Happy Birthday JP!!!!

Just wanted to put this up... It's my younger brothers 17th Birthday! He's quite possibly one of the most intelligent, kind and talented 17 year olds I know, and I'm extremely proud to have him as a little brother. Every Day he, along with the rest of my family, are such an inspiration to me and I'm so thankful to have such an amazing family. I love JP to pieces and even though he may be remotely taller than me, he will always be my baby brother. Have a good one, JP!

Here's a snapshot of probably one of the greatest home videos of all time ... but you'll probably never see it (unless granted permission by him, which I expect is highly unlikely)

On that note, I would also like to make a shout-out to Liam Mower who's birthday is also today... let's just say the fact that we haven't met yet is troubling because I'm pretty sure since the age of 15 we're destined to be best friends//dance partners//something like that. So, with that said:

My First Article with Her Campus!!!!!!!!! (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

MY FIRST ARTICLE YIPPEEEEE

Click!!!!^^^^^ 

Sorry for the abuse of the exclamation points, but my first article with the online campus magazine that I recently joined called Her Campus is officially up and I'm oozing with excitement! 

It's a bit ironic because my first week I was given the topic of "Health/Fitness" and lets just say I'm a yoga-doing, dance-class-taking, walking-across-campus-over-and-over-again kind of workout girl.... So of course, I wrote about how you can stay physically active, without actually going to the gym. I am clearly very lazy when I'm not in dance haha. Anyways, please check it out, it would be super awesome! 

It is my first article, so be nice ;) Also if anyone has suggestions for what I should write about next (note: it doesnt have to be about health/fitness) please let me know! I'm open to ideas!! 

One more thing....

I realized that I've been terrible at posting on Fridays, so I'm deciding to take off the commitment of posting a blog every Friday.  I feel like everything fun happens on the weekend anyways and it's more exciting to write about the fun things that happen on the weekend rather than the boring stuff that happens during the weekdays... am I right?  SO with that said, expect a post from me on Mondays now instead of Fridays.

Oh wait, scratch that. Expect a random post from me any day of the week... it's a bit more spontaneous, which in reality, is a bit more... me.

Macaroons, Dance Concerts, and the Importance of Live Art

Happy Friday!

It's been a great week so far, both academically and physically. I've been having some really great dance classes, I got two midterms back that I did extremely well on, and I did an interview for a summer job that also went well.

Oh, I also had my first macaroon ever so that was an experience. In fact as I type this up right now, I'm chowing down on a hazlenut flavoured one and drinking a cup of tea. I'm feeling fancy fancy freeeee (although I probably shouldn't be eating a dessert since my stomach isn't feeling too great. we'll call this sacrifice)

Anyways, I think the main thing I want to blog about is the importance of live performances. In my last post, I talked about how I was home to watch my younger brother perform with his highschool, School of the arts. School of the Arts in San Francisco is a very Ballet and Modern based school, so their dance concert was mainly works of contemporary ballet, modern, and the occasional jazz pieces.  These kids are all in their teens-- from 15 years old to 18, and all of them have got such talent. My brother kicked some serious butt (of course I'm being biased, but let's be real here... he's an awesome dancer) and it was just so cool to see him dancing in something completely different from Billy...

Except I do have to make note of one of the pieces that kind of reminded me of a continuation of Billy's "Shadow Dance" right before "Grandma's Song".  This piece used interesting lighting to create shadows onstage, and of course my brother whos obviously a seasoned expert on shadow dancing, had an awesome little duet with another dancer where he used his hands to create shadows that fit with her shadow. It was pretty cool and probably would have been the result of Billy's shadow dance if he didn't see Grandma sifting through his private stuff.

There were loads of other talent on the stage as well, and I have to make note of these two dancers... both tall and both are red heads... These guys were featured quite a lot and boy can they move! holy man, I was shaking my head in awe. The two of them had a duet, and it was so epic and ginger. Not sure why there's the idea that gingers are "soulless" and "unfortunate" because honestly, after Ed Sheeran, Rupert Grint, Karen Gillan, Prince Harry (The list go on), and now those two kids..... I Beg to differ. Gingers ROCK.

