Kahaani First Reflection
Kahaani First Reflection
From my Kahaani Signup Form:
I want to be a part of Kahaani because I would love to take this chance to make my love for dance count towards a pressing, global issue. In the past, I have used my Culturama experiences to count towards events like Move to Make a Difference, and this opportunity not only allows me to contribute more to global communities our school partners with, but also to learn and immerse myself in a new culture. I also feel that dance can be a great force for empowerment as well as to foster respect, appreciation, and understanding between individuals and between cultures, and I feel that Kahaani is a real manifestation of these things.
Kahaani is organised by Kolkata GC, a student-led organization that partners with Voice of World NGO in India who provide education, rehabilitation and shelter to the underprivileged community in Kolkata, India, with a special focus on the mentally/physically disabled community, children, and women. I hope that through Kahaani, I will get to learn more about this issue, and how it impacts the lives of the underprivileged and differently-abled community in India.
Through Kahaani, I would also like to continue my engagement with other global cultures like I did through Culturama. Even though I don’t have experience with styles like classical Indian dance, I feel that this is an amazing opportunity to begin to understand another culture in a fun and meaningful way. More technically, I would like to improve my dance angles and improve my control of energy in order to achieve perfect, graceful shapes for the dance.
IFP: Is Conflict Always Good? Reflection and Responses
Watch the reflection here!
IFP: The Lego Activity
The Lego activity (building a structure in silence while each person had an assigned individual agenda to complete) complicated collaboration attempts because of how each individual was focused on their own task, rather than paying attention to other people’s tasks and how they might interfere with others. My own assigned role (the leader, to help ensure everyone completed their tasks, which felt like a daunting task for me) helped me figure out halfway into the game that we needed to pay attention to others’ tasks to succeed. If one person was consistently changing the bottom four layers of the structure, everyone else needed to leave that part of the structure alone and adapt. We needed to note this without talking, showing the importance of awareness of others and consistently thinking about the greater good, especially within collaboration. It was because we didn’t do this that the goal wasn’t achieved in the end.
The discussion we had after the activity when we all revealed our roles helped us figure out these truths, and we started to see how each of our individual roles would influence other tasks. When reflecting, we each took turns to share our roles and our feelings about them, and I actually feel like the discussion helped to strengthen relationships between us as we listened to each other and saw the activity from their perspective.
This activity revealed a lot about the nature of collaboration, and that everyone always has their own individual agenda, however, the key to collaboration is awareness of others’ agenda and then adapting your own to fit theirs in order to achieve a greater good. Compromise, assuming positive intentions (the other people usually only interfere with your activities to achieve their own agenda, never out of malicious intent for you) and awareness of self and others proved the key to succeeding, so in the future, these are the things that I would like to focus on in order to become a more effective team player.
TOK Arts Day Performance
You can visit this link to watch the performance and hear a little bit about the piece, it’s context, and how the author’s circumstances might influence the way we perceive art.
Video Transcript:
This piece is called ‘Sicilian Blues’ and was composed by Hiromi Uehara, who is a Japanese jazz composer and pianist.
Why did you choose this piece?
I chose to play this piece because I think it really exemplifies how understanding the cultural and social context behind a composer can really enrich a piece. Uehara, as a woman and in the world of jazz outside of America represents how the jazz movement has spread. The genre of jazz was born in the black community in New Orleans in the early 20th century, with roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and it rose up as a cultural force against oppression and racism. As a counterculture movement, it’s really powerful and beautiful, despite the complexity of jazz music theory.
More on the Jazz movement
Ironically, though, the music theory world and the jazz world are pretty elitist. It’s hard to get in there, it can be quite cold and unforgiving. I think, though, that it’s a testament to the universality of music that a piece such as Sicilian Blues can be considered beautiful despite all this. And, of course, there are still people that discriminate and look down upon the Jazz movement for its history, no matter how wonderful the music is. I think that really goes to show how culture and social values really impact the way a piece is viewed.
Music Theory, and the Universality of Music
I think it’s obvious to all of us that music is much more than notes on a page. People who understand music theory might see the artistic value, they’re able to do almost like an autopsy on a piece to figure out why it’s so beautiful, but you don’t need a deep understanding of music theory to appreciate a piece. That also relates to how you don’t need a social context to appreciate a piece either. This is why music is universal. However, music theory and social context can really enrich a piece in terms of experience, despite the fact that it’s not necessary to know. I think that this complex universality is a key part of all art and all life, and is what makes Music such a fulfilling art.