Catch Me, I'm Falling

And the second week begins. Along with actually accomplishing things in classes, homework has once again begun to rear its ugly head. Luckily, I want to do most of the work that the teachers have given me so far, so that’s a good inspiration to finish the work. I’ve also been listening to more musicals that I ever used to. I think that I just had a relapse of my old musical craze. I love that Tuesday mornings I get to walk to school and sing for my entire morning. Already I’m getting ahead of myself; let me start with my weekend.

This Saturday, as some of you already know, I went to Toronto for the first time. It wasn’t as “scary” as a lot of people told me it would be. It was actually really cool. I loved that one part of downtown that my friend Andrew described as a mini Times Square. The International Film Festival is going on right now, so there was a lot of paparazzi and rallies going on. Andrew and I walked from the Go Station down to the Reference Library, which is an amazing library. There are five floors of every book. On the top floor they have an incredible amount of librettos and music scores. I really wish that I could take some of them home with me. I spent most of my day in the library, but one of Andrew’s friends showed us where the Theatre Books store is. I was very very tempted to buy some music there. My trip was very short, but a lot of fun. Toronto is a really cool city and I can’t wait to visit again.

Sunday was a study day, so we’ll skip over that day and move straight on to Monday. I had Tap class on Monday morning, which was really great. A lot of Tap came back to me, which I found really surprising. It was a fun class. Then we had Ear Training, where we just worked on singing exercises, learned a lot about rhythm and the origins of dictation.

The class that I loved the most on Monday was our Introduction to Shakespeare class. When the teachers took the attendance everyone had to answer with a quote from Shakespeare! It was a lot of fun and I learned so much even in just the first class. After the introduction from the teachers, we talked a lot about the structure of a play and the structure of a monologue. Then we talked about the four genres of a play: Tragedy, Comedy, Romance and Historical. For the last twenty minutes of class we were split in to four groups and we had to re-create each genre in a one minute play. It was tons of fun and a lot of interesting plot lines, like The Dance Audition: A Tragedy, and Love for Sheep: A Comedy. There was also a one minute recap of the beginning of World War One, in which my favourite line was “Sacre Bleu!” I was a worthwhile class and I honestly can’t wait till next Monday.

Our last class on Monday was Music Theory, which is boring, so I’ll just skip it and move right on to Tuesday. As I told you last week, Tuesday is a very vocal day and it is still my favourite day. We begin the day with a Vocal Technique class. Then we had vocal repertoire class. In this class we each have to do a presentation with four other kids in the class. The groups and presentations are already picked for us and they all have songs by a specific composer, or lyricist. For example, in class today we worked on the music for presentation #1 – Rodgers and Hammerstein. We did classics like, “If I Loved You”(which is now one of my favourite classic songs) and “I Cain’t Say No”. We also ran through the group harmonies of “Oklahoma!” again. Then we had Grammar, which I think is self explanatory.

In Musical Theatre Performance, Four people went today and they all did incredible jobs of their songs. Marie, our teacher is so great to work with. The songs that were sung today were: “Your Daddy’s Song”, “Role of a Lifetime”, “As We Stumble Along” and a very quick “Johanna”. I have to say that the song with the biggest difference was “Your Daddy’s Song” which almost had everyone in tears at the end (yes it was that good). I also signed up for Thursday and I’m really excited for that. I’ll tell you all about it on Friday.

Dance Performance was more interesting today than last week, because he started to teach us how to do the Vietnamese Waltz. It was a slow process, because sometimes it takes a while for people to get the steps right. I can’t wait till we get to do the dance with partners.

That’s all of the exciting things that have happened so far this week. I don’t feel quite as overwhelmed writing this on Tuesday and Friday. I’m just happy that I can tell you guys more of the details this way. So much happens every day that it’s hard to say everything, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of telling you all the important things eventually. I’ve still got Thirteen Fridays to get it down. Can’t wait till Friday!