Again, sorry for the gap between posts, i know its been forever since I've posted anything. But now that I have a little bit of time, I want to talk about my Thai dance class and give you all and idea of what I learned!!
So to start out, I believe that I had written about each of my classes back in september. I didn't say much about the dance class except what we were going to end up performing. As a refresher, we learned two dances: the fingernail dance, and Rejang Dewa Dance (which is a Balinese dance from Indonesia). Each of them were hard to learn in their own different ways. The fingernail dance is one that every Thai child learns when they are young, and it is one of the long standing cultural traditions in Thailand. Most of what was difficult about this dance was learning how to do all of the different hand movements at the same time as the feet (which were easier than the hands). Pictured on the right is me dressed in full traditional Thai dress for this dance, including the crazy fingernails! (hense "fingernail" dance). Our dance teacher is actually a professional dancer (google her! Waewdao Sirisook). She's fantastic, so energetic, and so much fun. Although she moves things along very quickly and it was really hard for me to learn the moves without getting very frustrated with myself because I was always feeling like i couldnt learn them quick enough. There was really no other way to do it though, Waewdao had to push things along quickly because we only had a few weeks to learn the dance. Surprisingly though, it all came together last minute, and I felt like I knew it (and still know it) extremely well! I want to include a video of the performance, but it's currently having trouble uploading! I will try to post the video in a later post just by itself. Along with the video though, I wanted to also include a couple of still photos (pictured below)
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| our hair was also done up in the traditional style |
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| lined up ready to walk out! |
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| dressed for Rejang Dewa |
The fingernail dance was actually the second dance that we performed during the evening of our final performance. The first dance we performed was Rejang Dewa, the Balinese dance. This dance was much harder to learn pretty much just because there is a lot more to the dance, and a lot more moves to remember. Waewdao told us that usually there is quite a lot of training, and back work to learn the techniques of the dance, but again, because we only had a few weeks to learn the dance, she taught us the basics. While we may not have looked as pretty doing it without proper technique, I still think we did a hell of a job. During the last week of rehearsing, we got a curve ball thrown at us. Basically, all of us were having a lot more trouble learning this dance, and many of were kind of doing the whole pretend like you know what youre doing thing. Once in the final week, we were all really starting to get it down, and then came this curve ball. Waewdao decided to have us in such a formation that we would be rotating around in a circle while we were doing this dance. Turned out in the end however, that it actually made the dance easier for most people because they felt more like they were moving in a rhythm that was helping them with the steps. By the end of the course, in the last week, we were practicing both the fingernail dance and Rejang Dewa so that they were both fresh in our minds for the performance. Much like the fingernail dance, Rejang Dewa came together extremely last minute, and we all ended up doing a fantastic job in the performance. I also have a video of this performance, but again, blogspot isn't currently letting me upload them. Please check back for a future post with these two performance videos in it though!! Below are a few pictures from the performance of Rejang Dewa, and also some photos from the end of the evening when we were finished, group shots!
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| Waewdao, our dance teacher, in front, with us in the back |
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| group shot after the performance |
In addition to the two videos I will be posting in another post of the fingernail dance, and the rejan de wah dance, look forward to a video I will post of our teacher, Waewdao, performing at Chiang Mai University at a music and art convention that we attended earlier in the semester!
So to start out, I believe that I had written about each of my classes back in september. I didn't say much about the dance class except what we were going to end up performing. As a refresher, we learned two dances: the fingernail dance, and Rejang Dewa Dance (which is a Balinese dance from Indonesia). Each of them were hard to learn in their own different ways. The fingernail dance is one that every Thai child learns when they are young, and it is one of the long standing cultural traditions in Thailand. Most of what was difficult about this dance was learning how to do all of the different hand movements at the same time as the feet (which were easier than the hands). Pictured on the right is me dressed in full traditional Thai dress for this dance, including the crazy fingernails! (hense "fingernail" dance). Our dance teacher is actually a professional dancer (google her! Waewdao Sirisook). She's fantastic, so energetic, and so much fun. Although she moves things along very quickly and it was really hard for me to learn the moves without getting very frustrated with myself because I was always feeling like i couldnt learn them quick enough. There was really no other way to do it though, Waewdao had to push things along quickly because we only had a few weeks to learn the dance. Surprisingly though, it all came together last minute, and I felt like I knew it (and still know it) extremely well! I want to include a video of the performance, but it's currently having trouble uploading! I will try to post the video in a later post just by itself. Along with the video though, I wanted to also include a couple of still photos (pictured below)
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