Not here

I've moved!!! (Blogs at least :p)

Since I'm back from Bates, I've started a new blog (which will probably become my more permanent blog):

http://catismynameow.posterous.com/

TTFN,
Calvin

So this one time at dance camp...

One of the questions I know that I'm going to be asked a lot when I get back to California is: "How was Bates?" Granted, it's also a question that I've been contemplating over myself these past couple of days, so I figure getting it into writing would be a good idea since it will force me to organize my thoughts a little better as opposed to my usual spewing of general excitement in nonsensical words and sounds.

Admittedly, trying to answer the question of "How was Bates" has been kind of weird for me. I mean, for these past three weeks, I've been constantly surrounded by inspiration, artistry, and a community of absolutely amazing people, so trying to describe my time at Bates is hard because this whole experience has been so special to me; trying to describe it out loud almost seems of bad taste. Besides, I don't personally feel like I have the capabilities to properly describe my Bates experience and do it justice (I'm going to admit to not being a very good writer). However, here I am trying anyway because 1) I realize how stupid I must sound with this whole "only special to me" business and 2) it would be completely selfish of me to not share even a little about my Bates experience.

So...how was my Bates experience? If I may quote one of my awesome new friends, Taylor Augustine, during a conversation we were having the other night: "I think I could honestly say that Bates changed my life."

um...yeah, that pretty much sums it up :p I've already said this, but imagine being surrounded 24/7 by some of most inspiring, artistic, supportive people in the world. I mean, I took class everyday with some of the best dancers out there and from some of the best teachers. I was in rehearsals everyday working on different projects with some of the most brilliant minds and I literally ate every meal with probably some of the coolest people I have ever met. You can't leave an environment like that with out being changed.

And changed I was :) Now I don't necessarily think Bates has changed me in the sense that I'm now a completely different person. In fact, I'm probably just as much the person I was a month ago before I left San Diego, but I feel that I'm now a much more inspired, driven, and focused me. The time I had spent dancing at that small liberal arts college has reminded me how much I love this thing we call dance and I'm now definitely a lot less scared to call myself a dancer.

In a gist...

1) I learned a lot

2) I met a lot of really cool people.

3) Bates = KICK ASS!

So I'm going end there because if I'm going to try to write more, this post will never end up getting published (I'll get distracted and save it where ever I've left off and continue it later. This will then happen repeatedly for probably the next couple of weeks where I will then just give up the post entirely).

:)

TTFN,

Calvin

PB (post blog): Varone for President (^_^)v

whoops...

I've been meaning to update sooner and I've honestly been trying to post a new blog, but I keep having to stop writing because I'm so tired by the end of the day that I never seem to have the energy to write to the very end of the blog, so I just keep adding to what I wrote the night before and saving it but never ever really reaching the end. Granted, it is also partly my fault because I tried to go into WAY too much detail about my very first week here at Bates and my trip to Boston, which I'm realizing isn't very fun to read (or write for that matter).

So here I am now starting the blog post over and trying to update y'all on my first two weeks here at Bates while saying it in less words. Brevity has never been my strong suit, but here goes nothing :p

In a general all encompassing sense, my first two weeks here has been everything that I could have asked for and more (emphasis on the more). I'm loving absolutely everything about being here at Bates.

My classes are phenomenal :)

Natalie's Modern V class is one of the best classes to start your day. She not only is one of the bubbliest and friendliest people that I have ever met, but she is also one of the best teachers I have ever had. By the end of the first week, she knew everybody's name and purposefully watches each and every single student in that class (maybe not every single student all at once, but through out the course of the week, she will have at least spoken to at least each student with comments or things to work on). She is super attentive and totally is not holding back on us with course and phrase work.

I'm also really fortunate to be in a repertory class with the amazing Doug Varone. What this means is that basically in these 3 weeks, Doug will be setting a completely new work on 13 of us students. Granted, it won't be one of best works and the purpose of this is just so that students get a chance to work with an amazing professional choreographer, but the idea of just working with Doug Varone is pretty epic. Working with Doug is quite the experience. Everyday we walk into rehearsal and Doug is totally hyped up on 3-4 sodas. He then gets into working with us in this piece and from beginning to end it is non-stop; Doug never takes a break in that 1.5 hours that we're there with him. On top of that, Doug works really fast, meaning we all have to be super focused so that we don't miss anything that Doug says or shows us.