So despite it being a great show, I think watching this show and watching my younger brother perform was kind of the inspiration behind my working hard in classes this week. Not to say I haven't been working hard in class, because I definitely do, but this week I had a different motivation behind me. After watching a live performance of dance, I was motivated to really work hard in classes so I can perform again. And I think it's really important, especially for artists, to constantly be exposed to live art. I'm really fortunate that the university I go to offers live performances weekly, whether it's a dance concert thesis, a live improv comedy club, or a jazz music night. Not only do you get a sense of inspiration and motivation while watching talented performers, you gain an even bigger appreciation and respect for the art. Don't you agree?

With that said, this weekend is going to be full of live performances: I'm seeing my friends dance in a student choreographed dance thesis, I'll be working on a dance-chemistry collaboration video, and then on monday I'll be attending a musical theatre night show in LA (with andy mientus and michael arden! I've only recently found out who they are, but my golly can they sing!) I'm so excited for these events and I love surrounding myself with such talented people who may have a different focus in the arts, but all have the same passion and drive. :D It makes me just want to embrace all of them in a lovely hug.

That's all for now! Lovely weekend to all and to all. xo

There's no place like home

Happy Saturday at 1:30am!

I am currently writing to you from my very own bed at my home in Half Moon Bay after a spontaneous trip from Irvine to surprise my brother for his first dance concert with SF School of the Arts.

It's been an incredibly stressful week-- I had another midterm that I didn't do as well as I hoped on (Yay BioSci!), a large rough draft of a bibliographical essay on Jerome Robbins, and another Dance History Quiz (which for some reason I had this strange false confidence while taking it... I guess writing "Martha Graham" and "Isadora Duncan" for every answer seemed about right in my mind at the time).   The first part of the week went by at an excruciating pace and I'm praising the fact that I won't have to worry about any exams till June. This was definitely a week I was wishing I was back on tour, especially after seeing my tour family the past weekend. I'm still struggling on adjusting back to student life, and I think it's taking me slightly longer than I thought.

Which again, is why I'm so so happy to be home. After the stress of midterms and papers, there's honestly nowhere I would rather be than here. I love being home.

Home to me is both tangible and intangible. It's tangible in the sense of it being a physical place you're referring to, aka your home that you grew up in. But over the course of years of living away from my physical, I realized that home can be more than just a physical house, but it can be a feeling.  Home is being surrounded by people who really love and care about you. And being back at the Viernes house, I'm getting both the tangible and intangible aspects of "home"-- it's overwhelming in the best way. I'm not saying that I'm not surrounded by people I love and care about at school (vice versa) because I am, and I couldn't be more thankful to have such lovely people in my life... It's just hard when everything you were once familiar with feels foreign again. I would go into greater detail, but given that it's almost 2 am, I might have to stop right about now

Midterms shmidterms and a mini Gatsby ramble

Happy Friday!

I'm lying. It's actually Thursday night, but no worries, by the time you read this, it will already be Friday.

It's been an exhausting week, and midterms have literally taken up every ounce of my time this week. After having a small taste of tour life all over again in San Diego with my Billy family, I had to return to the life of a college student.

And not just a college student... a college student in the midst of midterms, which is even worse.

I have one more midterm and a rough draft of a dance history essay to do still, but those aren't untill next week. So I obviously have time to blog, and watch The Great Gatsby at midnight tonight and get all the hours of sleep I lost over the week.

I'm doing a terrible job of trying to keep this blog up to date, but let me tell you I am making an effort!! I have drafts of different posts I started, I just haven't finished them yet. SEE PROOF:

 But I'll try to finish and post some of those during the week, or whenever this university mayhem is over.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Ah, 2 am. I am certainly not glad to see you again.
It's not Thursday anymore so I can officially say Happy Friday!

I just got back from seeing The Great Gatsby, and I thought it was pretty good! I'm not the greatest movie critic since I pretty much love all movies, but I figured i'll ramble a little on the movie:

I thought everyone did great performances of their characters. Leo was top notch, loved Carey for Daisy, and thought the people who played Tom Buchanan and Jordan Baker were incredible too (wish I got to see more of Jordan and Nicks relationship though...)! I want to give Tobey Maguire credit too because I think his performance was great as well....

but I honestly can't shake the Spiderman out of him. When he's narrating, I half expect him to start swinging from the rooftops in his Spidey Suit.

