose got the shoulder when I need to cry? I feel restless and I don’t know why. I cry for help, but still feel alone like a motherless child, a long way from home…” This was our own introduction, our personal touch. Once we got to the foot of the stage, the play really began, “Dark phrases of womanhood, of never having been a girl…”
My family is Guyanese, and at weddings it is a tradition to play a set of percussion instruments collectively known as Tassa. It is traditionally played at wedding ceremonies. There are four components to a Tassa “band”, one very large drum that is strung around the neck and played with both hands that sets the basic rhythm, two smaller drums played with sticks, and handheld cymbals. Performing is intense, and requires a lot of strength and stamina.
I went to a wedding in May in Queens, and to no one’s surprise there was Tassa being played during the ceremony. It was a hot, hot day and everybody was sweating. We came in a little late so we had to stand in the back where they were performing. These guys were tearing it up, they were playing crazy fast. It was definitely the fastest playing I’ve ever seen, and it sounded good. After about twenty minutes the guy playing the big drum got tired, and this group only had four people. Usually the groups have five or six people so that when a player gets tired, they can switch out and rest. So the guy playing the big drum got tired, and you could see it in his face; he was wheezing and sweat was soaked through his shirt. I swear this dude was about to pass out. So I’m standing in the back and he asks me to sub in for him. My initial reaction was shock, and then that turned to fear. I really didn’t want to do it, because I had never played the drum before, I had only watched people play them. I really didn’t want to play, I was looking around for someone else to play it, but it was like the crowd had suddenly become very interested in the very boring wedding ceremony. My dad, since he enjoys watching his kids do embarrassing things, said to the guy “yeah, he’ll do it!” So I took the drum from him, grudgingly. Trust me, the big drum is very, very heavy. Just picking it up made me sweat. I knocked the big drum how I had watched him do it in an ‘A’ ‘B’ ‘A’ rhythm, and the other members slowed down their playing to match my speed. At first it sounded awkward and out of sync, but the other players adapted to the beat I set with the big drum. So we quickly recovered the beat quickly, although we couldn’t play as fast as they were playing originally because of me. I guess we managed to do a pretty good job, because no one complained about the music.
This experience with the Tassa drums was definitely frightening at first, but it was fun once I got into it. I taught me that no matter how scared you are to do something, if you have the chance to have a new experience go for it, because you may never get the chance again. This experience has made me much more interested in Tassa, and I want to learn to play it seriously now.
“Give it up for Joshua George who will perform tonight on the piano” announced the host of the tenth annual talent show at Yonkers High School. The lights dimmed and the spotlight came on me. It was the first time I had a spotlight on me and it blinded me for a couple seconds and as my eyes were adjusting to the sudden burst of light I looked into the crowd and saw over 500 curious and attentive pairs of eyes in heavy anticipation of what I would perform.
It all started when I was in the 6th grade, my parents had heard a pianist performing and instantly had the idea that I should know how to play an instrument. So very soon after I started getting piano lessons from the man who they had seen perform. I was very excited at first to learn a new instrument but after the first lesson I felt overwhelmed and bored. However I decided to keep trying and to try and please my parents. Though I kept getting lessons I soon did not practice at all and so therefore I learned very little and my piano teacher had to stop teaching me because he got a new job and could not continue giving me lessons. Therefore I received lessons from 2 more teachers and then finally quit. I had learned very little because my latter two teachers were soon discovered to be incompetent and therefore at the end of 2 years of lessons I only had knowledge of the basic a to g notes of piano, I did not even know basic concepts such as chords, etc. I very soon forgot completely about piano and my beginner’s keyboard started to collect dust.
Fast forward five years later and I was a regular kid who was a self-taught drummer but had no relation to piano whatsoever. One day I was with my friend who was a pianist and I told him to play a song on piano that I could accompany on the drums and he played a song on the piano that I instantly fell in love with. Up till that point in time I had never heard a song played on piano that I actually liked, and ever since that night I always kept that song in the back of my mind.
