Hip Hop Final Project

In our hip hop class, our final project is to take an assigned nursery rhyme, translate it into my own words, take an assigned artist, take the artist's theme and incorporate into the translation of the nursery rhyme and create an original rap out of it. In order to do so, we must listen to the songs of the artist, hear the message he has put into the song and take the bits and pieces of different songs and use the feeling into my rap. My nursery rhyme was John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt with the artist Common. Common talks about the streets, the ghetto and the hood in his songs. It was difficult to make the nursery rhyme into a rap but it was also difficult to get the flow of the artist's music into the rap. I will be performing tomorrow in class so I will post the rap next week!

Hip Hop

This is a video of our hip hop class learning the routine of our final dance number. Near the end of the semester we will be performing this in front of an audience. The past couple of days we have been learning break dancing, popping, and locking. The class is a lot of fun where the professor is motivated and enthusiastic.

When dancing, the core is very important. The core is how you learn to balance yourself when dancing. In order to create your core, you must have strong abdominal muscles so when you turn or do any kind of large movement, you can stop or control your body using your abs. Muscles are very crucial in dance. Dancing takes strength where a easy looking step takes your entire body strength to achieve. I would like to go to the gym more often to strengthen my core.

iNERT!A Dance Workshop

This weekend, I attended a dance workshop sponsored by the Temple ASA where members of iNERT!A taught us a choreography. It was held in the dance studio of Pearson Hall where there were as many as 30 participants excited to learn new moves from the semi-professional dancers. This was the first workshop for iNERT!A of the year. The routine we were taught was modern dance, with a lot of level changes and lyrically choreographed dance moves. One of the members of iNERT!A auditioned for the show, "So You Think You Can Dance?" in New York City last year and made it to the finals. However he could not make it to the Las Vegas round. He says he will go to Brooklyn this year to audition once again. My friends and I had a lot of fun where we got to experience a new form of dance. It was a little challenging to learn the choreography in a short period of time of about an hour but at the end we all felt it was good exercise. The following day I had very sore muscles on my legs... I am looking forward in attending the next dance workshop!

HOK from Quest Crew

During my internship at FOX Entertainment in Japan, I had a great opportunity in working with a great crew. In the summer, they organized a summer party at Okinawa with almost the entire crew of FOX, famous Japanese and foriegn artists for performances, and models for the runway. I helped assist with shoots and took care of celebrities for the three days I was there. One of the celebrities I was in charge of was HOK from Quest Crew, who won first place in America's Best Dance Crew. HOK was a down to earth funny guy where he treated all of us like his friends. However when he started performing on stage he was a compltetely different person. He was concentrated and filled with energy. While watching his performance I felt inspired and almost could not believe I was getting to talk to a great dancer like him. Watching people dance inspires me in practicing new moves myself. I hope that I will have more time in the future to go to classes to learn different styles of dance.

Hip-Hop

Being a communication major I had a great opportunity of enrolling the Hip-Hop class in Temple University. It is an upper level theater class which counts towards my major requirements. This semester, I learn hip hop for the first time. I feel that I have started to get the hang of it but still at times uncomfortable with the movements because it is so different from the dance I used to learn. But I love moving my body and everybody sweats a decent amount every class. I feel dancing is a great way to exercise and release yourself from the everyday stress. We have started learning our final performance piece which will determine our grade for the class. I will try to take a video of the class this semester and post it on my blog.

Not a dancer

Although I am not a dancer, I love to dance. I have only taken a couple years of contemporary dance classes back in high school but ever since then I have fallen in love with it. Contemporary dance is something like a combination of jazz, hip hop and ballet. It's hard to imagine but it concentrates more on the dance techniques as well as new philosophies of movement.

Every time I come across a video of someone dancing I stop and watch it over and over again. I get inspired by the movement of the body and how it articulates in the music. One thing I love about contemporary dance is that many of the choreographers use the latest hit music. I love music and I love being ahead in terms of artists and songs so when a dance is choreographed to my favorite song, I once again cannot take my eyes off of it. One of my favorite choreographers is Luam. She is a great dancer and she teaches lessons in NYC. I am excited to go take her class possibly during thanksgiving if not during Christmas break!

Here is a link to one of my favorite choreography by Luam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNvsOE8PCH4