So I'm kinda totally bummed out.
After my amazing experience last season with the Reading Buccaneers, I was so pumped to go audition for a DCI corps. I loved Bucs, but I was ready to take it to the next level.
I had my heart set on auditioning with the Boston Crusaders, but when I emailed them to ask if they'd be able to provide for my gluten/lactose-free dietary needs, they said no. Which means they're just not an option anymore.
BLEGH.
So now it's decision time...go back to Bucs for another year to get more experience? Audition somewhere else? Cadets? Bluecoats? Such turmoil! Can't figure out what I want to do...but in the meantime I'll just keep practicing. No matter what, I'll be marching somewhere this summer.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Sunday, September 29, 2013
"Standard Time"
This year, I am the Special Events Chair of the Honors College Student Association at Millersville University (wow that's a mouthful!). One of the events I planned for this month was a trip to the Fulton Theater (an opera house) in Lancaster to see the dance musical "Standard Time." IT WAS PHENOMENAL.
The production is all of these professional dancers and singers (who have incredible Broadway experience) coming together for a show choreographed by Mark Stuart. There's no lines in it at all...it's just dance and music, but it was so incredibly moving.
The first movement was set in the 1938s and focused on a guy who shined shoes for a living and followed his experiences of trying to get a job, working in a hotel, and falling for one of the rich heiresses living there. The music was GREAT cause it was all stuff taken from that era, and the dancing was really old-fashioned as well. It was entertaining, comedic, and also thought-provoking with the issue of class difference being examined. Another cool aspect of it was the two main characters, the guy shining shoes and the heiress he falls far, were the only ones wearing red. All the other dancers/singers involved were in some variation of black. So those two really stood.
The next movement took place in the 1968 and followed the story of an interracial couple trying to be together though their friends tore them apart. It took place in a jazz club (THE MUSIC WAS ROCKING!) and was very West Side Story-esque. Two groups...one a mix of African-American/Latino/Asian (representing different races) and the other all Caucasians. They had dance-offs, singers competed to show off who was better, and then it all led up to this ballad where the lights dimmed, and the only focus was on a white girl and a black guy (both dressed in red...see the trend?) who had been noticing each other all night. They danced together, BUT WITHOUT TOUCHING. It was absolutely beautiful to watch, really emotionally effective choreography. After a few minutes, they finally held hands...something so incredibly simple but holding so much meaning after dancing for so long with no physical contact, but then the music went nuts and the lights went nuts and the friends from each side started fighting each other and pulling hair and throwing punches and one of the white guys got out a knife and through all the ruckus, the featured girl got stabbed. And then the curtain went down. That was the end. We were all sitting there with our jaws dropped. So much emotional build up and such an abrupt ending...ridiculously powerful.
The third movement took place in 2008, and it was my absolute favorite one. The music was all modern (there were songs by Adele, One Republic, Sara Bareilles, etc.) but all done in new styles...ah! So good! It opened with a guy in a red tank top surrounded by the rest of the cast, all in black hoodies and black pants, and it was just madness and chaos. And at the end of his feature, another guy in a red tank top walked across the stage...which piqued everyone's curiosity because in each movement, the ones in red always ended up as being the couple. Then there was a transition and a girl in a red dress came on stage and she danced a BEAUTIFUL solo with a man dressed in black to the song "Gravity" (Sara Bareilles)...but at the end of it, the girl was alone and you got the message that her love had passed away. The next scene was at a bar and a big dance scene with all sorts of couples...lesbians...interracial...and then the girl in red showed up but she was with a different man. Their dance was all about being in an abusive relationship...it was so moving and powerful. Ridiculously fast choreography...her being tugged and thrown all across the stage...it ended with the man throwing her down on the ground and leaving her. The music stopped and all you could hear was her sobbing. Then the man from the beginning with the red tank top helped pick her up, showed her a new way to dance/be in a relationship, and they got married. After the next transition, he was still in his red tank top but she had changed into black shorts, a black sports bra, and a cardigan and the scene was them living together at home. We saw their daily routine of going to bed together, waking up and brushing teeth, eating breakfast, then going to work. It went through that pattern three or four times, and each time you could tell the man wasn't as happy as he was before. At one point, the second man in the red tank (from the first scene) came into the house and the two of them danced and the wife came in and saw them, then she ran out crying. Then it was all this craziness of the stage being split and the two men dancing together and figuring out their relationship while the girl worked through her pain...but by the end, they all found peace. She accepted her husband's sexual orientation and let him go be with the other man, and the husband finally was in a fulfilling relationship. I cried so hard, because that's pretty much the storyline of my parents. And I absolutely LOVED how they conveyed the story...neither of them was a bad guy. It was clear the man wasn't happy and not with who he was supposed to be with. But it was also clear the woman was torn up and struggled to be okay, but she eventually found acceptance. I was sobbing. Thinking of my mom...my dad...the struggle for both of them and the amazing resolution that now my family is completely at peace with everything that happened and I couldn't imagine life any other way.
