Connie Zhang JDHS Capstone Summative Reflection 5/31/23 6AC
This year, in the Senior Capstone course, I’ve learned a lot about myself and felt like I really improved some technical and academic skills. Things like frequently talking with adults, different but effective ways to organize my information, and making long term plans to stick to were all greatly improved through my experience with this class. I realized that I’m a lot more motivated than I thought when it comes to projects and topics of interest. Motivated to such a great extent where I could be assigned to do anything but if it’s related to something I have a passion for I can do it. I also learned that the more I care about a project or topic, the more of a perfectionist I will be. With something as important as dance, one of the biggest things I stressed over was getting the information correct and making a product that would do justice to the beauty of storytelling through dance. I think Senior Capstone is a class that is quite suitable for me because I like working independently and at my own pace, so it felt like many of my strengths that maybe weren’t able to show through in other classes in high school were finally able to show themselves here in this class. If I could do this project again though, I would only want to change a few technical things that weren’t able to be resolved because of logistical issues. For example, re-recording my narration with a better microphone that won’t have the muffling noise in the background. Or re-filming the dance pieces where we don’t have to rush through the filming and can make the lighting the best that it can be. It’s little things like these that I would love to have re-done, but nevertheless I’m still very happy with the final product of my project and the little mishaps included in them only push me to extend this project further in the future. Initially, I didn’t think many non-dancers would be that interested in my topic, but after several peer discussions, roundtables, and public presentations I was very happy to learn people do care about what I’m talking about and they do have an interest in something they may not be as familiar with. I really appreciated this because my whole purpose of this project was to make others more knowledgeable and aware of the powers of dance, and how dance can convey a beautiful message just as well as any movie or book can.
Throughout the year, there’s no doubt I’ve come across many challenges. I was lucky and didn’t have too big of an issue deciding what topic I wanted to focus on in capstone, and I was also lucky not to be afraid of reaching out to people I don’t know. My challenges were largely either logistical or mental ones. As I mentioned before, things like having more time to film, adjust the lighting on stage, re-recording the narration, and other edits like that were some challenges I had to edit my way through when putting the documentary together. The mental challenges however, were a little more difficult to get through and weren’t actually resolved until the day before we filmed the dance pieces. With dance being such an important part of me, and having dance experts featured in my project, I felt really nervous and a small sense of pressure of making sure the information I was presenting in the documentary was accurate. I didn’t want to disrespect the art form or misinform any viewers, and was especially nervous of making the dances look clean enough (with few rehearsals to work on them) with myself performing them as well. However, the day before filming, my teacher and someone who appears in the documentary, Mr. Crabtree (Larry Crabtree), came in to see my dances and give me feedback. What he said after watching all three of them, was exactly what I needed to hear. He told me he could see the connections between the three styles and how the story was always present despite it being in three different styles of dance. He told me my choreography flowed great, it was accurate to its respective styles, and said I did an overall good job with the whole thing. Hearing this from someone who has been in the dance world for over 40 years made my day, and was one of the best forms of encouragement I could’ve asked for going into filming the next day. And that day resolved a lot of long-term worries I had been having about doing this project, but I also think having these worries and fears was a good thing, because that just showed how much dance and the project must have meant to me if I cared enough to be anxious about it all.
In the very beginning, my mind was dead-set on doing a hybrid TedTalk / dance performance project. People would come into the theater, a screen would come down, my documentary would play, but then throughout the documentary the lights would fade away and dancers would come on stage to perform live for the audience. This to me would’ve given an amazing effect, and would’ve further emphasized my point on how storytelling through dance can be such a powerful thing that is often overlooked. Unfortunately, largely due to logistical reasons and wanting my project to be present past just one night of being shown to others, I decided to have the project be entirely recorded. Looking back, I believe this was the right choice because it made convincing someone to be my dance partner easier, made it so I didn’t have to reserve a space to play the documentary, and also has allowed me to easily distribute my documentary for many people to see. I know several of my peers had some issues with getting in contact with community experts, but luckily I had been meeting mine almost everyday for years before this project. I was hesitant at first to ask them to be a part of my project since they’re my own dance teachers and I didn’t know if I wanted this project to be made too personal with my real life, however, all of them are so knowledgeable in the dance field that I believe not having them featured in the documentary would’ve been a loss to the whole project.
