Reina's Thoughts on the Performance

The performance came and went.

Success? I can never tell if my performances went well, I tend to leave that up to the audience. The typical response from my parents and friends who attended the performance was "I didn't get it all, you'll have to explain it to me."

Although 20 people responded to my invite to join the flashmob only about half actually came to the show and only 2 of those who did perform were actual audience members.

Below are links to pieces that friends taped for me, enjoy!

Invitation to Connect

Creativity & Cultural Improvisation

Around the World & Back

1 to 1 Hundred

Little Brother 

Reflections:
I felt pressured to create content, to create content with roles for the collaborators that in the end may not have been appropriate. Last year I felt that the Internet2 workshop was extremely successful, so I have begun to reflect on why I thought that workshop was more successful than this past performance. What did I do differently? How can I be a more successful collaborator?

I still feel that I did not achieve my own personal goals of knowing how to work the various types of technology that was introduced in this course. Rather I now know people who can work those devices.

In regards to technology, it is obvious that this is just the beginning of the learning process.

Reina's Thoughts on Her Pieces (cont.)

The pieces are coming along.

My original ideas have gone through a variety of transformations as I learn what is feasible with my collaborators both in the class and at the other sites.  

Over the weekend (April 20/21) a new idea came to me regarding my flashmob. I kept on wondering how I could make it more interesting for the audience. What if I got some of my friends to come to the show and join the original NYC dancer? This idea motivated me to choreograph the steps for the flashmob, record the set movements, and create a video to upload to YouTube entitled International Flashmob Choreography, and to create a facebook event inviting all my "friends" to join.

The stress of upcoming final projects, papers, and presentations made me want to work in advance regarding the creation of the performance program. However, the delay in receiving the info I needed led me to not be able to meet the deadlines I set up. Instead of trying to control the situation I realized I need to take a step back and chill about the whole process. Let things just happen, as trying to plan was just stressing me out and doing absolutely no good.

Reina's Thoughts on Her Pieces for Internet 2

Proposed Pieces:

Multiple Identities
Multiple Identities will be improvised, I just need to figure how the traditional NYC/USA music will sound and how the traditional NYC/USA dance will look.

International Flash Mob
Pretty excited for what I think is the first ever international flash mob. Ian and I were thinking of doing a pop-medley similar to this T-mobile advertisement.

To be continued...

Reina's Thoughts on Content Creation

I can easily come up with ideas for pieces. I try to create original works for every performance opportunity that I am given. I am all about increasing my "company's" repertory. Part of the problem of creating original dance works is finishing them in time for the performance. Way to often the piece is only finalized minutes before we go on stage and I heavily rely on my dancers to generate movement ideas and sometimes finish the dance without me.

Naturally, coming up with ideas for pieces for Internet 2 came easily to me. However, having them come to fruition is quite another story. Since these pieces are concept driven, I am a bit at a loss about what comes next, the movement or the music? I am so grateful that Ian has agreed to be my musical composer and advisor, however he needs to know more about the dance before creating the musical score and I feel that I need the music to inspire the movement. Hopefully after today's class we will have a breakthrough and be able to proceed with generating the actual content.

Reina's Frustrations

I feel under pressure from the faculty.  The need to create all this content for the final project is stressing me out. It takes time, inspiration, motivation, and dedication to create artistic work. I'm expected within days to formulate and articulate ideas. When I presented one piece at last year's Internet 2 I had been working months for a few hours a week on my piece. Now I'm expected to create multiple ideas in hours. I feel that in some ways we are being set up for failure or at least for doing a poor job. I also feel that the class itself needs to be longer and we need the opportunity to meet more than once a week to work on the actual art itself. We need studio time in addition to tech time.

Reina's Thoughts on March 20th

March 20th has come and passed. It's hard to rate the success of the performances. On the one hand we made connections all over the world and everyone had an opportunity to perform. On the other hand, we ran late, 2 people did all the "tech"work, and not all of the projects happened as they were envisioned.

I also wonder what I could have done as a producer/director to have made the process smoother, created a more equal delegation of tasks, run an on-time performance, and made sure that all collaborations happened as they were envisioned.

For example, my piece did not happen as I originally intended, which seemed too complicated when I discussed my initial thoughts with Andreas and Stephen. (Looping live music and dance and layering it with additional live music and dance.) Although they seemed willing to try it, I was overwhelmed by the necessary steps to make it happen. What was slightly upsetting was that my plan B also did not happen as planned. Due to a faulty cable the camera that should have been used to project the live feed was not available. I wanted the projection to show the live dancing in front of the pre-recorded footage. Instead I think a weird angle of the live dance was projected. Ohh well, perhaps next time it will work out. At least, a connection was made and something was shown.

In terms of our final performance April 29th I wonder what will change. Will I become as capable as Stephen and Andreas when it comes to the tech components? How many times did they ask for cables and I had no idea what was what. When will I be fluent in these technologies?

Reina's Dilemma Resolved

It's amazing how over the course of time things just figure themselves out. I went to meet with my friend and he had already put thought and time into the project. So I decided to choose him over the cellist. The cellist understood and hopefully I can work with her in the future.

It's been a bit frustrating organizing the March 20th project. Individuals haven't been the most responsive. I wish we had more class time to discuss and organize. I also wish we had one class to test out connections and talk through our project face to face, rather than via google docs.