Cultural Event

On saturday night I went with my best friend to my last cultural event which happened to be a dance performance. I looked a lot but had a hard time finding a dance performance to go that would fit my schedule so I had to settle for a ballroom dance at UVU.
We were some of the first people there and noticed that there wasn't many people but seats started to fill in the closer we got for the dance to start and it looked like mostly family had shown up to for the dancers support. That kind of reminded me of being back in highschool but the crowd was loud and fun. For me personally, I have never been the biggest fan of ballroom dance and the opening scene didn't help me out that much. It started out when the spotlight was shown on a guy hoisted up, standing on the hands of all the other guys with a very serious and I guess he was going for sexy look on his face with his arms crossed. They brought him out more to the front where they put him down and his partner came out and they started to dance. Then the whole dance team came out and performed a latin medley, which I learned was a combination of all the dances in a time period of about 6 minutes. Two medley's were performed, a latin medley to begin and a standard medley to finish. In between those two dances were a series of fox trots, cha cha's, waltses and you everything you would expect at a ballrom dance. One of my favorite dances was a couple who came out together and started to do a series of lifts that were pretty good. On one of the lifts the guy dropped the girl he was holding above his head, grabbed her leg and arm and swung her around with the momentum they had created and I swear her face got to about an inch above the ground. I did have a good time at the performance and I thought UVU did a good job. One thing I liked about it was that it showed so much variety from different cultures and backrounds and we never really got into ballrom dance in class, like where it started and how it has evolved. I would like to know that and will do some investigating on my own.

Cultural Event

This week I went to the University Chorale in summer concert presented by BYU's department of performing arts. The program was really good and you could tell they had been working really hard for this performance. A few of my favorite songs the choir sung were "The Moon is Distant from the Sea" by David Childs and also "John the Revelator" by Arr. Calwell/Ivory. Before each song they would switch out conductors and one of the members of the choir would come down to conduct. Before he did so he would briefly explain the meaning of the piece about to be sung. I really liked that because it helped me to focus more on the meaning of that piece and I was able to enjoy it that much more. "The Moon is Distant from the Sea" was all about the relationship between the earth and the moon and how that is depicted by the tides of the ocean being high and low. I thought the music did a good job to create that feeling. I will admitt though that if they didn't explain that beforehand I would have been a little lost. I thought the quality of the production was great and I enjoyed myself the whole time. Go BYU!

Classrom Discussion.

This last section, the film section, has been interesting and a lot of fun to learn. I had heard and knew some things about how moving picture all started but I didn't know that much and it has been great to learn about it in class. In class we have talked about and witnessed the advancements in film made throughout the 20th century from the earliest movies to the more recent and I couldn't help but think about how much film, The moving picture, has influenced so many in this past century. I enjoyed watching the trip to the moon in class where the first special effects were displayed and I imagined myself in that time going to see that movie for the first time and I bet I would have had a blast and wouldn't be able to stop talking about exploding aliens after they had been hit by an umbrella. It would have sparked my imagination as I thought about space and what was really out there which might even have eventually lead me down a certain carrer path. But today, I like just going out to a movie to be entertained by a great story which also spark the imagination but i think less than before because more is understood.

Reading

I was reading the video art article on blackboard and there was a part I really liked. I liked where it says, "This makes the video art form an apparatus by which the yet unfinished project of Modernism rolls forth. For if one of the impetus of Modernism in the arts was to create artistic forms responsive to the dynamic changes of industrialization, a celebration or critique, then video deeply internalizes this vocation. Video as an apparatus fundamentally prescribes modern technology and imbues it, thereby with meaningful use." That statement is meaningful to me because it is talking about the day we live in. So far in class we have gone over different art forms from many cultures from ancient times and throughout history. In our day we have so much technology and it is cool to see how we have created and adapted art to tell stories in the form of movies.

Class Chat

I have enjoyed studying music in humanities and talking about it in class. I've decided it is one of my favorite forms of art. I took piano lessons when I was 12 for couple of years and I did orchestra in highschool so I am a little familiar with it but not much so i'm glad that there are a lot of people in class that know a lot because i've learned a lot. I still think it is so cool that it is us that creates the sound from molecule waves in the air and how we can create music by organizing that sound into music with beats, rythems, keys and pitches. etc...
As we were listening to different types of classical music from different artists and different time periods I noticed a different reaction from me with every song and some of them I liked a lot more than others. I guess there are a lot of factors that go into that but long story short I think music really affects us.

Realism

As I started to read a little about realism I found a few neat facts. first, I didn't know this but realism theatre started in Russia and after that spread in Europe. A good description of realizm is " It is where people move and talk in a manner similar to that of our everyday behavior. The style has been dominant for the last 120 years. It holds the idea of the stage as an environment, rather than as an acting platform." This description really makes sense to me because as we studied realism types of paintings I enjoyed seeing the honest description displayed in them of how life was. It seems like maybe in the past people may have expressed themselves differently or not thought proper to focus on how we really are but realism is refresing in that it is down to earth and shows us how we really are. "Realism in the theatre was a general movement in the later 19th century that steered theatrical texts and performances toward greater fidelity to real life".

"This is your brain on music" Reading

I really like this book! I didn't realize how big of a influence music has in our lives and how our brains work to create it. I liked the question, when a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? the answer is no because our eardrums and brains are what create the sound from sound waves that move air molecules. That is pretty cool stuff. I also like how he explained the influence music has in our lives like when we are watching a scary movie different pitches and frequencies tones and rythems are used to create that nervous and scary feeling. That is powerful. Also, for example, in the advertising world music is used to make us feel that someones product is better than the others. The organized sound around us or "music" is so important and I think it might be the art that most influences us as humans.