Our Mid-term Performance

            When planning what form we wanted our performance to take, my partner Alyssa and I thought it would be interesting to take our newfound skills in the performance of Asian-style dance and apply it to a medium with which we were far more familiar. We thought this would allow us to draw connections between what we are learning in class and our own daily lives. We decided upon telling the story of Disney songs through our dance because of the pervasive familiarity which these songs have. Disney has become such a major part of our American culture; it is rare to find a person who has not seen a single one of the company’s movies. When beginning to brainstorm about which films we wanted to pull the songs from, both Alyssa and I immediately turned to our individual favorites as those musical moments were the ones which had the biggest impact upon each of us personally.

Alyssa chose the song “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from the movie Mulan because both the song and the movie are her favorite from the Disney collection. I originally chose “I Just Can’t Wait to be King” from the Lion King for similar reasons, however we felt that the songs were too similar in terms of style; both are very upbeat and fun. Therefore, we decided to contrast the strong, masculine style of dance that we planned on using with “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” with a softer, more feminine style applied to another of my favorite Disney songs “The Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas. We felt that by using both of these styles, we could more fully apply everything we have learned in class so far.

We decided to use the beginning of each song and combined them using a recording program to make one comprehensive performance piece. We then went about choreographing each song separately; then putting them together. Our goal in performing each song was to portray the feeling and story of them both, while still staying true to traditional Asian dance forms. Therefore, when choreographing “I’ll Make a Man Out of You”, we chose sharp, warlike movements to convey the somewhat violent nature of the song, such as the arrow and stomp moves we learned in class. Similarly,  while choreographing “Colors of the Wind” we decided to use a feminine style because of the sex of the singer and we chose to use moves such as the mudra meaning snake to represent animal. With this piece we wanted to use delicate moves to match the slow, majestic qualities of the song, while still representing the words of it.

After practicing for a few days on our own, we performed it for Guru, who gave us feedback on it. Based upon his feedback, we decided to expand our performance from just standing in one position and moving in synchronized ways to moving around in various shapes, while still mirroring each others movements. He also influenced us to add our own voices to those in our musical selections, which we agreed added a personal touch to the completed piece. Overall, we think it turned out fairly well and accurately portrayed the point we wanted to get across. I hope that our Banjar enjoyed our performance as much as we enjoyed compiling and presenting it!