Thursday, January 8

Today was the first day of my Spring semester. Thank goodness. I was going a little nuts not having class on a regular basis.

We also got a new classmate today (nick-nameless as of now). She finished her 1st semester here two years ago, but then took a leave of absence. Most of us met her back in August, and we've known that she was joining us. I'm thrilled that she's finally here. :)


Ballroom Workshop
We've started our Ballroom Workshop, which will take place over 8 days. I have shiny new character shoes that I'm having a blast using. It's been so long since I've danced in a structured way (before my current understudying role, the last choreography I learned with in 2005). And dancing with a partner? Not since I attended meetings of the "swing dance club as a freshman in college, which was back in 2002.

We did a jazz warm-up, and then learned a bit of rag (which will be part of our warm-up for the next 7 classes). We finished with the beginnings of waltz (learning "school-figures", which are the basic outlines of the step before you manipulate it in any way).


Voice
Ah, it's good to be back in Voice class. I think I tremored in every position today. Seriously. Destructuring (tremoring) is so much easier to do in a group (for me, at least). We also worked on our sending/landing and breathing.


Acting
It sounds like the coming days of Acting class are going to be spent showing all of our observation work without much of an order. The observations we've been working on are:

- People
- Animals
- Inanimate Objects
- Professional Skills

D-Train, O.D., and Iceman all showed people today. They "lived" as the character for a bit, and then answered our questions using the inner-life of the character.

All-The-Way showed her professional skill. She had observed a French pastry chef. She had pre-made her dough, but went about constructing something she called "apple gilletts" (no idea on the spelling).

Thrill showed his observation of the front door to his apartment. People exited the apartment. Someone couldn't find the right key, and then knocked to be let in. Dogs scratched at it. It was pretty funny, actually.


Textual Analysis
We're getting into what will most likely be my favorite thing that we do in this class: Shakespeare. (SQUEAK!)

We started looking at a couple of sonnets today, and just discussing how one needs to read poetic text. I'm totally geeked over it. We have an assignment to analyze one of the sonnets, break down everything completely, and then paraphrase it. Our professor wants us to "show our work". This means that we'll be copying pages of the Variorum and our Shakespeare glossaries and circling the things that we found helpful.