The Fosse Experience

Fosse...where to begin? When Ms. Mack first told us that she was going to set a Fosse piece on us I thought "Cool, Chicago dance!" I was way off. Fosse is so much more than that. You need to remember to have personality and remember all of the details. Learning Fosse has been a difficult experience but also a fun one. Ms. Mack chose to set Sing, Sing, Sing on the entire dance program.

When we first started learning Fosse, I felt like a spaz. After we had been learning Fosse for a few days, it started to feel a little more natural. At this point, I still don't feel completely comfortable but by the time the show comes around, I'm hoping for it to feel as natural as possible. I will be upset when we won't be performing Fosse anymore after the show.

Teen Arts...

Over the course of the 2 weeks, we have learned phrases for the piece the morning class is taking to Teen Arts and Ms. Mack has set the dance on us. I have tried my best to pick up the phrase work and find the details as quickly and accurately as possible. When we started the piece, Shalima and I were faking the counter-balances but now I feel that we actually go for them. I feel that this piece is helping me release in my body even more. When it comes to the parts where I am lifted, I try to help as much as I can by not giving all of my body weight over.

When Ms. Mack gives us notes, I put them into effect immediately. For example, the other day she told me not to step with my heels first and the next time we did the dance, I fixed it. There is a lot of cleaning up to be done with the dance tomorrow and on top of that there's a half day, which means we'll have to work our butts off tomorrow and hopefully everyone is in school or we're in trouble.

What is on my mind?

I can't help but feel a little overwhelmed right now. Between having an SAT class twice a week in New Brunswick and an Italian class in between those two days, Monday thru Wednesday is pretty busy for me. Sometimes I don't even get home until 10:00 and then I still have to eat dinner and do my homework. Luckily after tonight, my Italian class will be over.

I'm worried about the final for my Italian class because I feel like we didn't learn half as much as we did during the first semester. It feels like we spent two classes, which are two and a half hours each, on one lesson in the book. Last week for our review class our teacher let us out at least a half an hour early. Instead of letting us do the review packet on our own during class and going over it together, the professor just gave us the answers. She is letting us make a cheat sheet that is one page long though and we are allowed to use our dictionaries on the final.

My SAT class consumes a lot of my time because after each session, there is homework that needs to be done in the lesson book and online. Depending on the difficulty of the session, it could take me anywhere from one hour to three hours to complete all of the work assigned. Even though the class seems annoying and time consuming right now, I know that it will help me when I take the SATs in June.