Closing Statements

 

1

Incorporate & Continue

Guillermo Ospina

My main take away is that my body as a whole is an expressive element for me and a I have at my disposal at all times.  The experience though the class activities challenge me to embody my imagination and different ways to conceive myself as the actor of the music and expression that inhabits in me.  

Even though this is probably the begining of a stage of more exploration of my body, I feel that I can incorporate and continue developing elements of stage presence, character, spontaneity and creative process of getting outside of the box of just playing music and my imagination. 

I feel grateful for the process, and empowered to continue exploring the possibilities of performing with everything a got. 

2

Driving & Navigating My Artistry

Callie Rodina

This class I have SO many take aways. Some of the ones that jump out at me are the wants of my character, bound and free movement, imagination and my inner child driving my art, and Maria Callas’ ideas on artistry. I think the one that I will use most often is my inner child and its ability to drive and navigate my artistry. What a fun and motivating concept.

I plan to apply inner child work within my own personal self to my art by reminding myself of her every time I perform. This will hopefully channel my nerves in a positive way and help me have more fun and less stress when creating. It also helps me connect to myself as a whole. Many moments of my life I feel disconnected except for when I am doing my art. My inner child plays a big part in keeping me connected to myself. I love her so much and want to care for her and the way I do that is by loving and caring for my artistry.

I feel SO good after workshopping my phrase. It was so fun to create and to see it transform throughout the classes. I find myself very connected to the idea of speaking to my younger self, which I did in my phrase. I felt like I expressed that connection to my younger self well and I feel empowered to have spoken and loved to her.

3

The Drama Behind

Zaria Modeste

The main take away that I learned in the class is to not care what anyone thinks and allow myself to really be the character. At the beginning of the course, I was nervous performing in front of my peers in fear that they would judge me. But now I am staring to focus more on my character and how I want the audience to perceive my character. I am so glad that I took this course because moving forward I am going to think more like an artist and not as a student. In opera, vocal technique is very important, but the drama behind that is what captivates the audience. 

I want to be a performer that can captivate and evoke emotions. I will always remember how Professer Jorge shared his story with the class and how moved and into the story I was. That is how I want my audience to feel everytime I perform. During my performance, I felt as free as I have ever been. Not once did I think about what people where thinking but I felt every note and movement I made in my body. I became the character this day. 

4

Surprised & Excited

Sijia Lin

We successfully demonstrated our phrase in today's class. It was absolutely a great synthesis of what we learned from this class this semester. Many things have left a deep impression on me: we were walking, eye contacting with our classmates, doing free flow and bound flow with scarves and sticks, creating our phrases and performing for each other. These experience somehow change the way I approach music and performances. The perspective that the instrument is the extension of my body set up a new relationship between me and the piano. This is revolutionary. 

I have already applied this knowledge in my performance and it works so well. I feel that my body engage much more than before and that my body language supports my music better. I know to notice the space and the environment around me when I am playing, and I try to communicate more with my audience instead of focusing on the keyboard. Those changes make me surprised and excited!

This is a friendly and warm class. Although it felt very challenging to follow the class at the beginning, I gradually got used to it and got confidence. I am grateful that the instructor was patient and gave me so much encouragement to help me grow. I am very impressed by our lovely classmates and their beautiful works as well! Thanks a lot.

 

5

Interesting & Fulfilling 

Craig Jordan

One of my takeaways is to keep digging deeper into a character or an idea. Throughout the class we constantly built off of what we’d practiced before and continually went further and further into each task making each previous movement or idea more meaningful every week. Another takeaway is that it’s important to get out of your head and take some time not to worry about technicalities or worry about messing up, but experiment and try new things. 

I can apply this to my piano work by thinking deeper about my pieces and phrases in these more unique ways. Possibly “practicing” away from the keyboard and moving through my pieces without playing them. Even applying specific words or poetry to what I’m playing in order to achieve a higher musical state. 

I’ve definitely had lots of feelings of resistance to the things we did in this class because it’s been out of my comfort zone - I’ve always had an instrument to rely on. But it’s been very interesting and a fulfilling experience to see what places I can go to on my own. There are so many ideas that I’ve enjoyed and think will be very helpful for me going forward. 

6

Free of Judgement

Beatriz Menendez

My biggest take away from this course is to be unapologetically me. I don’t owe anyone aesthetics with my performance. What I owe is genuineness to my art form and to create things that speak to me as a performer. I can’t reach a heightened sense of artistry or performance if I rely too much on how I can be judged. Art is art and itself is free of judgment of its creator. 

There is a lot I have learned over this course that I can apply to myself as I move forward as an artist and performer. I can apply the movement techniques to create unique form in my performances and I can also use these movement techniques to move more organically and naturally during my performances. A lot of what I learned to apply is lack of judgment to myself and constant critique of how I may look to the audience.

I feel really good as this course comes to a close and I really appreciate this class the most through such a stressful year.

