Parade Group: Shih Chen University

They came today for an introduction to the parade and pageant, which included a personal tour with Gordan, Nina and JJ showing them fire dancing, paper mache Akin's giant float (pictured above) and start brainstorming ideas for the pageant.

Organization: Shih Chen University
Group: 20 First Year College Students, Design Department, Architecture
Assignment: 1) Ask them to do whatever I need for the pageant, they will live, eat, and sleep at Dream Community for 10 days 2) As of right now, they will make the flower for the pageant, make robot costumes and be in the pageant as robots. . .but also or instead be animals. . .not sure yet.

Today I gave them an assignment to design a flower with very specific measurements that would have the movement to grow, breathe, die and come alive again. They will present their ideas on Tuesday, then me and the other artists will design the flower based on their ideas. It's interesting process that I am into.

Parade Group: Chong Yi Elementry

Organization: Chong Yi Elementry (in Lu Zhou!)
Group: 5th - 6th Grade; 60 kids in samba costumes and 30 samba drummers
Assignment: 1) Design and make a template for cute samba costume that matches the samba drummer costume from last year. Parents will make the costume in one week 2) Design a cute visual element that will represent their school. Their school logo also has the image of a sprouting seed. 5 adults will come to Dream Community 3 days to make the puppet.

day 58: this is what parades are about

tomas, elena and bernvard

tonight was a great night: everyone dancing to music, little kids hitting each other with foam, paint on my hands, coffee, people visiting the workshop around midnight, laughing, giant butterflies, spontaneous synchronized choreography, stinky tofu, chocolate, conversations in 4 languages (spanish, french, mandarin and english), singing, puppets, and so on. this is what parades are about, i'm glad it's starting to finally feel this way.

the pageant: version 2.1

Kristi pointing, Kole behind her head (with Sun Son theater), Loenson (director), Bernvard (a new artist from Germany) and JJ.

another meeting yesterday . . . it was supposed to be shorter, but including the ad hock meetings, like this one, it made our end time around 2PM, just 3 hours shy of last week. so the director looked at our proposals and whittled it down to a beautiful, not complicated, dramatic, abstract and impressive production. (the robots and robot flower made the cut) It is basically an emotive and experiential piece with lots of singing, dancers/drummers in the dozens (including 100 belly dancers), fire dancers, fire works, giant projectors, voice overs, some puppets (including 50 animals) and hydraulics. This meeting here we are actually deciding what type of hydraulics would best work for the flower. Sometimes I catch myself in complete disbelief that this is all really happening.

Siou Fong Elementry: DONE!

1 parade group down, four more to go! in addition the potential of more groups, puppets for the pageant, final touches on the turtle and of course my own parade costume.

day 57: moon festival

the full moon


the moon cakes

this past week has been much talk about the moon festival, which officially was celebrated last night on the eve of a full moon. it happens the 15th of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar. everyone has actually been buzzing about it for weeks now. I wasn't quite sure what all the hoopla was about. But in this last week I found myself to eat lots and lots and lots moon cakes, the smell of bar-b-que in every direction, the majority of folks (not including Dream Community) going to their hometowns for a 4-day weekend with family and eating lots of moon cakes. the mid-Autumn festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, the other being the Chinese Lunar New Year. Last night a few of us took a little break and went for a walk up the mountain near Dream Community. We rested our bums to gaze at the bright bright moon, ate moon cakes (big surprise) and pamelos. it was nearly perfect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival

Public Workshop: sweet little muffin

a gem! I helped her parents make the turtle costume for her today. I decided to make costumes that matched the giant float I made. Also I like that the turtle is a symbol of long life here and I think it is lovely in terms that the theme is "hope."


I can't handle how sweet this is, can you imagine an entire turtle brigade of sweet peanuts like this one? In an earlier blog I stated that how great it was to see people taking pictures here in Taiwan always posing with the peace sign, it actually stands for "V" for victorious.