Fast foreword again to senior year in high school and it all happened fast beginning on the first day of class. I was bored with all the free periods I had and so I decided to go to the arena (which was restricted area). It was empty and because I liked being alone at times, I liked that it was quiet and empty. It was fairly bare with only rows of seats, and a stage in the center of the four sections of seating. I was sitting there listening to music when suddenly from the corner of my eye I noticed a piano in the corner of the room which I had never noticed before in the few times I had been in the arena for those past 3 years of high school. I walked closer and saw that it was a Steinway and sons piano, and I had vaguely remembered hearing about its reputation as perhaps the best piano manufacturer. So because I was so bored, I went and sat down and pressed the keys on an instrument I had hated and hadn’t touched in years. The song that my friend had played on the piano a year ago quickly came into my mind as I sat before the piano and though I knew close to nothing about the piano and lost any touch that I had with it years ago, from within me came the desire to play that song I had heard a year ago. Though it was probably very out of my league I had no such thought at the time, I was consumed by the passion to learn this song that had been playing in my head for the past year. So on that day it started, every day for three to five hours I would sit at the piano (in restricted area) and slowly figure out by ear how to play that song, and perhaps by a stroke of luck no security officer or administrator came and kicked me out of the usually heavily patrolled area.
Slowly but surely I learned the song and within a month I was playing it with ease. I soon started trying to figure out other songs by ear, and soon I started learning songs by ear with such ease that if someone gave me a song to play I’d learn it within 30 minutes, and sometimes even less. Somewhere along the line my hate for the piano morphed into an immense love and passion for the piano and soon I couldn’t get enough, I would stay up late at night and think of new song ideas, and I would spend as much time as I could before, during, and afterschool to practice piano.
Soon people started hearing me play from the hallways and started to come watch me play, and I even attracted the attention of security guards and even the principle all of whom allowed me to be in the arena, knowing that I was there only to practice piano. I even started getting requests from strangers, and security guards. One day someone told me that I should try out to be in the talent show at our school but I didn’t pay much attention to the idea. However soon an increasing amount of people started telling me the same and so I went to the tryouts in January and I tried out with a solo act and a group act, and out of 40 auditions I got 2 slots for performing out of a total of 15 available slots.
So fast-forward again to May 2010, and now we are back where the story first begins. I am in front of over 500 people (I knew there were over 500 people because I saw the ticket sales before the talent show started), and they are all waiting in anticipation to see what I will play. I started off playing a song that was a slightly difficult one (river flows in you by Yiruma) and though I had it down perfectly during practice, I messed up a great deal that night. As I mentioned before I became very passionate about piano over the past couple months so whenever I played I just los myself in the music because I didn’t follow notes, I simply played by ear and improvised. However being that it was my first time performing in front of so many people I focused on the crowd and therefore got nervous and messed up a lot. However I had planned to do two more songs in this performance so after I ended the first song I kept going despite my multiple mistakes. I went on to the next song (my heart will go on by Celine Dion) and this became a crowd favorite and I played nearly flawlessly as I began to focus more on the piano, and just enjoying myself with the piano as I had for countless hours throughout the months, rather than focusing on the hundreds of people watching me. I then moved on to the finale (1000 miles by Vanessa Carlton) and very quickly the whole crowd started joining in and everyone was standing up and singing as I was playing my heart out on the piano. By the time I was playing this song, though the crowd was pumped up and into the song, I was simply playing away focused only on enjoying myself playing the songs that I loved on the piano and as a result I played close to flawlessly. Though my first song on which I messed up on hurt my scores a bit, I still did well with the judges.
However the night was not over for me yet, in addition to auditioning solo, I also had an audition with a group of people I had befriended that year who played and along the months I have made friends with a violinist, a guitarist, a drummer, a singer, and a rapper. Though this was a very strange combination it sparked curiosity in the audience to see us all together on the stage together. After the introduction from the host, the violinist started of the song we had rehearsed for countless hours, soon I joined in on piano at which time an unexpected thunderous applaud emerged from the crowd as the spotlight came on me. Soon the guitarist and drummer came in and the singer started singing the first verse to the song, and we were all together in harmony.
