Analyzing Ocean Pollution

Ocean Pollution was the theme of our group. The name of the group was Sub-Zero. Our theme basically consisted of the water god Oxum and Omolu the pollution god. The plot of the dance was the two gods marching in the front of the parade; the fishes were behind along with the starfish and me as the shark. All the fishes that were following were the pray and the shark was the predator in the ocean. When the march started we were swimming because we are in the ocean, eventually we do the water dance where we put our hands together to form a cup and swerve left to right. We calculated how many times we were going to do that until we hit our mark and start stomping. We stomped as a group together six different sets and then we spin our music starts and we go under the arms of the two gods to form a circle. The song we used was by “Kid-Cudi She came Along,” As soon as the lady said “She came Along,” the two gods came in to dance their dance. While the ocean creatures circled them and walked around them. After a while the gods start fighting and Oxum gets knocked out of the circle while Omolu starts killing the fishes.

After she kills all the fishes, but the shark, the shark has nothing to eat since his food was gone and dies of starvation. After a while Oxum comes back and kills Omolu and starts saving all the fish from death including the shark, after they all revive we leave and start marching back to the end of the parade.

The whole idea of the theme Ocean Pollution came from the way Omolu spreads the smallpox, but in this case she’s spreading pollution. In our history of pollution, the ocean is one of the environments that suffer the most deaths because of pollution. These deaths include many different types of fishes, turtles, stars, and even sharks die. Oxum is the water god who keeps all these animals safe by providing them with water, but Omolu is the pollution that is thrown in the water and crosses the ocean life.

My part in the parade was to choreograph the whole routine along with another choreographer. I decided that the start of the march should consist of us to be swimming. After we hit the corner we would lock arms with the person next to us and skip together as a group. After we all came together and decided to knit. The importance of that in our group was for the knitting to capture our memories of the enjoyment we had swimming. From knitting I decided that we should samba to a certain point to show that we are still happy as a group. Once we hit the two yellow poles on the way to the stage we started to do the water dance to show that we have water, after that the music starts which happens to be a song that I choose and fitted perfectly in our parade. Once we got to our mark where in practice we practiced it too many times to not know where it was, but we got it right and started to march down to the stage in fancy style I believe.

Our performance started as soon as we got to the front of the judges. The two gods united to let the fishes swim under the bridge they formed. The fishes started doing a dance; the females did a different dance from the males. During this the song is playing in which the two gods circle each other around the circle while locking eyes and staring each other down. Once the song said “She came along,” the two gods go in and do their own personal dance while the fishes as me swim around them. Eventually they start fighting and pollution wins the first battle and starts polluting our water and kills all the fishes and only I the shark is left, but end up dying of hunger because there were no more fishes left. Oxum comes back and kills Omolu and revives all the fishes including the shark. All the fishes start to dance around Oxum while the shark which is me swims around the whole ceremony. At the end the two gods pick up a poster saying not to pollute the ocean. We then march our way out until we finish the parade.

Don’t Kill Fishes!

Our teams theme for the parade performance was Ocean Pollution. When we came up with this theme we originally wanted to perform in a swimming pool. We actually wanted to pretend that we were fishes and so that it would get our message across more efficiently. Sadly though we were taken out of the water because we had to perform live. Even so I believe that our theme and our idea came though exactly as we hoped for. Our music as in sync with our dancing and our costumes portrayed our fishes. For our costumes we came up with the idea of everyone portraying the fish they represented. I was a cute little turtle. We also wanted to put small messages on the backs of our shirts saying don’t kill fishes, stop polluting, trash kills; when we died we would have turned our backs to the audience and they would have seen our point more clearly. This proved to be difficult because we did not have paint or time to make everything look nice. I think that all the elements of our dance went well together and successfully represented out theme. Our dance moves were smooth and water like and our music went along with the dance moves.

