Internship
During the summer before senior year, I did an internship with The Poetic Dance Theater Company in Richmond. I drove up two to three times a week and helped out with whatever the company needed at the time, which eventually turned into participating in their performances.
7/25/2015
The first week of my internship was very exciting, especially because I had no idea what to expect. The only downside in sight so far is that I have to drive an hour to get to Richmond in order to do my internship. Even though it has only been a week, my time was packed. I made costumes for the upcoming show, edited a book the company was working on, and even made two covers for some books on photoshop. My week came to a total of 15 and a half hours.
8/14/2015
Well the second week of my internship was just as exciting as the first week, in fact almost more exciting. I did more editing this week to the books which the company puts out. I really making edits to the books because I feel very professional. Natica, my supervisor offered me something really wonderful too: she asked if I wanted to dance with the company in the performance! I went to my first rehearsal this week and everyone was very nice. I can’t wait for all future rehearsals with them. I know I will learn a lot! I did a total of 6 hours this week.
8/21/2015
I focused more on rehearsals this week instead of editing and photoshop. I learned two dances and began learning a third. These dances are done to prize winning poems written by people who submitted them almost a year ago. I did not realize how big of a deal this performance was. It turns out that the show is at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. My time during rehearsal added up to a total of 6 hours this week.
8/28/2015
I continued my rehearsals this week and I learned another dance. We tried on some costumes and I can’t wait to see how they look onstage. Just about every single one is incredibly sparkly. I also learned more about the company this week. Apparently everyone there has been dancing together for upwards of twenty years. They shared all of these old photographs with me of themselves from when they were much younger. It feels amazing to be a part of a group which has gone through so much together and has so much experience. I completed a total of 8.5 hours this week.
9/4/2015
During rehearsal this week, I was asked to stand in for another dancer. This dancer cannot make it to certain rehearsals so I have become her understudy of a sort. I discovered that it is really useful to know everybody’s part in a dance because not only can I help out when people are missing, but it helps me to understand my own part in the dance better. There is one dance which we do that involves a lot of swing dancing and charleston that I am very worried about. The dance doesn’t have much structure and the ending is a bit of a mess. The dancers are getting kind of frustrated about it, so I am determined not to add to this discomfort. I did a total of 7 hours this week.
9/11/2015
I felt pretty good about myself this week during rehearsals. We had a bit of a crisis: none of the dancers-- or the director-- could remember the dance! I was the only one who could remember the dance. I felt like I really was able to help out the team as a whole and do my part by refreshing everyone’s memory. I suggested as well that we video that particular dance on a phone so that we do not run into the same unfortunate issue again. I hope that I can continue to help out in rehearsal. I had a total of 7 hours of my internship this week.
9/18/2015
Well, this is my last week of my internship before the show. We had our dress rehearsal this week and I enjoyed it a lot. It looks like the entire show is really coming together. I am very excited for the upcoming performance. I was asked to do a solo too so I’m working extra hard to get the dance prepared for this Saturday. My mom is helping me choreograph it, I am just hoping I can manage to pull it off. I did a total of 8 hours this week.
9/25/2015
This was not exactly a week of my internship, it was more like a single day. Saturday was the day of the performance at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. So much went wrong behind the scenes, but it was incredibly amazing how the show went perfectly onstage. Despite late curtains and missing people, we pulled it off wonderfully and the audience loved it. We had a kind of after party on Monday where we watched the video of our dance and talked about how fun it had been. I had a wonderful time working on this internship and I feel incredibly lucky to have been involved. I completed 6 hours this week, and a total of roughly 64.25.
The Logs
Closing Report
When I first began this internship, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. When my supervisor, Natica Angilly, described it to me, she mentioned all kinds of options which I could be doing, but she did not tell me specifically what I would be doing. By the end of the internship I had learned so much which I had not expected. My daily responsibilities changed throughout the course of the internship. At the beginning, I was doing a lot of editing and photoshop in order to put short books together for publication. In this process, I learned about professional editing and what kinds of marks editors used on paper to imply certain corrections. In addition, I learned a great deal about making covers and what kind of color contrasts made a book look better and stand out to a buyer. I even worked a little bit with costume production, a job which led me into the second phase of my internship. This internship turned out to be very special because I actually got to rehearse and perform with the Poetic Dance Theater Company. These biweekly rehearsals taught me more than how to dance better, I also learned a great deal about teamwork and show business from them. On a daily basis, I was experiencing the importance of working with other people to put something much bigger than myself together. Even on the day of the performance itself, just about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong-- yet it all happened backstage and the show itself gave the audience no hint that catastrophes were taking place. Another obstacle which occurred during the internship was remembering one particular dance. For some reason, none of the dancers were able to remember the second half of this dance and they were becoming very frustrated with each other since everyone was saying something different. Up until this point, I had tried to be pretty quiet and easy going during rehearsals because I did not want to get in anybody’s way. At this point, however, I spoke up. I was able to remember the entire dance once I shared this knowledge with everyone else, the frustration subsided and people were very grateful. I suggested that we record our rehearsals on a cell phone in the future just in case everyone forgot again because that way, we could just watch ourselves do it. I was pleased to have been of help to everyone there and a little relieved to have avoided a conflict. I feel very fortunate to have been given this opportunity with the Poetic Dance Theater Company. Everyone at the company has asked me to come back and visit, even to dance with them again, and I sincerely hope I get to do so. The connections I have made in the poetry and dance world would have been unknown to me if I had not gotten the chance to be involved in such a wonderful festival. I know that I will use the skills that I acquired over the past few weeks for the rest of my life.
Week 1- 7/25/2015: 15.5 hours
Week 2- 8/14/2015: 6 hours
Week 3- 8/21/2015: 6 hours
Week 4- 8/28/2015: 8.5 hours
Week 5- 9/4/2015: 7 hours
Week 6- 9/11/2015: 7 hours
Week 7- 9/25/2015: 8 hours
Week 8- 9/28/2015: 6 hours
TOTAL: 64 hours