If you saw my Facebook status update sometime two weeks ago, you may have noticed that, yes, I indeed had gotten into Chris Aiken's Advanced Improv class :) It's soooooooooo much fun and I'm learning so much about not just improv, but also dance and performance in general. Chris is pretty awesome. I will have to admit that during the first week, I was having trouble getting into the groove of improvising. I mean, the class is right after lunch, so everybody is pretty lethargic and food-coma-ed by then, but the class is also 21 people, which is A LOT to keep track of while improv-ing. However, by the end of the second week, we were all grooving and moving together and making super smart choices; it was amazing :) (PS: Chris totally reminds me of Liam in a really non-Liam way. I think it's the fact that my exposure to learning improv has primarily been through both Liam and Chris; the two both have toddler aged daughters that you know they adore; and the two just kind of are shaped the same/move kind of similar lol)

The last class I have is called Business of Dance. It sounds of kind of stupid, but this class has been one of the most eye opening classes I have ever taken. Kim Konikow (our teacher) is basically teaching us everything that they don't teach you in dance class about being involved in dance. I now kind of know what a 501c3 is, what a fiscal sponsor is, what a press kit is, that anything I buy that goes towards my career as a dancer I can get deducted on my taxes, and other really super useful things to know as a dancer. On top of that, for every class, Kim invites a different famous person (basically awesome people that were invited to teach/set work at BDF this year) to talk about their career and how they got to where they are now (free advise!). Yeah...they need to offer classes like these at every college campus.

So yes, the classes here are amazing. Plus! On top of all of that during the day, almost every night there is some kind of activity or event. Whether it be a lecture from our visiting international artists or an informal showing of Doug Varone's latest work, there's something going on all the time. Sometimes I feel like we don't have enough time during the day. I mean, with a full day of classes and then an evening activity followed by general hang out socializing time, we're all definitely not getting enough sleep. With that said...who cares. We're all only here for 3 weeks, so we're going to make the best of it before we have to leave.

My trip to Boston is also worth mentioning. I spent my first weekend here at Bates not actually at Bates but instead in Boston. I took a bus Friday afternoon and was in Boston in like 3 hours (and I passed like 2 other states on my there. kind of weird). So my weekend in Boston basically consisted of Shawn literally taking me everywhere around Boston. We walked and took the T literally EVERYWHERE! Shawn took me to breakfast Saturday morning at this place called Dot 2 Dot. They literally had the best pancakes and french toast I have ever had. So good :) We met up with Shawn Ta in the afternoon and explored Boston China Town (I also got a pretty comprehensive history lesson about Boston China Town). Afterwards, Shawn (Freeman, I know that's confusing) took me shopping and we ended up somewhere in the south end on Tremont where we decided to stop by a bar to get a drink. Granted, we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, so we got kind of drunk and started wandering the streets of Boston while inebriated because we then thought it would be a good idea to get something to eat. We also happened to be in an area of Boston that Shawn wasn't quite familiar with, so we walked around some more before we finally settled to eat at this Indian restaurant which turned out to be really good. We then hung out with Shawn Ta and his boyfriend after dinner for dessert. Sunday consisted of lunch with Alissa Wilcox, who I haven't seen since freshman year, and a boat ride out to the islands with a beer. Overall, the trip was really nice (though, I will say that the bus ride back to Lewiston was a little creepy mainly because it was dark and we were driving through some middle of no where towns and the bus driver definitely did get lost at some point)

After this Boston trip, the rest of my time has been spent at Bates and with the awesome people that I've met here. On the second weekend, we all went on a beach trip to Reid State Park. This was probably one of the most beautiful beaches that I have ever been to (and that's saying a lot seeing as I live in SD right now). I have pictures, but my internet at Bates kind of sucks, so I'm just going to upload them all when I get back to SD (or maybe when I'm at my sister's place in Baltimore), but trust me, so beautiful.