My job in tem sub zero’s great performance was to be in charge of the music. I can not say that it was all my idea because it was a group effort in choosing the song. Our first idea was to mix a few different songs so that we knew different elements of the dance. Our theme of ocean pollution need the song to be soft, slow and soothing in the beginning to symbolize peace and happiness among the fishes. It also needed some excitement and cheerfulness to express the fishes happiness toward their goddess Yemanja. Another element of our parade was sadness and distress for the part when Omolu comes to kill Yemanja and the fishes. Our song needed to consist of all these elements at the same time, so we thought it was best to mix songs to get good results. But like many things in life things never go according to plan. We found out that none of us knew or had the equipment necessary to mix songs together. Our plan B was to listen to songs that sounded "fishy" in order to get the results we wanted. What we ended up doing was listening to Edgar’s Ipod and finding the perfect song. The song we used in our performance was "She came along" by Kid Cudi. It had most of the elements we needed and I believe it helped get our message across. It was slow and peaceful in the beginning and moved into a more upbeat and fast rhythm. The song also became slow and mellow towards the middle which was perfect for our fishes untimely deaths. This song was a good choice because the lyrics had the perfect cues to our dancing. When the song said she came along our Orisha’s came into the circle. The song also gave us perfect transitions to our movements. When it said rain, we made movements of rain. Over all I believe the song and our dance went well together. One of the songs that we were thinking about using in our original plan was "Under the Sea" from movie "The Little Mermaid" . I think that that would have been an funny and cute way to let the audience know what we were doing

This experience was very knew to me but fun at the same time. At the beginning I was very reluctant to do it because I prefer to dance when no one is watching but I knew it had to be done. I really enjoyed working with people who I would have never thought I would work with let alone become friends with. I had not worked with a group of people in a long time but it did bring back memories of my day’s of being in JROTC and working in teams. I was very surprised with myself because I realized I am very creative. I am happy to say that once I got used to the idea that we were going to parade around in front of people I had good ideas to bring to the table. Normally I stay quiet when it comes to voicing my opinions but this project helped me learn to speak freely because people will listen.

Save the Sea Animals!!

My group, Subzero, choreographed and performed based on the theme water pollution. As a group we decided that we wanted to demonstrate how pollution affects the sea animals. We came up with this theme, as we decided research about what is affecting the ocean and the living species in it. We saw pictures of animals cover stuck with trash and oil covering them. This problem affected us and we wanted to show people how pollution can affect the sea animals. The overall idea of the dance was to show that trash can cause the death of the sea animals. In the choreography we included a pollutant, the water god lemanja, and animal fishes. For the animal fishes, we included: a turtle, jelly fish, beta fish, clown fish, and a shark. We wanted to show a variation of sea animals. The shark represented the predator. The choreography began with the sea animal going through a bridge that the pollutant and lemanja made. This represented the animals going inside the polluted ocean. Lemanja represented the water and the pollutant the pollution. While going in the sea creatures were swimming through the bridge. Once inside the people representing the fishes starting dancing. They dance some African American and Samba moves. This represented the fishes being happy in the ocean. Then the pollutant and Lemanja walk around them. They just looked at each other in a bad way. They made dirty looks to each other. Then the fishes made a circle and the pollutant and Lemanja went inside the circle. Each of them introduced themselves with a dance. The pollutant was represented by the goddess Omolu. Lemanja and Omolu danced in the middle of the circle and introduced to the audience what they do. Omolu performed the dance of spreading out diseases, but in this situation trash. Lemanja, performed the dance of water and the bracelets. Then, Omolu and Lemanja fight each other, Lemanja losses the fight and gets out of the circle. Then the fishes continue to swim around, but Omolu is also going around. As she goes around she is throwing trash and every time she throws trash to a fish, the fish dies. Omolu goes around killing the fishes. The last one to survive is the shark. The shark does not die of pollution, but instead of not having anyone to eat. The shark shows his starvation to the audience by rubbing his stomach and making a sad face that he has no food. The shark represented the Life Cycle. Then he dies. After all the fishes had died, Lemanja comes back in and fights Omolu. She revives all the fishes again and they swim out. Omolu stays on the floor dead. Our costumes were simple, but it helped people understand more about our theme. We bought colorful shirts that will help represent the color of the fishes. In the shirts we put the name of the fish and drew a picture of it. The shark put a red bandana on his face, to show that he was the predator. Omolu, dressed all in black and had a skull painted in her shirt, with other words printed. It had words like disease, pollution, and death. Yemaya, wore a white skirt and a baby blue color shirt to represent water. In this process of making the parade I also got the opportunity to learn more about myself. I learned that working as a team can be fun and easy to do. Before I would be the shy one of the group, but this time I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and decided to speak more and give my opinions to the group. Another thing I learn is that working as a group makes things easier. Also, I did not think I had creativeness, but I sure did have it inside me. This parade turned out to be a unique and fun experience. In overall, I learn many things from this parade and class in all. At the beginning of the course we learn about the Oxiras. I learned that each dance that the Orixas performed represented something. Also, samba moves were interesting to learn because it is part of the history of Brazil. Samba helped Brazil bring together the mixture of races. Also, because Samba is still performed in Brazil and has been part of many other places. While working on the parade it was interesting seeing how everything we learn was going to help the group make a statement about our theme. As an assistant director, I was involved in every part of the parade. The things we learned in class helped us come up with ideas that would help the audience understand about the pollution in the sea. Doing the parade made me understand that dance can be more than just moves. Dance has a deep meaning for something. In this case the Oxiras helped our parade have a meaning and helped the audience understand about what was going on in our dance. If I could continue this piece, I would incorporate different styles of dancing. I would add more samba into it and some hip hop. Also, I would add more formations to the dance and have other people perform. I would put more people, so that there can be more fishes. I would put more fishes because the ocean is full of different sea animals. Also, I would give the pollutant more and different kinds of trash. This way people can see the different ways a fish can be polluted. Another, thing I would do is make the piece longer.

