'Dream Realms' Pizza party

Photography: Jacqueline Darling Ifield

This is a picture with my choreography adviser Ming at our long overdue but truly fun Pizza party. I love that my adviser has committed to seeing us through to this journey's end. Time. Beautiful. I won't forget his very relaxed tone at the committee meeting, while talking about the kind of work I want to do and the level I need to take the dancers to...'It takes time, it could be a semester, it could be a year...' Time to breathe while we create and dance and grow.

Thank you Ming for guiding us through this adventure...there may be hard days, but it's also going to be full of fun. Smiles, the pizza was really good.

Work-In-Pro(gr)cess...

Photography by Chiu-yi Chiang,

From the Album: 'Rehearse is what we do'

Fun and work as we headed up to the showing on 2/25. Smiles I'm glad for every day of journeying together. A process of unravelling and revelation that we will never forget.

'Dream Realms' enters a new phase...

It's been a while...I am sorry for the lapse in my writing and updates. I must be honest to say I have faced a crazy amount of challenge and work, and have barely have had time to breathe. Now is when I am forced to slow down and it is really good, heaven invades with sweet rest.

This 'Dream' project is entering into a whole new level of maturity and commitment. It is a deep mountain climb I have said yes to and my dancers would need to choose to commit to if they want to be in the final performance. In the last weeks before school closed, we worked hard to find/arrange music and put the dances together. I only had a 50 percent or less readiness of structures. We had more dancers change, and that left us with a higher level of contingency. Winter break interrupted with me having a quick vacation in Redding(USA) and the dancers dispersing through hometowns and cities in Taiwan for Chinese New Year. I returned and jumped back into intensive rehearsals 3-6 hours almost everyday depending on the piece being rehearsed. The dancers had to reconnect, start off afresh and re-discover for themselves, what was done in January. It was intense! I've never been put under so much pressure as a choreographer before...beautiful learning curve and I'm glad to have made it through those swirling waters. I also had the challenge of putting a production proposal together, which was much harder than expected because of details of editing, Chinese to English translations, formatting and the delay of gathering all the information from dancers and designers. It was done, and done well. I made a gantt chart for the first time ever. Business school of seven years ago came rushing back. I definitely love doing everything I'm doing. I'm happy though for the now more restful pace.

So I had my pre-production exam on the 25th of February. It was a crazy lead up to a 'something beautiful but still very raw' performance. I had a great table decoration though, that set a new standard for TNUA exam committees. Smiles. I had photographers and videographers and wore a dress. The presentation was done in style. It however did not hide the fact from my panel that for what I am endeavoring to create I need more time, in rehearsing with the dancers and in processing the choreography for myself...developing both dancers and dances, while finetuning all artistic decisions. It is stepping into the ocean. My adviser has agreed to journey with me on this, and so I begin a whole new voyage of discovery...I am so excited!