Phew!

It's all over, finito, done and dusted, finished. I never thought I'd get there but the thesis is complete - 6000 words on Interactivity in Dance Performance - and not only is it finished but it's finished early. It's not actually due in until Friday. I really am living up to this 'mature student' tag, in the past I'd still be up at 5am struggling to find printer ink on the day of the hand in.

Worst thing is I can't even celebrate with a glass of vino as we're all out and the shops are shut. Rubbish.

Flash! Bang! Whatta picture...

I've just uploaded a whole load of photos from the DISI party at the end of March and Club Noir at the start of June to my flickr page. Go and have a gander and a giggle.

Also, the first showing of 'As the sparks fly upwards...' went really well. It wasn't a huge turnout but the feedback was invaluable and I can't wait till September to do it for real.

Dissertations, Decorating and Dancing

It's all go at uni at the moment with the first draft of our dissertation in and awaiting feedback before the final is due mid July. It is driving me slightly mad at the moment because my academic writing has never been a strong point. Granted, I do always manage to pull it out the bag but it doesn't really come naturally to me so I need to get my head down and get stuck into it.

As always, the practical side of the work is rolling out no problem so I suppose I should be pleased about that. If you want an idea of what I'm producing have a look at Confessions of a Screendance Student. The work will be on display in Dundee this September as well as (hopefully) being programmed at The Arches at some point this winter as well.

Alasdair's been busy too re-decorating his flat. His flat isn't in the best area but it's a good flat with 2 bedrooms and a front and back garden which is great during the summer. Even better now he's got rid of the dodgy 80s decor that's been there since he moved in.

Finally, Lisa, Alasdair and I went to Club Noir this month for some old-fashioned, dressed up dancing. I'd been told that it was full of fag hags in their underwear so, of course, I went wearing my sparkly pants on the look out for new gay best friends to dance with. I wasn't disappointed. Lee, Lewis and Ricky certainly fit the bill and even came prepared with a feather for my sparkly headband - it was meant to be!

Amsterdam Part Deux

Our second trip to Amsterdam in the last six months was even better than the first. As well as being my first time there during the summer it was also my friends, Yasmin and Adam's, joint Hen and Stag do, or 'HAG do' as I like to call it.

The hotel was a huge improvement on the last one simply because there was room to move around without having to climb on the bed or wait til the other person passes. It could have done without the clogs or coos on the walls though!



We spent most of our time watching the world go by, giggling like schoolgirls, drinking freshly squeezed orange juice and wandering around the canals feeling jealous of anyone in a boat.

Saturday night was spent at Club 11, a bar/club/restaurant situated on the 11th floor of a dis-used postal building, which you have to enter by a lift complete with grafitti and ghetto blaster. I think it's the only club I've been to with windows (the only one I remember anyway) which meant we had great nights views across the city and an extremely early glimmer of sunrise towards the end of the night. Gorgeous.



Sunday was supposed to be sports day for the Hag do but the blistering heat combined with varying degrees of hangovers put paid to that. Instead we decided to laugh at Yas in her Hen gear and 'interesting' articles in the Candian Cosmo (apparently women are worse drivers than men because they are 'foolish' and 'apply make up'!!!) and just generally laze about... Can anyone spot a theme here?

All in all it was a relaxing weekend which is lucky because I have a presentation in front of the examination board on Monday for uni and need to have my wits about me.

Burning and Burning

What a week it's been. In uni I've been busy editing the multi-camera shoot for Scottish Dance Theatre's latest piece DOG which is actually a lot of fun. In one viewer you have the choice of footage from the four different cameras and in the other you see your current selection. It's very tactile and very similar to choreography in that you pick the best view of each section to show the audience. Anyway, it's all good fun but not when you only have two days to learn it, do it and get it onto DVD for Scottish Dance Theatre to show to a festival in Athens. And even less fun when you're left to your own devices to do it. To say I was feeling a little un-supported is putting it mildly. Anyway thanks to Derrick's Linton and Blackie and a marathon DVD burning session today it's all done and they better like it!

Back to my own stuff next week learning Isadora. Woo hoo!

Other burning news. My pee is on fire again. Not funny at all. Back to the doc's tomorrow to get it sorted. I'm getting really fed up with it now, it seems like every few months I have cystitis. It used to go away after a few hours and a dose of Cystopurin but not it lasts at least a week and medicine only takes the sting out of it slightly.

After that pleasant news... I also finished a new film this week (yes, that's how busy I've been!). These Things Happen was filmed at Angus Balbernie's creative lab a few weeks ago and at first I was struggling with all the footage of very different improvisations and trying to figure out how to put them all together but I had a lightbulb moment at the start of the week and decided to do the minimum amount of editing. The footage I decided to work with was filmed on my mobile and the only thing I did to it was to rotate some of the scenes that were filmed in portrait so the film feels like it's rotating but the dancers stay standing. It's going to be screened at The Dance House's Re:Surface event next Wednesday evening. If you'd like to come along, get in touch and I'll send you an invite.

That's all for now.

The Results Are In...

And they're good. Very Good.