Save the Ocean!

The theme of our final performance was ocean pollution. We chose this theme because we thought that we could create a clear message about the negative impact that pollution can have on the ocean and the animals that inhabit it. The group also realized that this theme would allow us to incorporate some of the water movements that we had been learning in class. I believe that our theme was successfully interrogated by our performance, and I also believe that our message about the negative impacts that arise from polluting our oceans came across quite clearly.

In my opinion, the two main reasons that our performance was able to convey our theme so clearly was due to the dance’s characters and choreography. In the dance we had two Orixas: Lemenja, who represented the water goddess and the protector of the ocean, and Omulu, who we chose to symbolize water pollution. Originally our antagonist was a mere ocean polluter, but the group decided to change this character to Omulu since he is the god of disease. We had the two Orixas introduce themselves by using moves that were unique to their characters, and once it was made clear who these two Orixas were, we had them battle one another. Omulu was the victor and Lemenja was banished, which allowed Omulu to begin to infect and pollute the ocean. This is where the various sea creatures that had been swimming around during the battle came into play. We had ocean creatures such as the shark, jellyfish, turtle, clown fish, beta fish, and crab. Each fish character used moves that represented swimming to help make it clear that they where sea creatures. These characters played a crucial role in helping us getting our theme across, since their deaths represented the destruction that can be brought on by ocean pollution. Omulu would give each fish a piece of trash, which represented pollution, and the fish would then die until only one loan shark remained. The shark didn’t die because of the pollution directly. Instead the shark died of starvation that resulted from the lack of live fish that remained in the ocean after the pollution had spread. Afterwards, Lemenja returned and defeated Omulu and was able to heal the damage that the pollution had caused. Once the balance was restored, the sea creatures then danced around her using some of her own dance moves to show their happiness of her return.

The music also helped our performance move along smoothly. Our group chose to use the song “She Came Along” by Kid Cudi. The song may not have contained any special meanings, but it seemed to fit our dance almost perfectly. We were able to use the song’s lyrics as cues to begin our dance moves. The very first time that the song says “she came along” was when we had the Orixas first enter the circle, and the part were rain was mentioned was when we had the fish begin to raise their hand up and down while wiggling their fingers to represent rain.