The dance musical ended with an awesome feel good song with joyful dancing (there's no other way to describe it) and celebration, and then a short feature at the end with all the three couples that had been the focus from the different time periods. It was amazing. When it came to the curtain call, I stood up the fastest I ever have for any performance.
What the choreographer and those dancers/singers did was astounding. It was so thought-provoking and emotionally powerful...without one word ever being spoken.
Short clip from one of the musical's workshops: http://www.thefulton.org/standard-time/
The production is all of these professional dancers and singers (who have incredible Broadway experience) coming together for a show choreographed by Mark Stuart. There's no lines in it at all...it's just dance and music, but it was so incredibly moving.
The first movement was set in the 1938s and focused on a guy who shined shoes for a living and followed his experiences of trying to get a job, working in a hotel, and falling for one of the rich heiresses living there. The music was GREAT cause it was all stuff taken from that era, and the dancing was really old-fashioned as well. It was entertaining, comedic, and also thought-provoking with the issue of class difference being examined. Another cool aspect of it was the two main characters, the guy shining shoes and the heiress he falls far, were the only ones wearing red. All the other dancers/singers involved were in some variation of black. So those two really stood.
The next movement took place in the 1968 and followed the story of an interracial couple trying to be together though their friends tore them apart. It took place in a jazz club (THE MUSIC WAS ROCKING!) and was very West Side Story-esque. Two groups...one a mix of African-American/Latino/Asian (representing different races) and the other all Caucasians. They had dance-offs, singers competed to show off who was better, and then it all led up to this ballad where the lights dimmed, and the only focus was on a white girl and a black guy (both dressed in red...see the trend?) who had been noticing each other all night. They danced together, BUT WITHOUT TOUCHING. It was absolutely beautiful to watch, really emotionally effective choreography. After a few minutes, they finally held hands...something so incredibly simple but holding so much meaning after dancing for so long with no physical contact, but then the music went nuts and the lights went nuts and the friends from each side started fighting each other and pulling hair and throwing punches and one of the white guys got out a knife and through all the ruckus, the featured girl got stabbed. And then the curtain went down. That was the end. We were all sitting there with our jaws dropped. So much emotional build up and such an abrupt ending...ridiculously powerful.
The third movement took place in 2008, and it was my absolute favorite one. The music was all modern (there were songs by Adele, One Republic, Sara Bareilles, etc.) but all done in new styles...ah! So good! It opened with a guy in a red tank top surrounded by the rest of the cast, all in black hoodies and black pants, and it was just madness and chaos. And at the end of his feature, another guy in a red tank top walked across the stage...which piqued everyone's curiosity because in each movement, the ones in red always ended up as being the couple. Then there was a transition and a girl in a red dress came on stage and she danced a BEAUTIFUL solo with a man dressed in black to the song "Gravity" (Sara Bareilles)...but at the end of it, the girl was alone and you got the message that her love had passed away. The next scene was at a bar and a big dance scene with all sorts of couples...lesbians...interracial...and then the girl in red showed up but she was with a different man. Their dance was all about being in an abusive relationship...it was so moving and powerful. Ridiculously fast choreography...her being tugged and thrown all across the stage...it ended with the man throwing her down on the ground and leaving her. The music stopped and all you could hear was her sobbing. Then the man from the beginning with the red tank top helped pick her up, showed her a new way to dance/be in a relationship, and they got married. After the next transition, he was still in his red tank top but she had changed into black shorts, a black sports bra, and a cardigan and the scene was them living together at home. We saw their daily routine of going to bed together, waking up and brushing teeth, eating breakfast, then going to work. It went through that pattern three or four times, and each time you could tell the man wasn't as happy as he was before. At one point, the second man in the red tank (from the first scene) came into the house and the two of them danced and the wife came in and saw them, then she ran out crying. Then it was all this craziness of the stage being split and the two men dancing together and figuring out their relationship while the girl worked through her pain...but by the end, they all found peace. She accepted her husband's sexual orientation and let him go be with the other man, and the husband finally was in a fulfilling relationship. I cried so hard, because that's pretty much the storyline of my parents. And I absolutely LOVED how they conveyed the story...neither of them was a bad guy. It was clear the man wasn't happy and not with who he was supposed to be with. But it was also clear the woman was torn up and struggled to be okay, but she eventually found acceptance. I was sobbing. Thinking of my mom...my dad...the struggle for both of them and the amazing resolution that now my family is completely at peace with everything that happened and I couldn't imagine life any other way.