Keeping in mind, what I had learned from the previous performance that night I focused on playing piano and placed minimal attention on the crowd and just relaxed and had fun as I normally would when playing those 88 keys that I loved on any given day. I especially put my heart into playing this particular song and enjoyed hearing so many different musicians playing with me, and putting a spin on the song because this song was called apologize (by Justin Timberlake). This song was the very same song that I had heard the year before, it was the same song that I had heard being played in my head for over a year, it was the very song that had pulled me toward the piano, it was the very song that made me fall in love with the piano, and it would be the very song that would play in my heart and mind every time I sit down at the piano and perform for crowds of 50, 100, or 500, it would be the song that would play in my head and heart when I play piano for multiple recordings on camera to be put on the web, or when I would be asked to record in professional recording studios. But most of all, and most frequently this song comes into my mind and plays in my heart when I am simply sitting in my music room playing my heart out and expressing myself on those 88 keys which make up a piano, which I once hated but now love.
I’ve never been a person that liked to celebrate birthdays because to me they weren’t very meaningful. I always thought people made their birthdays be too big of a deal, there wasn’t a need to make everyone know it was your birthday. Luckily my birthday is during the summer so I don’t have to deal with going to school and everyone telling me happy birthday. This summer I was turning eighteen and everyone kept telling me that this was a really important birthday and that I couldn’t pretend it was an other normal day. The only reason I was looking forward to turning eighteen was because I would be able to by my own lottery tickets. My mom told me she was going to buy me a cake and I didn’t mind because it was what we always did for my birthday: bought a cake, sang happy birthday and then took pictures. My mom always liked to take pictures because she liked to see how I changed every year. This was routine for me because I did it every year and after it was over everything went back o normal again.
I never stopped and thought about what was happening, as we were taking pictures, for the first time during my birthday I actually began to see the meaning of becoming a year older. Everything changes around you and if you don’t appreciate something when its there, you might not have it there later. I realized when I was taking a picture with my sister that she was about to move out and live on her own; I was going to start college and move out soon as well. I wouldn’t have my sister there anymore to get me out of trouble or to help me when I couldn’t do something on my own. This was the first birthday that had meant something to me because when I was young all that I thought about were the presents that I was going to get from everyone, as I grew out of that stage birthdays didn’t mean anything to me anymore and they were normal days to me.
Now that I am older, in a new stage in my life I have found some meaning to birthdays again. I guess its true what people say, that as you grown older everything begins to have meaning because you appreciate what you have around you. You realize that you wont have the people that have been with you since you were born around you anymore. As I took more pictures with my mom and dad and then with my sister I began to appreciate having them there with me during my birthday. I realized that birthdays could be a good thing because they can bring family together for a few moments that usually wouldn’t happen. These moments are the ones that you have to remember and having pictures can help you remember them.
There is nothing that irks me more than a blank sheet of paper. So white, so pure. Lacking experience in any aspect of the word, devoid of life, hopes, and dreams. I look upon a blank page and I already imagine how to put a mark on it. Black, blue, or red, I already plan to teach and taint the piece of paper.
Lines become letters become words become sentences. Punctuation slips through the words, filling the page with periods, commas, and the ever-popular semicolon. I play fast and loose with the rules of grammar, focusing more on how to best get motions and emotions across. Sentences become paragraphs. Ideas become something more concrete and real.
I pick up the paper; I read it. I cringe at my own mistakes. Inkblots. Cross outs. I check and double check, continuing to fix and change anything that didn’t completely please me. And nothing completely pleases me, not the first, second, or third time around.
A clean sheet, a clean copy. Writing the exact same words without the x-marks and the notes. And then I made them again, repeating the process. Another clean sheet. Another group of cross-outs. Another clean sheet. Another group of cross-outs.
And eventually, I decide that, if it can get better, I wouldn’t be able to make it so. This time, one more clean sheet, and only words. I resist the urge to revise more; this is my final product.
And this time, I read it again, just to enjoy.
You reach out, fingers stretching out in the darkness, almost trying to grasp some invisible object. Your eyes soon snap open as you sit up, letting out a breath you had no idea you were holding. Inhale, exhale. You tell yourself it was just a dream, nothing but a silly nightmare, but you can’t escape the fear that grips your very soul…
The summer of eighth grade was the first time I took a photography course. It was my first experience with the art. The fascination was incredible. I was able to take pictures, develop my own film and create something unique. I loved the fact that I could capture the image of what was going on around me. I loved the fact that one picture could hold a thousand words. The fact that even a photograph of a landscape told a marvelous story.