7

Different Articulations

Hannah Gallamore

I was able to perform the whole poem today. I’m still uncomfortable creating my own movements but I know that will get better with time. 

I’ll apply what we’ve learned in class when I’m performing marimba. I use different movement in my strokes to show and make heard different articulations.  I will use the courage I’ve gained doing these movements in front of class to perform marimba trying not to feel judged and to just give it my all. 

I felt extremely overwhelmed at the beginning of the semester any time we added something new. I continued to feel anxious coming into each class because I didn’t know what to expect, but I slowly got used to that feeling and accepted it because that’s life - full of unexpected events. 

8

Strength and Spiritual Support

Yuan Gao

I just finished my last Doctoral Recital on Sunday and I am very excited. I watched the video of our final performance you sent us last week, I laughed and I feel very proud of myself. That’s the first time I dance and recite in front of people. 

Of course, that was a wonderful experience. During this semester, I want to say, I became more brave and confident than before. So much so, that I also felt more confident and comfortable in this recital. 

In the performance, I feel that it is not important what movements I was going to do, but the important thing is the state of emotion. Although my performance was short, I got your encouragement, and for that I am very grateful. I will always remember this class and the strength and spiritual support it gave me. 

9

Don't Apologize

Taylor Cooper

In this lab I have learned a lot. I learned about my rehearsal style and how I respond to the environment. I also found that we can approach things from different focuses and levels while still maintaining the intention and rawness of emotion. A really big thing I have learned is DON’T APOLOGIZE. This one is particularly difficult for me but I believe if I can work on it and find my way to it that it would be extremely beneficial not only in performance but in life. 

I intend to use what we have done in here as a new aspect of my rehearsal for my pieces but also as you mentioned today finding a way to do my own work. I believe that the tools you introduced to us are ones that could allow me to feel free enough to explore what my story is without feeling like I am wasting time guessing.

This process has been a roller coaster. I enjoyed it very much but there were days where I struggled to exit my comfort zone or get rid of mental blocks. Once I worked through those, I felt intense freedom and some pride in the work that came out of it.  

10

Sing to Express

Lindsey Espeseth

The biggest takeaway from this semester is, sing because I love it.  Sing because that’s how I express and that’s what is inside.  It doesn’t matter where, when, and for how many people.  Sing to express.  While some inhibitions linger, my mental confidence has grown so much this semester.  I’m so excited to continue practicing all that I have learned this semester to get my body where my mind wants it to be: free and expressive. 

 

I have always wondered how to carve a path with my name on it, when there are so many great singers who came before me.  I love that we used movement to find expression and reason behind the text in our final project.  I think this is a great tool to use for any future roles I may have in opera.  These characters need new life.  Approaching my interpretation in this way will be so helpful in making my characters uniquely mine.  

I felt nervous so many times in this class.  This last time, I finally felt free to express and experiment.  Again, my body revealed my nerves, but I’m so excited about this mental growth.  The headspace I was in as we were laying on the floor, is where I want to be before every performance.  Not only envisioning success, but stepping into the lives of all my songs and stories.  Relating them to the moment and sharing that with the audience. 

11

Courage

Yudi Zhang

As we just finished our final dance, I felt an unprecedented power of freedom in dancing. The most important aspects that I learned from the class is to feel the real me and to trust my body, I never learned dance before; I thought that was something I would never be able to do, but it was just not as strict as I thought. Dance is more like a way to express your insight, your emotion, it is another language said by you! 

I had a lot of fun in the class but time goes by so fast, I wish I could be in the class longer. For my musical study, dance helps me to feel every part of my body, and teaches me how to control it better in the performance. Also, when dancing, we need to really focus on what we are doing, it requires the constant concentration and “improvisational” skill just in case you are about to mess up. 

The key to the performance is, no one is going to know that there is a mistake, we are the one who’s going to tell, what we do is to keep it going, do not show your fear and worries. The audiences are receivers. At the end, I wanna thank our professors, for teaching, patience, encouragement, I wanna enclose the thoughts with the word “courage”. This is all we need for our life!

12

I am Ready

Carolina Nieto B.

The most important thing that I learn from this class is not be afraid of others. Being in a character means to give everything that one is and have and do not think if the others will accepted it or not. It means that  one is one's own judge. It means  that one has  to do one's best even when one is not in mood to do it. 

Learning to do movements was really amazing, I think this is a tool for us, to have more confidence in ourselves. The whole   process has being amazing, I’ll finish this course, but not the learning, I’ll always keep in my mind that we are more than just musicians, we are souls that are here to give and bring to others the best that we have. 

I’ll apply all this learning in my career as a singer, I don’t want to be anymore just a good singer. I want to be “the singer;” the one who even with her mistakes will give everything, her body and soul. This process was hard, but pleasing at the same time. Pushing myself to be a better version of who I already am has not been easy. However;  I’m ready to keep learning, to keep working  and don’t give up.