9/8/08

Today we had our first introduction to Indian dancing. One of the other students was our guru for the day, which just goes to show the knowledge that we as students can learn from each other. The dance steps we learned today were pretty difficult, especially for me who has little if any rhythm. It was nice because she took it really slow and urged us to keep repeating the steps so that we could perfect them through practice. We mostly focused on the footsteps and keeping with the beat. I can only imagine how much more difficult its going to be when we add the hands. The leg bending and holding up the arms really hurts my muscles, but in the words of the US Army "Pain is weakness leaving the body." The lecture we had today also taught me a lot about the importance of an Indonesian person's name. Birth order and Caste rank are very important to assigning a child a name. My name would I guess be Ni Made Amanda Anderson. I like adding the cultural lessons to the class because it gives us a bit of insight into the why dance steps are the way they are and how the people who make up the dance live their lives.

P.S. I can already feel my posture improving. ;)

8/31/08

I started reading The Ramayana today, and its a very difficult book to get through. I think a lot of it has to do with the confusing non-Western names and places and the random thrown in Sanskrit words. I do appreciate, however, the fact that the story is in prose, instead of direct translation of the poem. I think it allows the author to be more descriptive and allows the story to flow better. After dabbling into the story, I'm having a hard time conceptualizing what exactly we are going to be doing this semester in theater, but I'm excited all the same. And so it begins, tomorrow is our first real day of class.

8/27/08

At the moment, I'm very intimidated because I've never taken a dance class before, yet I'm excited to try new things and dabble in new cultures that I know very little or anything about. The class will be challenging, but humbling, and show me that I don't know as much about the world as I thought i did. It'll be great to be aerobic after a long day of classes, but I can already tell that this class is going to force me to move my body and mind in original ways.

I'm going to stay in this class because I want to move my mind in a direction I normally would not have taken and because college is about trying new things. As an IR major, I also want to experience a cultural element in my education, and this seems like a perfect opportunity to do so. I also feel that it will be nice to have a class that pushes the creative mind rather than the intellectual mind, something I haven't had the opportunity to do at W&M yet.