I will forever remember the first time I held the camera in my hand. It wasn’t a digital camera, but a professional style camera. It looked like a small black box with silver edges that would shine when the sunlight hit them. As I held the camera to my face, looking out through the lens I saw a small bird across the lawn. “Click.” I snapped the first photograph, and the bird flew with the sound. “Click,” and I took a picture of my friend walking over, camera in hand. The days flew by as I made the camera click and had finally finished my film. The first part of the assignment was done.
Developing the film was a completely different experience. I had never developed film, had never been in a dark room. I had never worked in a completely dark environment. The room was not lit red as you see on television. There was only one small red light in the corner of the room. I was afraid that I might mess up my film. I was afraid that I would mess up the photographs while they were in the chemical bath. I was terrified that Professor Sha would not like the end product.
For the next month, I went through the same process, and with the same amount of curiosity. Through the photography class I learned that not everything has to be perfect because not everything in this world is perfect. Sometimes your film is very well preserved, and the images come out pristine. Other times, while in the dark room your film might be exposed to the slightest bit of light and there is a white spot right in the middle of your favorite shot. Other times, because of that little exposure, the photograph comes out with such an effect that it becomes a unique piece. It comes to define what you think is a good photograph. Photography is an art of trial and error. It is an art where what you think is horrible, is amazing to someone else. It is an art that allows you to tell your side of the story with only one click of the camera, one strip of film, and one piece of paper.
My First Concert
My hands were shaking as I hung up the phone with my Godmother. Her words rang over and over in my head; “you have to get better if you want to go to your first…CONCERT!” I couldn’t believe it. I was only nine years old and I already had bragging rights over my friends of being the first one to go to Madison Square Garden to see a live music performance. Oh, and this wasn’t just any concert. This was to see N’SYNC live! While they are just a faded mark on the music industry now, in 2000 they were taking over the media by storm along with some other boy bands. Needless to say, my misery from being sick the previous few days, was squashed by the new motivation to get better soon.
Finally, the night I most anticipated for weeks had arrived. I was dressed in my custom made shirt that my mother had decked out in rhinestones and it spelled out N’SYNC. I didn’t know what to expect when walking into Madison Square Garden. It was my first time there and nothing could prepare me for what I stepped into, screaming girls of all ages stomping their feet and screeching the lyrics to songs that were yet to be preformed. I thought it couldn’t possibly get any louder than it was at that moment but then, the light dimmed and I was proven wrong. Through the darkness five silhouettes appeared on stage and the noise level was brought up a notch. I was a very shy girl so everything around me was overwhelming and almost scary. But then, those familiar lyrics that I memorized as if it were biblical text rang out through the speakers. I felt myself whispering along with the song. My Godmother nudged me to speak up and enjoy myself like everyone else but I found it hard to escape my shell in front of strangers. Inside I wanted to belt out the songs along with the cute singers like I did alone in my room but I found it to be near impossible.
It seemed as though I would spend the rest of my night sitting in my chair mumbling to myself until, those five young stars made their way through the crowd. My heart raced and when I looked straight ahead there was J.C staring straight in my direction. My Godmother, noticing the direction I was looking toward, encouraged my belief that he was looking at me. That was all I needed to finally get off of my chair and sing and dance along to every song that was preformed. I sang louder and danced to be noticed than any other girl around me. My shell was broken and I told myself “make this night memorable!” and that is exactly what I did.
Until this day, I will never know for sure if J.C really noticed me among the crowd but at this point I don’t really think it matters. It was the push I needed back then to break out of my comfort zone. I learned to try to make each life experience worth remembering and to enjoy everything to the fullest. Never hold back due to insecurities. The night would not have been the same had I just spent it in my seat. It was the joy and connection I made with the music that made it amazing.
Several years ago, I had been told I would play my piano at a grand and reputable concert hall known as Carnegie Hall. The name appealed to me (as did the fact that hundreds of spectators would be there,) and I quickly began practicing my compositions for the recital. I had only two pieces to perform, The Gypsy’s Rondo, and Butterflies, yet I felt very nervous about being on stage for even those several minutes. Two months did not seem to be ample time to perfect my repertoire, and I ended up cramming several hours of last minute practice in the last week before my date.
