So, for the next few months you'll all be getting a lot of Genki-related posts, largely because it's taking up a large chunk of my free time. But today I thought I'd give you an update on some choreography-related decisions.
Sasha and I have the song we'll be using to choreograph the Lost Voice vs. Pirates dance-off, and it's pretty epic. The original version of the song is about four minutes long, which is way too much for us to use, so I ended up downloading an editing program and making a few attempts at cutting out the excess. I made six different versions, and we're pretty certain we can use the sixth one as the final product. It was kind of exciting to find that I could cut and splice the music on my own; I've never done anything like that before.
So, at this point Sasha and I have the music, but we still can't do a whole lot because we aren't entirely sure how many dancers we'll have or whether all of them are physically capable of dancing. I don't mean to say that we think some of them are bad dancers; the issue is that one of our cast members got hit by a car, and we don't know how mobile he'll be over the next few months. He's doing mostly okay, but there are some problems with his legs. Until we know whether he'll still be involved in the musical, we can't really make the dance. It sounds a little mercenary to talk about another ALT being hit by a car while thinking of it only in terms of how it'll impact the dance you're choreographing, but that's kind of the mindset I'm in at the moment. I've sort of got blinders on because it's going to take everything we've got to put this thing together in time. So while I'm hoping that Guy is doing alright, I also really want to know whether we need to work around his injuries or not.
Besides getting the music worked out, Sasha and I have broken the song into chunks and decided what kind of action we want in each section. I think the plan we've got at the moment is a very good one, but it's going to take a lot of choreographing. There will most likely be a section where we'll have six pairs of people fighting one-on-one, and I don't think we want them all doing the same thing at the same time, so that means we have to choreograph six different fights at once. We'll see if that ends up being feasible...
Well, I didn't originally intend to get into so much detail about the things that are worrying me right now. My main objective was to share the music that we'll be using for the dance off. It's a pretty cool song; I've been listening to it a lot, and I enjoy it more now than the first time I heard it. The song is called "Why (Keep Your Head Down)" and it's by Touhou Shinki/TVXQ!. We're using the Japanese version, but I'm giving you a link to the Korean version because the video has lots of fire and some explosions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djJb5iSL0Do
Something interesting I've noticed while watching an excessive number of Japanese and Korean boy bands on YouTube (as research, of course) is that while both genres use English here and there in their songs, K-pop (Korean pop) songs tend to use English that is grammatically correct and which forms a logical idea. They also have excellent pronunciation. Although their songs are as auto-tuned as American pop, I'm starting to suspect that K-pop singers may have a considerable amount of talent. Many of the ones I know of sing in Korean, English and Japanese, and they are amazing dancers as well.
As luck would have it, my YouTube research led me to a song that we decided to use as the finale for the show. The directors were pretty evenly divided between two songs, either of which could've worked but neither of which was exactly what we needed. While we were talking, I remembered that one of the bands I had been looking at had a song called "Neverland". I showed everyone the video, and in the end we all were in favor of using it. This was partly because we'd been talking about the subject for nearly an hour and everyone just wanted to go home, but I also think it's because it is an excellent song. The English in this song is also very clear and correct, which is pretty cool. There's a line that's half in Korean and half in English, and which to me sounds like they're saying "Drunk in Neverland". The others mostly thought it sounded like "F*cking Neverland". I'm pretty sure that by the final show, the cast will be singing along using the more offensive lyrics, of course. Anyhow, the song is very catchy, and the dancing is amazing, so do check this one out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW8UW4yAKEU&feature=fvst
Well, that's about all I've got to say about Genki at the moment. Expect more news, and likely some more rants, as the musical season continues.
No comments:
Post a Comment