On the 22nd of June 2011 a certain amount of students were picked to go to Orleans House Gallery for a career in the Arts day. All students who had opted for GCSE in Dance, Drama, Art and Music had the opportunity to attend. The day was packed with fun events to participate in. There was: animation, dance, acting and singing. We all had to chose two of these each as we had two lessons, one in the morning then one in the afternoon. I took part in dance, and singing.The first lesson I had was dance. Dance was a bit rushed as our dance teacher was stuck in traffic because he was coming from East London. His name was Nasae and he is a professional dancer and choreographer. I found out that he owns his own company in partnership with two other dancers that he went to college with. We started with walking exercises to get our bodies warmed up and moving, and then we got split in half then cut down into groups of 3. One half had to make up small routines about being locked up in an enclosed area trying to get out, then the other half also had to make up small routines but this time it was about freedom having the space to do pretty much anything. I was in the group that had to do a small routine about freedom.
I was in a group with Melanny Cando Rojas and Kirhira Brown. The style of dance we chose was ballet because with the style ballet you can express yourself in so many ways, through so many movements, small or big, and you can tell a story. After that we moved on to practicing a whole routine that already existed. Some of us go to the G&T dance club and we taught the routine to the students that didn't go.
Later on Nasae told us a bit about himself then got straight into teaching us a street dance routine. At times we found the routine hard but sometimes easy. It was so funny when we had to perform the routine in groups of 3 because I think the majority of us messed something up, but we didn't care about that, we just went for it and enjoyed ourselves.
In the second lesson I chose singing which was so much different than what I had expected it to be. We sung a whole song together to warm up our voice and performed singing exercises. Our teacher was Mr. Logue; he performed two songs for us which were amazing. The best one was Lady Gaga 'Bad Romance' because he sung it really well but got every one to join in when he sung the chorus. When we went off into groups of 4, I went with Melanny Cando Rojas, Elise Moore and Chloe Beaumont, We sung 'Don't Stop Believing' by Glee. It was really good fun. We practiced most of the afternoon then when it reached about quarter to three we all had to perform it. I think our performance had to be the funniest because all of our microphones kept turning on and off and Chloe had the loudest.
It was a really great day and has helped me to think more about my career in the future.
By Rachel Varney 9CD
