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.

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Hannah Gruen
Christy Yang
Ruby Lee