Week 5: Post Ted Talk

After presenting my slides and finishing my presentation, I feel more confident in what I’ve accomplished. Not only did I reach my goal of being able to learn certain moves and apply them to a contemporary tap combination, but I was able to apply this to other people’s lives and show them how they can embrace my project to help themselves discover more about what they can achieve. After I presented however, someone’s question interested me.

This person is a friend of mine but doesn’t really know much, if anything, about my dance career. They asked me something along the lines of, “What part of dancing does the emotion come from and does each style represent a different emotion?” I hadn’t really thought about that during my dance career but now, I’ve had time to think about it.

The emotion in dancing does not come from one specific thing. I comes from each of those specific aspects coming together to create a picture. Creating an emotion in dance is about being able to paint a picture for your audience which is why I used my painting motif in my presentation. Emoting is from the dance, your facials, the movement, the song, everything. Each aspect is a different color or shade of paint and you have to put them together to create picture. This picture is your message. It’s why you’re dancing.

I know why I’m dancing so, no matter what style I show why I dance. This is why I picked tap for my genius hour project. Learn a new style so I can express my picture in a new way. It doesn’t matter what style it is, you just have to have all the color paint so you can make a painting.

The movement. Purple.

The facials. Blue.

The expressions. Orange.

The music. Yellow.

The melody. Green.

The voice. Red.

The painting.

Each aspect creates the painting. This isn’t all. Throughout my presentation, I also talked about a paintbrush. In literal terms, my paintbrush was my tap shoes. I painted an actual picture using my tap shoes. But that’s not a paintbrush in dance. Yes, a paint brush can be your body when you’re doing floor work and technically it can be your feet. Not in my case. The paintbrush is the purpose. You need a reason to dance to make everything flow together. I’ve discovered that during my presentation but after I was asked this question that’s when I learned.

I understood why dance is art. I understood why the color orange can mix with blue. I understood that the picture I paint is through more than just the choreography. It’s everything.

This project did for than I expected it to. It taught me so much more than I ever intended. I learned more about myself as a dancer and that can help me improve in every style. Now I have my paintbrush and I want you all to find yours too and use it to paint a picture.

Comments
Hannah Gruen
Christy Yang
Ruby Lee

Week 4: Pre - Ted Talk

Before making any progress this week, I needed time to reflect. I needed to reminisce about the start of the project so I could figure out the deeper purpose that was being developed through the process. The past few weeks I’ve been growing into an artist and I want to be able to express that with myself. As weird as this sounds, I had to get in touch with myself so I could really connect with why I started this project in the first place.

Yes, this project was a requirement for a grade but I did choose what I learned. I got to pick what I did with my blog and my time. It was all up to me. I took some time to really reflect on what made me do this project and I can honestly say it was more than what I said in the beginning.

It is true that being a dancer you need to have experience in every style of dance and yes, it is true that tap is a major part of dance, but that wasn’t my only reason to tapping. I can confidently say that there were to other influences in making my decision to learn tap.

First, my friend Sophia. Sophia is a dancer at my company who is the definition of perfection. She has perfect posture, leaps, turn out, balance, EVERYTHING!! I am so jealous of her capabilities and strengths. What she can do on the dance floor is simply astounding. I WANT TO BE HER!! Sophia does every style I do but she also is amazing at tap. I look up to her as a dancer and I want to be as strong as she is with her movement. I wanted to attack tap the way she did and wanted to have the capability too. One of my hopes for this project, was to see an improvement in my tap skills to a point where I can feel confident enough to go to Sophia for help. She has such confidence in not just her dancing but her words and her actions. She can put a smile on anyone’s face and she makes the most of everyday.

The other reason I wanted to tap was to find myself through more than a ballet or contemporary piece. Ballet and contemporary have always been my strong styles and I could get lost in my own movement and wanted that feeling elsewhere and I knew dancing did that for me so why not tap??!

My inspiration for tap, I discovered, was more than what I said in my first post. It was a role model and a hidden feeling. That’s what I used to make my final product.

P.S.S..S.S.S..S.S.S.S.S.S.S..SS..

SORRYY!!! I will have the video uploaded to my next dance in my next post. I couldn’t accomplish all I wanted to! I want this video to be spectacular so just waittt!!

Commentss:
Avery Ryan
Margo Kaplan
Ruby Lee

Week 3: Vlog Post!!

Tap Vlog from Kat Saddler on Vimeo.


GREAT VIDEO AND MORE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWuz3oE7xjk 
Comments:
Christy Yang
Avery Ryan
Lizzy Cutler

Week 2: The History of My Step

I decided to spend this week learning more about tap before I learn a combination. I continued my practice with the moves I have previously learned and took the beginning of this week to learn about the history. I feel learning the history of tap will help me improve my tap skills because I will learn what tap has done for other people and know where it came from. Knowing the origin will help me understand tap as a whole.

I discovered that tap is a mixture of many styles of dance. It involves african, swing,  irish and clog dancing. Dance came about by people making fun of slaves in the 19th century. They would paint their faces black and “imitate” them in the form of vaudeville. Vaudeville is “a type of entertainment popular chiefly in the US in the early 20th century, featuring a mixture of specialty acts such as burlesque comedy and song and dance.” After they performed their “comedy”, the slaves would imitate the Irish’s imitation of their dancing. In 1882, the metallic at the bottom of the shoe was added by Thomas Rice to add noise. This soon became popular along with tap dance. Tap became a well known and liked form of comedy.

I found this to be rather interesting. I wouldn’t have suspected tap was a form of comedy. I always found tap to be more fun but never something to laugh about. Of course I am a dancer so I don’t find dance humorous unless it is the intention of the piece although, I can see how tap can be comedic by its sounds.

After learning the history, I learned a combination(If you want to learn the combination there is a link at the bottom!!!). This combination took a while to get the hang of. I would always forget one sound or another and I would just forget it at times. Thankfully, I managed to record my combination 3 different times. One was just by counts, another done to slow music, another done to fast(my jam).

This combination was so fun to learn but a little frustrating at times. I would stop the video countless times just so I could get the hang of the first 4 counts and so on. The combination was only four eight counts and for those of you who don’t dance, here’s what that means: Dances are choreographed in eight counts. In a song there are beats that dancers count and they are counted by 8’s(1, 2, 3…). Each count or beat has a certain move or step to go with it. In my video, you will see that I started by counting out the steps. Watching that may clear things up for you.

After learning the combination, I was able to feel the rhythmic movement of tap that you can’t feel with any other style. If you’re considering learning this combination, definitely click the link at the bottom!!

History:

http://theartofsimple.net/history-of-tap-dancing/

http://www.essortment.com/history-tap-dancing-65288.html

http://www.tapdance.org/History

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4Tpqmc4htQ
Comments:
Noah(red)
Sarah Wolbach
Toni (red)