Other highlights worth mentioning: Doug's informal showing of his newly finished evening long work, "Chapters from a Broken Novel." o m g...it was so beautiful. I have not been moved by a dance piece in a while, but that piece was just jaw dropping-ly amazing. Plus, I don't do well with sitting through evening long pieces, but I had no trouble at all with this piece. Granted, the episodic nature of the work helped make it feel less of an evening long piece, but still, it was evening long with an intermission. I was just so inspired by all of the dancers and all of the movement. It's so strange because I see Doug everyday and in rehearsals, he's just Doug (same goes with Natalie). However, after watching the showing, Doug became Doug Varone and I felt so giddy (like I was meeting Neil Patrick Harris or something :p).

In short, I'm having an utter blast here at Bates. The people that I'm meeting and all of these new friends that I'm making are all such amazing people and dancers. I'm constantly surrounded by inspiration.

Well, it's probably about time that I actually publish this post seeing as I've been meaning to update last week.

More to come soon!

TTFN,

Calvin

1st day felt like a week...

So it's literally the end of our very first full day here at the Bates Dance Festival and I'm sitting at my computer in my room attempting to update you all on what has happened since I last posted while also waiting for my body to cool down enough so I can go to bed with out dripping with sweat.

Was that a run on sentence? Probably.

But nevertheless, let me update y'all on the rest of the weekend after I got tired of just sitting around in my room.

Knowing nobody and having nothing to do, I decided to go outside and explore the campus a little bit and I ended up in this shady grassy area and read. The campus is beautiful. Brick buildings with fields of green grass and tall trees. It's pretty breath taking (especially when it's really sunny and a nice cool breeze blows through the campus). I eventually got tired of reading (which meant that I literally started dozing off) and headed over to the dining commons. Let me tell you, Bates dining hall food...so good!! I know people complain about Plaza Cafe being pretty bad, so it's no comparison, but if anybody's been to the dining halls at USC or UCLA, it's like that, but with better choices (including vegan and no gluten foods) and better ambiance because all the walls in the dining area are windows and the Dining Commons have super high ceilings and let in all of this sun light. It's nice :p

So now, I'm going to bullet point the next couple of highlights from the weekend:

1) After dinner, we saw Doug Varone and Dancers perform in the Schaeffer theater. The company was absolutely amazing and so breath taking to watch. However, I do have to say that I kind of wish Doug's company wasn't the company that we got to see that Saturday. Having traveled for 14 hours and having not showered or anything, I will admit to having troubles staying awake. I was super exhausted, but I did pick up enough energy to watch the final (of three) pieces that Doug presented that night and I was so mesmerized by all of the dancers. The choreography was complex, quick, and kind of all over the place, but all the dancers had such weight to their movement and were just absolutely beautiful to watch. This company is definitely one of my favorite companies now.

2) After the show, I waited around in my room for a little bit just chilling and trying to stay awake because I had received a call during the performance telling me that my luggage was going to be delivered to me that night by 11pm. And lo and behold, at a 11:30, I got luggage and was able to finally shower. Needless to say, I passed out that night.

3) I didn't wake up the next day until 11:30am or so, but I felt so much better and felt quite rejuvenated. Sunday was spent basically just relaxing and getting familiar with the campus. I spent most of the afternoon by the lake on campus reading (Morgan would love that spot) :)

We also had orientation and stuff, but that's not all that exciting. Here's where the exciting part of this entry begins because...

We finally had our first day of classes!!!

So you're probably thinking that the first day didn't go so well because of the title, but in reality, the first day of classes was absolutely AMAZING!! We literally went from 9am to 5:30pm (with breaks between classes and a lunch break between the 2nd and 3rd classes), so been in class all day just felt like a week. An absolutely wonderful week, but a fairly busy one at that.