I arrived at Carnegie Hall an hour before my performance and took that time to relax and go over my music. The songs were to be memorized, and I strongly believed that I would forget midway through one of the pieces where I was playing. When it was my turn, my knees were slightly buckling, my mouth was dry, and I could barely walk to the bench. After a good thirty seconds of positioning myself, I started to play; and play I did, furiously pounding away at the keys for a solid 10 minutes. Admittedly, I had rushed through the song very rapidly and I nearly skipped several spots in the music where I had some fingering trouble.
When the songs were complete, I relaxed my hands, took a deep breath and stood up. As I almost fell back down, the crowd erupted into a standing ovation, and I sensed a wave of relief pass over me. I took a bow and proceeded off the stage for the next performer to play. The experience was overall one of the most prominent memories I have of my lifetime of practicing piano and it helped me overcome a huge phobia of stage fright. I had learned to relax my mind and body, concentrate on the task at hand, and perform in a tense situation. Whenever I am stuck in a bind trying to finish an essay or prepare for a presentation, I think back to the most exciting 10 minutes of my life, the time I performed at Carnegie Hall.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘375415052 which is not a hashcash value.
My naked feet were touching the cold, bare stage. I slowly turned my head hoping to attract the least attention possible. My eyes slowly wandered from left to right, assuring that we were all in the position the coordinators had vibrantly marked with red tape. I gave a reassuring smile to Raquel, the dance partner right beside me, and who in any other moment I referred to as my best friend. Yet at that moment the title best friends didn’t apply to any of the five girls dancing with me. I knew that at that glimpse in time a simple title wasn’t enough, for what we were going to do at that moment was beyond what any society driven title could capture. It was a collaboration of the inner emotions we all possessed. Love, happiness, and unison. I gave a brief look towards the audience, rapidly squinting my eyes, trying to notice who was screaming our names. “Ok when are the going to start the music” are the words that flashed across my mind, as my legs shifted from side to side trying to calm my nerves. I gave a brief smile to the girls surrounding me, not clearly seeing their faces, as I had no glasses on. The echo of the crowds voice grew louder and louder. T starts off as a small chant and soon turned into a boisterous monster of noise. Like the clamors and screams heard from the bleacher creatures at a Yankee game. Screaming for each player as they came out, with the beer slurred words, and the crazy adjectives paired next to their name. “Go Shabel”! “Whoooo”. Out of nowhere there were laughter- random guys from he audience screaming, “lets go sexy”. They- whoever they were had no face. For what we all saw was a blinding spotlight shimmering across the stage. This was our senior moment, nothing had ever compared. We wanted leave saying we performed once in our school talent show. The months of practice, yelling, mess-ups, and laughter had all accumulated to this very moment. As the spotlight glowed off our six heads, shining brightly against Melissa’s soft and thick Columbian curls, Shristi’s long, silky Indian hair, Raquel’s wavy and thick Mexican hair, Elizabeth’s curled laced hair tied in a lose bun, Victoria’s tight and [perfectly combed hair, and my tightly pulled back hair trying to show the makeup as much as possible. STOP. I released out a light gasp of air as the host begins to say in an animated voice “now give a round of applause for the Bollywood divas”! The curtains opened, feeling as though they took eternity to do so. The music dropped, the audience became silence with the random exception of some family members trying to make sure that their child’s glory moment is captured and withheld in everybody’s mind. Whether it was the spotlight the blinding uniformed sound of the audience scream we began the opening move, Right foot in the front, arms raised in the air, forming a dove like shape, and waist moving up and down. The sound of the music overwhelmed the room, allowing me- correction, allowing us to feel the music. With bright smiles, and our vibrant colored outfits we moved to the rhythms and beats of A.R Rahman’s song form the Slum Dog Millionaire film – Jai Ho. Its uplifting spirit could be felt around the unite stage. This was no longer a dance, it was our mark…our signature to Richard R.Green H.S of Teaching. DAMN. This was the word that was transmitted throughout my body. As the high tempo part of the dance had approached, and the group’s arms graciously were lifted in the air towards the top right, I for some reason had raised it to the bottom right. A quick mess up…but it felt as though it was something imprinted for the entirely of the dance. I felt as though everybody were looking through a magnifying glass, and my quick mess up was going to overshadow every single step, shake, jump, and hand movements we had skillfully crafted to follow the beats of the bollywood sound. “Suck it up” were the words that I silently echoed