My job in this performance was to design the costumes and to decide what props would be best to use to help portray our theme. Due to a lack of money, I decided to make the costumes somewhat simple. I had each person wear a solid colored shirt that matched the creature that they were playing. The turtle wore a green shirt; the clown fish wore orange and so on. As a group we also decided to draw our creature onto our shirts to help the audience understand exactly what creature we were portraying. The only character that didn’t have a symbol on the shirt was the shark. Instead I had the shark wear grey and a small piece of red clothing to show that he was a predator. I think that these costumes really helped to show that the ocean is full of diverse and unique animals. The Orixas also wore similar shirts, but Omulu’s shirt contained symbols that represented death and sayings such pollution. I also had Lemenja wear a shirt and colorful bracelets to amplify her beauty. The only issue that I had with the costumes was with the Orixa’s costumes. If we had continued with the dance performance, I would have made their costumes a little more intricate and eye catching. The only props that I chose to use were the pieces of trash that Omulu gave the fish to represent the pollution that was infecting the ocean. The props were just simple objects such as a small bag, a soda can, and a jello cup, but I believe that they worked well in showing the spread of the pollution.

This dance performance helped me realize that I could in fact be a creative person. I was able to offer small ideas, such as Omulu grabbing Lemenja’s wrist while she was dancing to signify the beginning of their battle, that the group liked and added into the performance. This helped me to be more willing to speak up, which is something that I’ve always had trouble doing. I also realized how a group can feed off each other’s ideas and can then create something amazing. This performance also managed to help me overcome my fear of dancing in public. After the dance, I couldn't help but feel that if I could dance like a dying fish, then I shouldn’t have any problems going swing dancing!

By Clarissa Morales

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.

The Dancing Experience

For our presentation during the Carnival that we established for our Brazilian Dance class, we chose to do our parade performance on the theme of Water Pollution. It was a theme that we all agreed on because of the Orixias that we thought would be excellent to portray in the dance. The characters in the dance were all types of fishes such as a shark, clown fish, crab, turtle, beta fish, and a jellyfish. The two main characters in the dance were the two Orixias Omolu and the water goddess Iemanja.  We chose the theme of water pollution because we believed that it was a problem that the world is facing today and it also related to our dance moves and the Orixias.

 

            The story of out performance or the setup was about two major powers colliding and it affected the living things around them and in our case, the fish. Fish would be living normally in the ocean and then Omolu would come in and make the water around the fish dirty and eventually all the fish would later on die. Also having the predator (shark) swim around the ocean without his food (fish), really made it hard for him to survive so he also died as the fish did. Then when the fish were all dead, Iemanja came in and fought with Omolu and killed her and then she revived all the fish. Then once the fish came back, they started worshiping her.

 

            We were able to put the whole story line into our performance very well mostly because of the dancing styles that samba brings. Since samba can be danced with many styles of music, it was easy for us to find a song that would work with our performance. For the dance we chose the song “She Came Along” by Kid Cudi.  The song does not relate to the story line but the beat or the bass line really did help us out because of the movements we were doing. It all contributed greatly and the dance was able to work well with the song.

 

            My job for the Sub-Zero group was the job of looking for our locations in which we practiced and where we had our meetings. For the most part we had our very first meetings at the University Village and then in Diego’s apartments. At first we began to talk about how everything is going to be. Since we just needed to talk, I decided to go to places in which we were able to talk about how we were going to make the dance. Once we began actually practicing the dances, we practiced at the UCR dorms. After getting the entrance, we began to practice at the actual parade route after we were shown how the parade was going to be. In the last few days, all our meetings were at the actual parade route. That was basically my whole participation in the group other than buying some shirts for some group members and giving a few ideas for the dance.

 

            We had to cut some things from the performances in order to make it shorter because at the practice parade it was too long. But everything came out perfect for the final performance. I had a lot of fun in the class because I would never pictured myself actually dancing in a parade in front of people in school. It was a new experience for me because I was usually a very shy person. Being able to dance during lecture was very enjoying because in the beginning I did not know what I was getting myself into, but throughout the course I guess I could say that I actually changed. Before I went into class I basically only knew about Brazil from their soccer based views and the land of very beautiful woman. But I was able to learn more about the carnivals and their whole traditions and gods. It was very interesting. The whole course ended with a bang because of the parade we did. I would actually laugh if anybody told me that I would dancing in a parade in front of the school months before. But I truly believe that dancing in with the whole class and being able to enjoy it made actually get enough strength in order to dance in front of the school. Overall it was really great class that I enjoyed, I am not just saying that because I would like to get a good grade for my final. But I really mean it that I had a lot of fun and I met a lot of people and it was great experience, I loved it.