The dance musical ended with an awesome feel good song with joyful dancing (there's no other way to describe it) and celebration, and then a short feature at the end with all the three couples that had been the focus from the different time periods. It was amazing. When it came to the curtain call, I stood up the fastest I ever have for any performance.
What the choreographer and those dancers/singers did was astounding. It was so thought-provoking and emotionally powerful...without one word ever being spoken.
Short clip from one of the musical's workshops: http://www.thefulton.org/standard-time/
Friday, September 20, 2013
Big Lips?
Saturday night, David and I were lounging in my dorm room on my couch (IT IS THE BEST COLLEGE COUCH EVA! Hideous, compact, and comfy!) just talking about random stuff and he was looking at me at one point and offhandedly commented, "You have a really small mouth." Immediately, I was offended. I told him that's a terrible thing to say to a girl, it's like telling a guy his junk is really small. He couldn't comprehend what I meant, saying he thought he was complementing me. So then this started this whole discussion of the "idealness" of women with big lips...
I think females with big lips are super attractive. And using the ridiculous illogical logic that society has taught me, my brain goes like this: She's really hot. She has big lips. My lips are small. That must mean I'm not pretty.
Boom. Irrational. Terrible. Nonsense. But it's totally the way my mind works.
I showed David pictures of Penelope Cruz, Emily Ratajkowski...and he just shook his head and said their lips look silly and fake and he doesn't find it appealing at all. I told him he was nuts.
But then he made a point that I had never thought of before: "If your lips were as big as theirs, it wouldn't go right with the rest of your face. Your proportions are perfect the way they are."
Woah. That sort of makes sense. I kind of hate my lips a little less now...
The whole conversation got me thinking about how crazy it is that we all compare ourselves to celebrities, models, our friends, etc. and use their facial features to judge our own. We watch tutorials on youtube to try to copy the way Nina Dobrev does her makeup...how riannstar does her hair...how Lauren Conrad shapes her eyebrows...but they're doing what's best for THEIR faces. Who's to say that I would look so much better copying celebrities? What if, instead, I focused on my best features and owned them as being my own?
Food for thought.
I think females with big lips are super attractive. And using the ridiculous illogical logic that society has taught me, my brain goes like this: She's really hot. She has big lips. My lips are small. That must mean I'm not pretty.
Boom. Irrational. Terrible. Nonsense. But it's totally the way my mind works.
I showed David pictures of Penelope Cruz, Emily Ratajkowski...and he just shook his head and said their lips look silly and fake and he doesn't find it appealing at all. I told him he was nuts.
But then he made a point that I had never thought of before: "If your lips were as big as theirs, it wouldn't go right with the rest of your face. Your proportions are perfect the way they are."
Woah. That sort of makes sense. I kind of hate my lips a little less now...
The whole conversation got me thinking about how crazy it is that we all compare ourselves to celebrities, models, our friends, etc. and use their facial features to judge our own. We watch tutorials on youtube to try to copy the way Nina Dobrev does her makeup...how riannstar does her hair...how Lauren Conrad shapes her eyebrows...but they're doing what's best for THEIR faces. Who's to say that I would look so much better copying celebrities? What if, instead, I focused on my best features and owned them as being my own?
Food for thought.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Drum corps has spoiled me.
I expect all of my friendships to be deep, meaningful, and awesome. I expect to be thoroughly understood and accepted. I expect social interactions to be effortless, with no thought. I expect to be happy all of the time.
And it just doesn't work that way in the real world.
I expect all of my friendships to be deep, meaningful, and awesome. I expect to be thoroughly understood and accepted. I expect social interactions to be effortless, with no thought. I expect to be happy all of the time.
And it just doesn't work that way in the real world.
Friday, August 16, 2013
David's BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!!
My man returned to me last Monday night!!! DCI finals were Saturday and the Bluecoats got FIFTH! One better placement than last year AND they beat Phantom Regiment! Woot woot!
Monday night I went over to his place to chill with his family and eat Chinese food...well, they had Chinese food, I had to bring along my own gluten-free salad and eat that instead. Sigh. It was really nice just to relax, lounge on a couch and talk to him. You end up really missing those little moments when someone's gone for three months.
And then on Tuesday it was ADVENTURE TIME!! About a month ago we decided we wanted to take a little mini-vacation together when he got home, and we chose to go to Washington, DC. So we left Tuesday morning around 8:30, and hit MAJOR traffic...but it was no biggie, we didn't have specifically timed plans so it didn't matter if we got to the city two hours later than planned.
