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.