Choreography: SAVE THE OCEAN!!!!!

The theme of the performance was water pollution and its effects on animals in the ocean. In addition to the theme, we included characters/animals like jellyfish, crab, clownfish, turtle, shark, beta fish, and the two main Orixas which were Lemanja who represented the water goddess and Omolu who represented water pollution and the spread of diseases. The theme we chose and the dance moves we came up with represented how water pollution can cause damage to fishes or animals in the water, and how we need to save the ocean by not throwing trash or substances that may cause harm. In my opinion, we interrogated the theme and our dance movements successfully.

As a group, we decided to pick a song that had a good rhythm and beat that we could dance to. We used “She Came Along” by Kid Cudi. Even though the song did not have a specific meaning, it worked well with the dance moves and we felt comfortable with the song. At the same time, in order to represent each character in the story, we used bright colored t-shirts with the name of our fish painted on them in order to distinguish ourselves from each other. For example; yellow or orange would be for the clownfish and black would be for the Orixa Omolu. In the use of props, we chose to have signs in the end in order to spread the message in which said, “Save the Ocean”. Additionally, Omolu carried a bag with trash in order to give to each fish as the spread of pollution. One of the main gestures that we used were hand and arm movements such as stroking or bringing our arms up and down to make it look and symbolize waves.

My job as a choreographer was to position the characters in their spots. I decided to incorporate some African dance moves that I had performed in my elementary school dealing with swaying of the hands, bringing hands together going from side to side and the movement of hips and feet in the direction of half circles. Additionally, we added water movements like stroking of the arms to represent swimming and positioning our hands like bowls and moving from side to side as if we were holding water. As well, we incorporated the movement in which you bring your hand down and then up, wiggling your fingers in order to represent waves. Furthermore, while practicing the dance routine it occurred that we had been making a lot of circles and we were repeating some of the same routines, I decided to take away some part of the movement and change it. Instead of going in a lot of circles, the Orixas would step in the front and have their battle and the rest would line up with each other on whichever side they are positioned and do a form of line dance in order to switch sides. As for the dancing of the Orixas, I had positioned both of them to be in the middle because they were the main characters that would explain the significance of the theme and send a message through their dances. The group decided that both Orixas should be fighting/battling because since Lemanja is the goddess of water, she protects the fishes and the overall ocean and Omolu the god of sickness spreads diseases to the ocean and pollutes the water in bringing trash and death. In Omolu’s dance, she gave each fish a piece of trash in conveying that they are being polluted and eventually die. The shark on the other hand, does not die of pollution but of starvation, because as the food cycle, all of the food that the shark eats are dead. After a few arrangements of the dance routine, we finally decided that it was good. Our dance performance clearly stated the theme of water pollution and demonstrated how it can kill living organisms in the ocean.

If we were to continue with our dance performance, I think I would incorporate some hip-hop or merengue into it, because it would look interesting to see different kinds of dancing all in one show and it would be an interesting idea to try out. I do not think that I would subtract anything from the dance, but to let each character in the group have their 5 minute part or solo so the audience could also get a feel of what the character is all about.

Overall, from the experience that I have gained in taking this class and through the explanations of the history of Brazil and dance moves, I did not know what Orixas were and that they had their own dance movements in order to represent themselves. As well, through the different forms of movements like walking or sitting; how they can be incorporated as kinds of dance maneuvers. At the same time, I did not know about the different dances in Brazil like Samba or Capoeria. Furthermore, I learned that teamwork and sharing ideas can help everyone understand what they are doing, as well to come up with a dance that everyone had fun making up. Additionally, I witnessed that if you put effort and have fun in what you do, you feel more confident and you bring out your true identity. I also learned that you can integrate Brazilian dance to any kind of music depending on the rhythm and the beat it has. Dance is a way to express oneself and spread a message through movements and body language. I had fun getting involved and experiencing a new culture and how a true Brazilian parties!

Picture up top: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3262/2684254993_259226a18b.jpg?v=0