Theatre: Choreography

Throughout my five years at Blackburn College, I was given many opportunities to expand my dance experience.  As one of the few dancers at Blackburn, and I’ve been told the most talented, I was asked to take the place as the Spring Musical “Choreographer” for several seasons.  In taking this opportunity, I was replacing a member of the Performance Arts Department staff, Mary Ann Harp.  As the years went by and through my collegiate experiences, I learned a great deal about theatre choreography.  No longer was I allowed to choreograph in just any styles that I wanted, but I had guidelines to follow and an image already in place that needed to be conveyed to the audience.  I was given scripts, music scores, and directorial guidance to help portray the best overall picture including all creative sources involved.  I have done five shows so far in my time at Blackburn, and I'm also choreographing Cabaret in the spring.  The ones I've already choreographed include Godspell, Oliver!, You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, The Taming of The Shrew, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee which I co-choreographed with Mary Ann Harp.  Below are links to photos from some of these shows!

You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown photos

Solo "My Blanket & Me"
"My Blanket & Me"
More "My Blanket & Me"
Even more "My Blanket & Me"
"My Blanket & Me" 4
"Suppertime"
"Suppertime 2"
"Chasing Rabbits"
"My New Philosophy"

The Taming Of The Shrew photos

"Waiter Gallop esque" dance
More dancing
Dancing continued
Even more dancing
And more dancing

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Photos

"I Speak Six Languages"
"Magic Foot"
More "Magic Foot"
"Magic Foot" continued
"Magic Foot" finale
"My Favorite Moment of The Bee"/"Second"
"Pandemonium"

Most recently at Blackburn College, I was given the opportunity to choreograph Cabaret.  This was a great experience for me to learn new material and to expand upon my choreography skills.  I collaborated with Director, Dr. David Sollish and Musical Director, Dr. Elizabeth Zobel, to finish a very successful spring musical for Blackburn's stage in April of 2011.  Not only did I choreograph the show, but I starred in the show as well as character "Frenchie," one of the "Kit Kat Klub Dancers" who sang and danced in the club.  I had a friend video tape the dances during one of our shows in order to give notes to my dancers.  The videos are posted below as reference for my styles of choreography.

"Don't Tell Mama"

"Willkommen"
"Two Ladies"
"If You Could See Her"
"Kick Line"
"The Money Song"

Theatre: Makeup

While a junior at Blackburn College, I took a class focused on preparing me for being a makeup artist and costume designer for the characters that grace the stages of the world.  In this class, I learned how to transform my face; I learned how to make myself look old, young, gory, or broken and bruised.  I also learned how to turn myself into an animal, a piece of food, or a character from a movie.  Also, we studied period dress from times dating back to Ancient Greece, Shakespeare, and the Renaissance, all the way to the 1900s, a decade at a time.  From this class I learned how to create a character from head to toe.  To give a clearer picture of what I learned, here are pictures of the makeup that graced my face during this class, most images attached to links.  I've also added some of my more recent work with makeup, specifically from Blackburn's production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I played Frank-N-Furter.

Frank-N-Furter step one

Frank-N-Furter step two

Frank-N-Furter step three

Frank-N-Furter step four

Old Age Makeup from the front
Old Age Makeup from below

Old Age Makeup from side

Gore Makeup

Fantasy Makeup: Jack Sparrow

Fantasy Makeup: Jack Sparrow 2

Fantasy Makeup: Jack Sparrow 3

Musical Theatre Reviews

While at Blackburn College, I double majored in Performance Arts and in Communications.  Doing so gave me plenty of opportunities to overlap my talents.  For instance, while taking Musical Theatre class, I loosely used the skills that I built in Creative Nonfiction Writing class to write about the shows that we were seeing for assignments.  Although I added several of my own opinions into these papers, I feel that they still show some of my strengths in critical analysis of performing arts.  The shows we saw included Candide, Legally Blonde, and Grease.  Also, I critically analyzed two shows that I used perfomances from in class.  From the analysees, I learned how to best portray my characters and how to fit into the era of the piece.  These shows included Company and Annie.  Below are the finished analysees of these shows.

Candide Analysis

Legally Blonde Analysis

Company Analysis

Annie Analysis

Graphic Design

Although my training in Graphic Design will continue from this point on, I've already learned a great deal about why and how it is used within the world around me.  I've learned how to use three different Adobe softwares including Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe InDesign.  Using these tools, I've learned how to manipulate images already in existence, create my own images, and how to layer images to produce the effects I want.  While in my introduction class, we did several projects that stretched us to learn new techniques.  The first project we worked on required us to take a screen grab from a silent movie and turn it into an abstract depiction using black, white, and variations of one color.  During the second project, we were required to create a symmetrical design using a grid and variations of one color.  For the third project, we listened to Henryk Gorecki's Symphony 3 and from our interpretations of the music, we created posters for the symphony as if it were being performed at Blackburn College.  The three links below are to the projects that I've created for these purposes.

Screengrab Project

Grid/ Symmetry Project

Symphony Poster 1

Symphony Poster 2

Creative Nonfiction Writing

While enrolled in Blackburn College, I took a class based strictly on writing in a nonfiction manner.  Although my initial thoughts when beginning the class consisted of opinions of how boring this class would be, the class actually challenged my talents and taught me how to channel the truth into creative prose that could be incredibly interesting to the reader.  As a Communications Major, this has truly been one of the most valuable lessons I've ever learned.  We wrote stories of several categories, these including a travel essay, a review, a nature essay, and even a simple narrative piece.  The following are my revised versions of these stories.

Las Vegas Travel Essay

Grease Review

Six Flags Nature Essay

A Bittersweet Symphony Narrative

Fading Memories Narrative