myself. T was that moment I realized I had to go all or nothing. I quickly realized that it was time for our solos. Moving our feet to the rhythm of Rahman’s voice, we got into straight-line formation. The music’s sound appeared to be louder and pace got quicker. “Baila, Baila”…were the words playing off the sound system, which means “dance, dance’! Three of us moved towards the front of the stage, having an imperfect harmony… yet somehow that was refreshing. Not having everything perfect and simply following the sound of the music, instead of obsessing over systematic moves. As three remained in the back, we quickly did our own moves. Melissa moved her waist to the imaginary Columbian drums playing in her head; Elizabeth held back trying to finish her moves as soon as possible, and I broke out with what I thought was most appropriate at that moment- the robot dance. I gave a quick chuckle, knowing people were going to be humored by my “signature move”. As soon as were finished the other three girls, shifted to the front of the stage, improvising whatever they felt at that moment. We rushed back to a line formation, realizing that the end of the song was coming to its peak. With the shimmies tied around our waist, we moved up and down, following a rhythmic pattern, like coins being thrown against one another. We stretched our bodies as much as possible; trying to mimic the Hindi moves Shristi had patiently taught us. The crowd began to stand up as we pointed towards the audience, and with pride screamed “Jai Ho”! “Jai Ho”! As its beautiful sounds with upbeat singing and noises had been heard throughout the small auditorium, the song reached a calming point. It was tranquil and soft, like the sound of a loud violin in a vacant, and small room. With the music slowing down we slowly got into our final positions. Three of us bent down to the floor, with both our news touching the pale, black stage. While the other three, remained standing up, arms shaped like a beautiful origami. “Whooooooo…the ending sound of the song was overpowered by the scream and chants of teachers, parents, family, friends, and the school security guards. WE stood up and stood beside one anther, taking a unified bow. We instantly smiled at one another and started screaming. We rushed off the stage, and began to talk over one another saying the same thing- “ l love you guys”. Walking off the stage, the claps got even louder, causing our smiles to get wider. The feeling was inexplicable, with the mess-up in mind. The performance was perfect. All of the weeks of practice, and countless hours afterschool didn’t really matter at this point. What mattered was that at that very instance, we realized the value of friendship, dance, and most importantly the idea of bonding. This was an experience like no other, one that would keep me bonded to these girls. Some friends have bracelets, or necklaces, others have scrapbooks, handshakes, or “traveling jeans”…but we had something different- we had “the Jai Ho”. The jai ho, which translated means one significant and beautiful thing – VICTORY.
Just before my eighth birthday, parents, my sister, my grandparents, and I went on a two-week cruise ship to the Bahamas. Among the many activities on the cruise ship was a music show in which passengers could sign up to perform for an audience. I wasn’t particularly interested, but my parents thought it would be a good experience for me and signed me up. I was supposed to play a classical piece I had been practicing just before I went on vacation, but on the night of the performance, I completely forgot how to play the song, and I got stuck. Not even slightly embarrassed, I turned to the audience and confidently said, “Well, I forgot how to play this, so I’m just going to play James Bond for all of you.” Then I played the James Bond theme, and the audience loved it. They were shocked that a young person like myself could remain so confident and handle a situation so maturely. One woman loved it so much that she found me after the show ended and told me I was her favorite performer that night. She kept telling me she knew I would be famous one day, and she had me give her my autograph. While I may not be pursuing music as a career, this experience has shown me how amazing it feels to perform for others, and music continues to be a passion of mine to this day.
I was born in Hungary, raised as a Hungarian, but lived in America. Due to this I have a wide variety of interests, and always want to explore the cultures of other nations. Last year I had the opportunity to learn more about one of the most interesting cultures out there; I was going to Spain. A few of my classmates and I decided that every summer we would go to a different country by ourselves, no parents, no family, no teachers. We would go by ourselves and be free to do whatever we wanted to. We decided to go to Barcelona.
The first day when we arrived, we just left the airport and got settled in at our apartment styled hotel room, this was the calm before the storm. The first day being the exception, we went to a wide variety museums every single day, from small museums featuring current paintings, statues, comics, and humorous graphics depicting modern conflicts, to larger and more known ones like the Picasso Museum, which contained hundreds of pieces of art.