So here is my schedule:

9-10:30am: Modern V with Natalie Desch (one of the Varone company dancers)

11am-12:30pm: Modern Repertory with Doug Varone

2-3:30pm: Making Dance I with Victoria Marks

4-5:30pm: Business of Dance with Kim Konikow

Modern V:

SO AMAZING!!! Natalie didn't really hold back even on the first day. We went straight into doing full on movement. It felt like from warm-ups in the beginning to the across the floors at the end, we were just doing a whole bunch of phrase work. It was soooooooooooo awesome!!

Modern Repertory:

Yes, I get to work with Doug Varone. Yes, he's setting a new work on the students of this particular class. Yes, it's pretty freaking amazing :) It's only been one day, but I'm already so inspired (not only by Doug, but also by the other dancers in the class). Doug works really quickly and is just so much fun to be around and talk to. Highlight of this class, however, has to be at the very beginning of class when Doug is taking roll. He calls each one of us one by one and asks us about where we're from and about where we go to school. So when it comes to my turn, I tell him that I just finished at UC San Diego. Doug then goes to ask me who teaches there and of course my first answer would obviously be: Allyson Green. Doug's response: "O! Ally!"

Doug Varone is friends with Allyson Green and calls her Ally. Our department freaking rocks :) (PS: remind me to give Allyson a hug from Doug :P)

Making Dance I:

So this probably was my least favorite class today. It's basically a composition class, which is really nice, but a lot of what we did today I've already played with and explored at UCSD and I feel like I'm going to want more from this class, but we'll see. I'm actually really trying to get into Christohper Aiken's Advanced Improv class which is at this same time, so I'm trying to switch classes. The only problem is that this improv class is full and has been full from the very beginning; it doesn't look like it'll open up anytime soon. However, I've been having conversations with Nancy Salmon, who's in charge of class registration and what not and she said she would talk to Chris. However, she had asked me about my background in Improv and I had told her that I had been improvising for about a year (and mentioned Deborah Haye and what not), but she said that Chris would probably say "no" because it is an advanced improv class, but I feel like I've probably done more than a year of improv at UCSD and it's only been this last year that improv has become something of interest to me. So this makes me a little nervous especially since after talking to Nancy I found Chris at dinner and had asked him about his class and he had told me to just go to his class tomorrow. So we'll see. I hope it's not going to be as hard as Nancy makes it out to be :p

Business of Dance:

This class I found surprisingly interesting. Kim Konikow isn't a dancer, but comes from a very strong arts administration background and I think the class will be super helpful especially when it comes to CDC, so I'm really excited for this class now just to learn about what it takes to make art and put art out into the community, especially since that's what we as the Collective Dance Collective are trying to do :)

All in all, the first day at the Bates Dance Festival was soooooooooooooo amazing. I kind of didn't expect it to be as good as it is, but I definitely now know why Bates is considered one of the strongest summer dance programs out there (which is also weird because it's in Lewiston, Maine, which is basically this low income deserted mill town in the middle of no where Maine).

I'm excited for tomorrow :) I'll keep y'all updated!!

TTFN,

Calvin

I'm in Philly!!

So really...I'm only in the Philadelphia International Airport waiting to transfer to my next flight that will take me to Portland, ME, but I've never been to Philadelphia and something like "I'm in Philly" felt like an appropriate thing to say (plus, it's just fun. There aren't many places that have a cool fun shortened name like Philadelphia. C'mon, it's PHILLY!!)

I'll have to admit, this probably isn't the ideal way that I'd choose to start this particular blog, but seeing as how I didn't actually decide to start a blog about my East Coast trip until we started to land in Philadelphia, I'm not going to be too picky about the beginnings of this blog.

So originally I wasn't going to blog at all about this trip; I didn't really have a reason to start a new blog. Plus, I didn't really realize that I was actually going on this trip until basically now (though really, even now, sitting inside the Philadelphia International Airport, I'm kind of still not comprehending the fact that I'm on a trip and doing a dance festival). I don't know what it is about this particular trip, but going to the Bates Dance Festival, visiting Shawn in Boston, and visiting my sister in Baltimore all in one summer just seems so surreal; I don't imagine myself going on trips like these very often so all of this feels so unreal at the moment. On top of that, this is the first trip where I didn't fly out of LAX, meaning that I didn't go back home to Arcadia/El Monte first. I packed from my apartment in Hillcrest and was picked up and taken to the airport by Moae (thanks again!!). Maybe this trip is so strange for me because it's kind of the first trip that I'm making that doesn't physically involve my parents; this is like my first trip as an adult. Strange. Plus, this is also the first trip where I'm traveling and doing something all by myself (even when I went to NY last year, I had Morgan and Uncle Bobby, so I wasn't completely alone :P).