Our first stop was the Smithsonian Zoo!!! We saw pandas, elephants playing with tire swings, flamingos, a baby monkey nursing, an orangutan, an ape, a bunch of other cute little mammals, tons of reptiles, a ridiculous amount of awesome-looking birds, and a statue of a hippopotamus in a pond that I totally thought was real at first...OOPS.
After two hours at the zoo, we drove the hour to the hotel, checked in (I felt like such an adult!!), dropped our stuff off, and then went off to dinner! We went to Outback Steakhouse and it was FANTASTIC. It seriously had the best gluten-free menu I've ever seen at a restaurant. I got Alice Springs Chicken and tried some of David's crab...turns out that even though I don't like seafood, I like crab! A really nice night. :) David wore his Bluecoats polo shirt that day and one of our servers knew what the Bluecoats are! Apparently he marches some indoor circuit and knows a girl who marched this Bluecoats season with David. It was pretty awesome that he got recognition for something most people don't even know exists.
Tuesday morning we got breakfast at the hotel, and they actually had some food out I could eat! Success! Then we checked out, and drove to the Metro station closest to us. We figured out how to work the Metro card pass thingers and then we were off!
We got off at the Smithsonian stop cause the thought was we would do a museum first, but the time we got there it was 11AM and we knew we'd be hungry soon so we decided to hike the 45 minutes to Union Station to get some food. Then after a yummy, but expensive, lunch we hiked back to the National Mall area and toured the Air & Space Museum for about two hours. Instead of doing another museum next, we went to go to see the monuments. ALL the monuments. We walked THE ENTIRE MONUMENT LOOP. So much walking!!!!!!!
I think seeing the monuments was my favorite part of the trip. The architecture and structure themselves are so amazing and then the quotes inside and around all of them are BEAUTFIUL. I was totally English-major geeking out at the word choice and vocabulary and syntax and use of parallelism and and AND! The Franklin Roosevelt one was my absolute favorite. But they were all really impressive and emotional and moving.
After we completed walking the loop, we walked AGAIN to Union Station...we could have taken the metro, but that required transfers and money and it was a nice day and we've done harder things *cough drum corps cough* so we just kept on walking. For dinner I got a salad from Subway, which I didn't know you could do! You just pick your ingredients like you do for a sandwich but they turn it into a salad instead...pretty sweet.
Then we took the metro back to our original metro station, got in the car, and had an awesome drive home. It is so much fun spending hours in a car with someone when you just keep finding things to talk about even though you spent the past 48 hours with them.
Excellent trip. Excellent boyfriend. Excellent to have him back. :)
Monday, July 29, 2013
Reasons why...
...my mellophone section is the best section eva.
- We all love each other. Seriously. No one dislikes/has any issues with anyone else in the section.
- We all slap each other's butts regularly to communicate hype, encouragement, and love.
- During rehearsal we each carry around a small water gun to spray each other and other hornline members (as well as unexpecting staff...muah ha ha!).
- We whoop and holler during run throughs to keep the energy going.
- We are easily the most attractive section of the corps.
- We are the only section that has every single member climb a ladder during the show.
- We have amazing techs.
- We have neon orange hats.
- We had a "superhero boxer" hype day. We all wore superhero boxers over our shorts.
- Our section leader made us all mellophone superhero capes when we had our superhero hype.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
:D!
I am so freakin' happy right now!
Bucs is wonderful and amazing. I've met so many new friends and love them all so insanely much.
My job is AWESOME. I'll have to make a separate post about it sometime later but seriously, most rewarding job in the world. I'm gonna miss it.
School is coming up soon and I'm starting to get excited! New people to meet...old people to reconnect with...(shout out to Paul!!!)...new classes...ANOTHER JOB! It's gonna be great. :)
Family life is pretty dang good.
I'm TAN (for once in my life).
Aaaaaaaaaannnnnndddddddd...David comes home in less than a month!!!!!
Life is good. :)
Bucs is wonderful and amazing. I've met so many new friends and love them all so insanely much.
My job is AWESOME. I'll have to make a separate post about it sometime later but seriously, most rewarding job in the world. I'm gonna miss it.
School is coming up soon and I'm starting to get excited! New people to meet...old people to reconnect with...(shout out to Paul!!!)...new classes...ANOTHER JOB! It's gonna be great. :)
Family life is pretty dang good.
I'm TAN (for once in my life).
Aaaaaaaaaannnnnndddddddd...David comes home in less than a month!!!!!
Life is good. :)
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