On some days we only visited 1 museum, but we always made up for it by going to a historical or cultural site. One of these, was the beautiful Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia (also known as the Barcelona Cathedral, or Catedral de Barcelona). The Cathedral was a unique experience, because it wasn’t like a museum, where you go into a building to see art; a Cathedral is different, a Cathedral is art.
The most interesting thing in Barcelona, was the wide variety seen throughout the city. There are all kinds of different cultural representations everywhere. The one that affected me the most was a pillar by the beach, which towered over the city, and on top of it stood Christopher Columbus, pointing towards America.
The Barcelona trip was a memorable one for me, that I will never forget. Seeing so many amazing things was a great experience. I grew to enjoy going to museums even more since that trip. The sheer amount of museums found in that city is mind-blowing. The only negative thing to come out of it all is that now I have very high expectations of most museums I go to, but so far I have not been disappointed.
I was part of my school’s seventh grade play, the Sound of Music. I was uncle Max. He was not the main character, but a significant role nonetheless. For a few months all the members of the play met up in my school’s auditorium. Every day we practiced: the actors rehearsed their lines and the stage crew went over their multiple tasks. When it was show time everything went well and the audience was satisfied. The play was a success and everyone walked out with a smile on his or her face (at least figuratively). However, the crowd didn’t know that there were many flaws to our play. No one was able to notice though; everyone improvised accordingly and helped bring the play back onto the right track. That was the key to victory: teamwork. At each practice, every person understood what his or her own role was as well as everyone else’s. If one link came loose, someone was able to tighten it.
I can refer to this experience and understand the importance of an event as a whole, to not necessarily pinpoint the individual aspects within it. Although any single part of anything can be looked at as the “game changer” or even “the most important” instant, everything that happened before – and in many cases after– that instant is just as crucial to the outcome. Take the winning shot in a basketball game for example. It is the shot that Michael Jordan took that caused the team to take the lead in the score, but what if his teammate didn’t make the steal and pass it to him? The outcome could not have been the same. And if you go back further and examine the chain of events, you will see how each step leads up to the climax. It is events like these that make me realize that every thing, big or little, carries significant importance.
For two months, the music class had been switched from the classroom to the auditorium of the four floor primary school. The children of the honors class in the fourth grade were on stage during that time, practicing over and over again the routines for the school play. That year would be ‘Annie’ and the girl cast as her was neither an orphan or a redhead but she had a voice of an angel and that was what had mattered at the time. Their teacher, young and blonde and full of vitality, easily kept up with her students and managed it all while dealing with the abrasive music teacher who was in charge of the songs.
Cecibell Lowe was not part of the honors class that year, but she would join them in the fifth grade, the next year that was also their final one in their elementary school. For the time though, she was part of the class whose music teacher was in charge of the play’s songs. For those two months she had seen her friends working hard and trying their best to make the musical work. Everyday they left sweaty and sore from the dancing and poor Jeri was hoarse some days from singing so much but they made sure to show up everyday, ready to do it all over again. It made the tall-for-her-age Hispanic girl happy and she watched their practices as if she was a critic. Of course, this was after she finished the work assigned her class to keep them quiet. As much as she liked watching, she knew she couldn’t really afford to get behind in a once-a-week class like music.
The week before the performances started was hectic and tense and noticeable to all who entered the auditorium at any given moment. The petite blonde teacher was on the receiving end of terse words from the music instructor, who could not tell that the children all around him were unhappy with his behavior. The principal, the drummer for the night actually, was popping in whenever time allowed and smacked her wooden drumsticks over her drums to call attention and to refocus the group. She didn’t mean to be strict about it but they were on a tight schedule so Ceci could understand it. It didn’t make the tension any easier though and she felt bad for the nice young teacher who was trying so hard to make ‘Annie’ a memorable show at P.S 14.
The first performance was on Monday, starting with the fifth graders because they were the oldest. Tuesday was when the fourth graders were allowed to see and of course, Ceci was excited. She had seen their hard work and she had even managed to catch the movie version on television within the past couple of months so she had a gist of what the show would be about. It sort of made her feel grown up, just a little though. The lights dimmed in the auditorium and it hit her that this was their performance; she hoped it went well.
