No to Ocean Pollution

The theme of our parade was “Ocean Pollution.” It took us a long time to finally settle on this theme because we wanted to choose an issue that each and every individual felt strongly about. Some of my group members felt strongly about the endangerment of animal species, others about water shortages, and finally there were those who felt strongly about pollution. We decided to take all these issues and combine them into one, which eventually gave us our theme. After we had chosen our theme we moved on to other elements of the parade such as: music, costumes, and choreography, which helped get our message across. Overall, I believe that we were able to successfully interrogated our theme by our performance.

The first thing that we chose after the theme was our music selection. At first we wanted to make a mixed CD of songs, but we soon came to the conclusion that this would not fit our theme. We wanted our music to flow like the ocean itself , and not have awkward breaks in the middle. We also wanted our song to be slow, soothing, but at the same time upbeat. In the end, my group and I ended up settling on the song, “She came along,” by Kid Cudi. I personally think that this song fit our theme perfectly. It is slow and soothing enough that it fit the choreography of the fish and it had a fast enough beat to not make things too dull.
Also, the name of the song “She came along” and lyrics, were supposed to represent the surprise attack of Omolu, which was played by myself. Omolu in our parade was supposed to represent pollution, disease, and ultimately death.

After we chose our song we moved on to the costumes. At first we planned on buying body glitter because we wanted everyone in the group to represent a fish. The body glitter would look like fish scales from far away. However, this proved to be too much of a hassle and we wanted variety in our parade so we decided that everyone in the group should represent a different sea creature. In order for us to be told apart we decided to buy colored shirts and draw the sea creature we were supposed to represent in the front the t-shirt. I, was not a sea creature, but I did write “Omolu” on my shirt and drew a skull to represent death. I also wore brown shorts because the color brown is associated with Omolu. In Addition, Blanca who was Yemaya, and who was supposed to cure the fish of the disease, wore a baby, blue shirt in order to represent the colors associated to the goddess. Overall, I really had a fun time decorating the t-shirts and helping make them.

When it comes to the props, we didn't really have that many, but the ones that were used fit the theme accordingly. I was the only one who really had to carry the props. The props consisted of actual trash, to represent all the waste that gets carried out to the ocean every day. During our performance I carried a plastic bag filled with a water bottle, a candy wrapper, a soda can, and an empty “jell-o” cup. I ended up passing out all of these objects in order to show the spread of disease to each creature. At the end of the performance both Fatima and Carissa also held a sign saying, “Save the Ocean” in order to let the audience know that something should be done about this issue. All in all, I think the props were very effective, and it made things easier when it came to showing that pollution causes the death of many sea animals.

When it comes to the actual choreography, it also revolved around our theme. When it came to my own and Blanca's choreography it was pretty simple. We each decided to perform the dances that are associated with each God. I, for example, did the hand movements for the spreading of disease. When it comes to everybody else in the group, they incorporated a lot of hand movements in order to depict the movements of the sea animals. Also, the group incorporated different formations in order to depict the movement of the waves, up and down, right to left. As a whole, the choreography really matched our theme very well, and I think we were able to show this through our performance.

I definitely learned a lot about myself through out the entire process. I learned to manage my time, and I learned that in order to really do well I had to practice a lot. In the beginning, I really didn't think I would be able to pull of the role I was playing, since there were high expectations from my group members. I had to perform a dance that I couldn't change or manipulate, and it had to be right on point. However, I studied the dance a lot and all of the different moments that make up the dance itself, and in the end I think I did a pretty good job. I also, think that we did a very nice job as a group as well. I really enjoyed watching the dance of rejoicing and celebration when Yemaya revived the animals. All in all, I had a great time and in then end it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.