Wedding Dance

October 26, 2014

This is the first of many wedding dance posts. During this activity, I and a couple others worked together to choreograph a dance for a dholki, which is a dance/ceremony in honor of the new married couple in Pakistani culture. We worked together to brainstorm and choreograph the dance, and then practiced and edited it to make it smooth and well performed. We interacted by bouncing ideas off of each other and learning from each other. The CAS element involved here is Creativity. The learning objectives advanced here were: Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth, because I learned of my abilities and how I can change as a dancer from others, Undertaken new challenges because I have never done anything like this before, Planned and initiated activities because we started this and organized our ideas on our own, and came up with a final product. We Worked collaboratively with others because this dance was a team effort and wouldn't have been the same without our collaboration. I Develop new skills because I learned how to choreograph and dance. Through this activity I hoped to accomplish creating a new dance, experiencing other cultures, and learning more. I was successful in accomplishing my goals as I successfully learned about and created a dance, and also I really enjoyed doing so. Some difficulties we ran into were my inability to dance well, and also occasionally we disagreed on our ideas. To overcome this, we taught each other and compromised. Through this activity I learned a lot of new skills and ideas, and that I have a great appreciation of new cultures and ideas. I learned that others are very accommodating and helpful to someone who is trying something new. This activity benefitted others because it was done in honor of a wedding and so it helped the family and the couple celebrate. Next time, to improve, I would like to learn several dances and even teach others in order to solidify my skills. I can apply my ability to try new things and my new cooperative skills in real life situations in school and in life, and they will be very beneficial.

November 4, 2014

Today we continued choreographing and practicing the dance. We made changes and chose which portion of the song we would be using. Our goals were to solidify the choreography to make it official so we could practice on our own. We also wanted to be more confident. We were pretty successful in achieving these goals, because after practice, I was able to review on my own through out the week using the video we filmed. As a result I was much more confident and able to contribute to the group more. Some difficulties we ran into were me lack of knowledge and ability to contribute, but to solve this, the group was really helpful in helping me catch up, so I was much more able to contribute the next time we met. To improve, I would study up more on our dance so we can perfect it and be ready for the performance. 

November 9, 2014 and November 16, 2014

Today we made a couple changes to the dance. We debated on how to change it the best way to make it the most natural looking and fit together. Then we practiced it several times to make it perfect while adding in edits here and there. Our goals were to finalize and solidify our performance, and we did that exactly. Some difficulties we ran into were our lack of agreement on what we agreed on during the prior meeting. We slowly realized that as we finalized our piece it didn't matter what had been said before so our new ideas were better. To improve this if i ever did it again I would make sure I studied up so i can contribute better to brainstorming. I would also practice more so it could be more professional on my part. Overall this was a very enriching, cultural and fun experience that I would do again in a heart beat. 

Total Hours: 9.5- Creativity