PS: This whole graduating from college and finished with school thing is still really weird. I don't know what I think about it yet, but all I know is that it's weird.

Anyway, so what changed my mind about blogging about this trip? There are actually several reasons for this and I will list them for you here (let's just say this trip has already started to be quite eventful and I barely left California 6 hours ago or so):

1) I bumped into Terry, Adrienne, and Olivia. Even better, they were on the same flight as me to Philadelphia. How random is that?! I was walking to the gate to board the plane when I hear my name out of no where from a familiar voice. I look around and lo and behold, it's Terry and her family. So they're flying to Philadelphia for a few days before they go on their trip to Italy and they just so happened to be taking the same flight as me (and sat in the row right in front of where I was sitting :p)

2) And guess who else was on this same flight? Cheetah Platt and one of his brothers. Random? Yes. So I remember Cheetah from his duet that he made with Carrie Prince four years ago when I still a freshman at UCSD. So now I've finally met the famous Cheetah Platt :p

3) I've learned a few things already having started this trip. One of them being: East Coast airports are so much better than West Coast airports. Granted, I've only been to SAN, LAX, JFK, and now PHL, so this is only an assumption and not a conclusion, but I still think East Coast airports and better than West Coast airports. Sure, SAN has free wireless, but the bathrooms are kind of gross and you'll have to admit, the facilities at SAN are kind of old. In general, SAN just looks old and in need of a few upgrades. And don't get me started about LAX. I hate LAX -_- Both JFK and PHL are pretty nice with much better bathrooms and nice decor in the terminals and outside of the gates.

---

Slight pause because my computer started running out of battery, so I needed to turn him off.

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So now I'm back to this blog entry and quite frankly, I wasn't quite sure where I was going with that list up there anyway, so I'm just to jump forward 7 hours ahead of when I last stopped writing.

**SHAZZAM**

Where would you guess I would be 7 hours after I stopped writing in the Philadelphia International Airport? At Bates College of course! So I'm sitting here in my room, which is literally in an old house. I don't even know what to call the rooms because they're not dorms and they're not really residence halls, but literally Bates College turned the rooms in old houses into rooms for students, so that's where I am now just chilling on my bed inside Mitchell House; it's kind of cute, kind of old. You're also probably wondering: "But Calvin, why are you just sitting in your room on your computer when you've got so much exploring to do?" Well, my friend, let me tell you:

1) I would go out and explore and take a look around the campus seeing as I have nothing else to do until dinner tonight, but I've been flying/driving/sitting around in an airport for about 14 hours. It's quite hot in Lewiston, so I'm also really sweaty. The thing I really want to do right now, above all the other things, is shower and change. But I can't do that. Why? Because my luggage got lost -_- I believe they found it and it's flying into Portland, ME on a different flight from Philly as I type this right now. However, even then, I would still have wait until tonight before they actually deliver my luggage to Bates College in Lewiston. So basically, I have no clothes or shower materials with me; I only have my laptop and the Chronicles of Prydain.

and

2) I don't think there's much to see here. I'm literally in the middle of no where. Lewiston isn't a very big town and Bates isn't actually that big of a campus. There's a lot of trees and green things, which is nice, but having grown up in San Gabriel Valley, I can comparatively say that I'm in the middle of no where.

So I'm basically just sitting here in my room that's in this old house that's by this small school that's in this quaint little town just chilling (chilling hard!).

And I believe that should just about update y'all with the beginnings of my trip. There's probably more to come, but as of now, I'm just sitting. However, I'm sure things will pick-up very soon, so do look forward for more updates.

For now...

TTFN,

Calvin