Also, please don't tell me I wasn't the only one who pictured Leo in Titanic scenes throughout this film.

The soundtrack is A++ . I'm all for the merging of different time periods in music, so I thought it sounded really cool. However, I'm still kind of iffy on actually seeing girls in flapper dresses dancing to Kanye West. I remember watching the trailer and not really knowing what to think about the mix of modern music in a scene thats supposed to be set in a 1920s time period...  I thought it added a really cool modern vibe to the scene, it's just... strange. It's kind of like how I feel on the Bates Motel show on A&E, (which is a modernized spinoff of Norman Bates in his early adolescent life), and it's set in contemporary time... It kind of throws you off when crazy Norman pull out his iPhone to type a text to his mother. Little modernized things like that just kind of take you out of the time period for a moment, and I guess it's slightly distracting. But, nevertheless, the soundtrack is awesome.

I can't NOT talk about the visual imagery in this film so here it goes:This movie SCREAMS Baz Luhrman. Even if you don't know who the man is, if you've seen Moulin Rouge, you would totally recognize the cinematography. Everything was so beautiful, and it was so visually stimulating, its like one big shiny DIAMOND. The lavish mansions and parties that Gatsby threw totally blew my imagination of what his parties were like out of the water. I found myself shaking my head in awe at the sights because his parties were even more elaborate and magnificent than I imagined. Hell, I want to go to a Gatsby party... There were moments in the way a scene was filmed that I could trace back as a similarity to Moulin Rouge, but of course, it IS Baz, so obviously there would be familiar moments. I feel like it would be really cool to watch in 3D, but I'm not really a fan of 3D movies.

 Anyways, I really want to re-read the book again and re-watch the film so I can analyze/recognize some differences and similarities between the film and the book. It's one of my favorite things to do with a book-turned-film. I almost always prefer the book to the movie, but I thought Baz did a unique take. I wouldn't say it was one of my favorites, and I'm not gonna lie, there was a couple moments in the film where I tuned out for a few seconds (I think it's because I was tired, not because the movie was boring) but for the most part, I liked what Baz did with it.

What did you think, Old Sport? (Let's not even begin to count how many times Old Sport gets said in the film. I can already see ideas popping up for possible movie games in the future...)

With that, I'm heading to sleep. Night, Old Sport!

Pre-Post Blog Post

Happy... Saturday!

I'm already failing at keeping up with my goal of getting a post out every Friday. It's Saturday morning, and I want to say I was productive last night, but in all honesty I was at Target picking up things I probably didn't need but tricked my mind into thinking I needed, drinking Irvine's quality boba tea, and trying to make a dance resume look like a regular resume for a summer job I'm applying for. Resume Help would be lovely.

I DID start a post though that was to be queued for Friday-- but hey I didn't finish that either! I'll try and get that done so I can post it as a belated Friday post... or it might just sit in my "Saved Drafts" folder for a while.

Anyways, I'm off to San Diego to visit and watch my lovely cast from Billy Elliot. It's a nice day, I'm sure it'll be a nice weekend, and I'm happy to spend some time with them again. I'll probably blog about it.

May the 4th be with you!


WAIT, quick little story about National Star Wars Day:

When I was in middle school, my friend Sam and I were absolutely obsessed with Star Wars that we wanted to create a day to appreciate and express our nerd love for it. We picked May 31st as our "national Star Wars Day." Not sure why, but I'm thinking it's because it was after my brothers birthday and we were planning on doing a Star Wars marathon or something of the sort on that day. So for a while we celebrated May 31st as national Star Wars Day until we were told that there was an actual National Star Wars Day (May 4th). I remember being really bummed out because we both thought we were super duper original with our idea for national Star Wars day, but when we heard the pun "May the 4th be with you," we laughed at the brilliance of the pun and accepted it then thought "why we didn't think of that?". Let's face it, it's a terribly good pun. :D

Anyways, with that said, Happy National Star Wars Day! and in case you missed it, you can always celebrate it on the 31st!