Whos side?! R-SIDE!!

David Vargas

Prof. Scott

Brazilian Dance

June 10, 2009

Overall I believe our performance as a group was a success. I believe our theme was a success and what we were trying to portray was really shown in the way our dance was choreographed. All the important elements needed to make this themed dance a success were included. The major elements for our dance include things such as the choreography, music, signs, gestures, costumes and props. These elements were require to help us not only portray the dance itself but to really give it a good vibe, a vibe that the audience would be able to detect and know what we were trying to convey across.

I believe overall our group project was a success. I believe this because all members of the group participated and took care of what they needed too. There was no weakest link and everyone did their part to make this a successful project. The theme of Juicy-R was the Riversides lack of school spirit and how the absence of a football team and other elements has really affected school spirit here in Riverside. My role in the group was to be in charge of the music, and play the music at the right time in what order. However, the group as a whole came to the conclusion of choosing which songs we were going to incorporate into the parade.

I think our parade was successful in representing the theme of no school spirit in various aspects. We first started out with a couple of skits to see how those would work out, and then we started with songs that would incorporate into the dance together. The choreography was mostly constructed by other people but it had to be worked with the sound so it would go together and make a successful dance.

As far as gestures went there wasn’t too many. We did our best to look lively and really into the dance. At the end of different songs groups would throw up their hands in several ways. Others made hand gestures during the dance that would incorporate the song and theme. The hand gestures came in and were incorporated into the theme of no school spirit. We portrayed how lame and weird it can be to not have any school spirit due to things such as no football team.

Costumes were a confusing task because we did not know what we could come up. Although the job was for the costume person everyone had an opinion to what the costumes could be. They also had to be connected to the choreography and the song itself. It came down to being blue shirts with UCR on one individual shirt. Another thing that we used was sticks with colored ribbons, the colors of UCR. Similar to the idea of pong pongs used by cheerleaders. This portrayed the idea of school spirit at the end of our dance.

During the process of this dance I learned many new things. One which was it is difficult to work with a group in college when everyone is on tight schedules. Most important things I learned though were the different dance of samba, Capoeira, along with others is that there is meaning to body movement. These types of dances could be incorporated to our theme. At first I found these different dances a bit complex and never learnable, but after long tries and effort I found out that it was fairly easy with plenty of practice.