It actually went better than expected. The flaws were unnoticeable to anyone and ‘Annie’ had been at the top of her singing game. The rest of the class had filled their cues on time and the acting wasn’t half bad for a bunch of nine and ten year olds. The lights turned back on one final time and when the audience clapped, it wasn’t just to be polite. And Ceci, well she appreciated just how much work they had put into it and she enjoyed the final product. As outspoken as her own teacher claimed her to be, Ceci was shy in this aspect but she knew that already. That didn’t mean she couldn’t take that creative energy of hers and apply it somewhere else besides on stage. She knew just how hard the backstage work was and she knew she could definitely work with that if the time came. Luckily, it never did.
I didn’t know I didn’t post…
I first heard the name Juilliard in High School Musical 3: Senior Year. No, I am not a fan of High School Musical! My cousin was watching it on Disney channel and I happened to be watching it alongside her. Anyways, I remember how they mentioned that it was a prestigious performing arts school in NYC and how all the characters in the movie wanted to attend it after high school. I thought it was just a fake school and forgot all about it until late May of this year.
My sister, a student at St. John’s University, was taking an art class and
for one of her assignments, she had to attend a performance by the students of the Julliard School. It was a late evening performance and she dragged me with her. I was very reluctant to go since all I knew was that we were going for some “stupid dance performance”. I followed my sister to Juilliard, specifically to the Peter Jay Sharp Theater. After standing in line for ten minutes we were able to get free tickets for the performance called “New Dances: Edition 2009 because of special student discounts.
Since we had arrived late, by the time we entered the auditorium it was completely packed. It was the first performance of its kind that me and my sister attended, so were amazed by the grandeur of the auditorium. After looking around for a couple of minutes, we saw that there were some empty seats all the way in the front row and we decided to sit there. We sat there for twenty minutes, reading the playbook and waiting for the performance to begin. When the curtains finally raised, we realized that sitting at the front row wasn’t the best idea since the stage was really high and half the stage was blocked from our view. We moved back a few rows and started watching and the performances blew me away.
The performance was divided into three dances. The first dance was one about death and traditions and rituals. I remember how a group of people were dancing around a woman laying on the floor and as they moved, they portrayed their loss and misery. They wore simple clothes and just danced. Then, several men raised the woman and danced as they held her above everyone else. At the end of this dance, I was really captivated and excitedly waited for the other performances.
I never realized how dance can portray a story as simply as a book or a movie can, until I saw that performance. I could not believe that the swaying of the dancers, their rhythmic and synchronized movements, could be this beautiful. Because of this performance, I finally realized why people spent so much time, money, and effort to become a dancer: because dancing was a beautiful art.
The second dance was one about a girl’s birthday. It started out with a young girl dressed in a pink dress and a crown above her head dancing by herself in what appeared to be a restaurant. There were several tables and a waiter moved about the stage. The girl was smiling and her happiness was apparent through her dancing. Then, several young people (her friends) come in and they dance together. They pair up and dance to classical music to celebrate the girl’s birthday but as they each get drunk, they forget about the birthday girl. The drunk men and women dance really quickly and the performance becomes a bit racy. As they get more and more drunk, the stage light dims on them and the birthday girl is put on the focus by shedding all the light on her. Her loneliness is portrayed as she dances by herself and sometimes with the waiter. The music starts out slowly but it quickly becomes very loud. She starts swinging on a swing set up on the stage and she swings as high she can. The higher she goes, the higher the music becomes. She swings around and around and this clearly portrayed the fact that her world was turned upside down. This dance ends when the girl’s friends finally realize what they have done and the stage dims.
The final dance of the evening was very modern and the music was techno. The performers wore shiny, metallic outfits that seemed like alien gear or something that Lady Gaga would wear. Throughout the whole dance, the music was very upbeat and the audience became one with the performers. It was very different from the other two dances and I think it was the best dance out of the three.
Once the show ended and the performers took their bows and the audience applauded them for their amazing performances, I took in everything. Everything was in a way surreal. I was so glad my sister took me to see this great show and I really appreciated dance.
Now, my sister and I are waiting for a chance to see another performance and since I’m in Macaulay, we are really excited to get cheap or free tickets!