I finally picked up my PG Cert results today and I've done not too badly at all. I've managed to get a B2 which comes under the bracket of 'Very Good', an A would be 'Excellent' but I'm happy with being 'Very Good'. My mum, however, had a different reaction. Upon hearing my good news, her first question was, "so what do you have to do to improve on that?".

Typical.

Crimbo Catch Up

Ok, ok, I've been very lax recently with my blog writing and I'm sorry. Lots of things have happened but that also means I've been very busy. Since my last post I've been to Amsterdam, finished (and passed) the first part of my Masters, Christmas shopped on my tightest budget ever and celebrated Alasdair's birthday in style.

Our four days in Amsterdam were great, strolling along the canals, drinking hot chocolate and stuffing ourselves with more dough, cheese and ham than we could handle. The only downside was our ridiculously tiny room. Seriously tiny.



The other minor downside was our incredibly loud French neighbours, every night at around 1am they'd start screaming and running around the room. Not ideal for a romantic getaway. Anyway, on the upside Christmas decorations don't get put up until 12th night in Amsterdam so we were able to actually get excited about the whole thing rather than having it forced upon us since mid-October.

After that I found out I'd passed the PG Cert part of my Masters so now have a few more letters to tag on at the end of my name! Also on the work front, Derrick Linton, one of the Time Based Art students on my course, very kindly came down to Glasgow to a freezing day in the Arches to take our pictures for the new website. I'm busy designing the website right now and it'll be online in the new year but you can have a wee preview of the images on my myspace page (the link is opposite).

There have also been a few good nights in and out in the past month and the Subby was having a Morgan's Spiced night on Friday which to be honest could have gone either way but we decided to chance it and go along for Alasdair's birthday (4 days before Christmas - nightmare!). Good decision. Everyone was being handed Elvis style gold aviators as they entered and Mischief-La-Bas were there doing a press routine and taking polaroids of everyone. The music was pretty good as well and Sarah, Jen and I went mental for 5 minutes while they played MIA (AMAZING!!).



Well it's now Christmas and we'll be having our usual family day tomorrow full of pressies, booze and possibly karaoke - Alasdair doesn't know what he's let himself in for! Have a great one, enjoy it and please remember it's the thought that counts... after all, I'm a student again!

xx

...and relaaaax!

Phew! It's all done and dusted now, printed off on fancy paper, burned onto discs and emailed to my course leader one day ahead of the deadline. I really am a mature student now. The course is divided into 3 units, PG Cert, PG Dip and MSc, so that's the first one done. Providing I haven't made a total mess of it (fingers crossed) I will be able to add PG Cert to the end of my name in a few weeks time. Better order in the new stationery now!

My Future Mother-In-Law, Research Woes and a New Toy

After being informed by Alasdair that his mother wanted a word with me about a Christmas night out for the girls in the family I gave his mum a call and was greeted by, "Hi Susan, this is your future mother-in-law, how are you?". A bit of a shock for both of us! Me and Alasdair that is. Apparently his mum has it all mapped out for us.

I've spent the rest of the week winding Alasdair up about it almost being Christmas and how he better produce a decent rock and speak to my dad first or it's a no go. Obviously I'm joking but it's got to a point where he's not sure which is always fun.

Apart from that, this week I've been struggling uni-wise. Struggling to determine exactly what it is I'm researching at uni. Initially I came up with the idea of anonymity giving people freedom but since discovering that all my research is anecdotal (not ideal for a Masters) I have decided to approach the course from a much more practical viewpoint. Since leaving uni (the first time round) 6 years ago I have worked on a project to project basis, making live dance and dance films just because I'm interested in them. They've always been inspired by music and a vision I've had for an end project but now that I'm having to create things from a research perspective I've been struggling. This week I've decided to tackle my course from a practical point of view, taking on lots of mini projects in order to experiment with a notion of the camera being another dancer, showing the viewer what a dancer sees, giving an 'inside view' of the movement. As a result I'm feeling a lot more positive about the whole thing and can't wait to get going with lots of practical work.

Finally a huge thank you to my parents who made Christmas come early today by giving me a MacBook. I can't wait to get going on my uni work now... as soon as I can tear myself away from t'interweb!

Back to School

Yes, that's right in a moment of madness I accepted an offer to return to uni and do an MSc in Screendance. I found out about the course when an audience member mentioned it after seeing Dark Matter in April. I originally thought it'd be a 6 week intensive that I could pop along to, brush up on my editing skills and then get back to work. It was only when I got chatting to the course leader that I realised the intensity of it all. Not only is it a Masters degree but it's a full year, not an academic year, so I'm signed up to this until Sept 2008.

The course itself will introduce me to new software and techniques and has the opportunity for me to access the Dundee College dancers to create new work. There are only 2 of us full time on the Screendance strand and one other part time but we've been teamed up with Time Based Artists, Sound Artists, Illustrators and Animators as 'Media Arts and Imaging' so there's a range of people to work with on different things.

I'll be spending this year looking into interactive software and it's use within a non-dance context to create dance. It'll all become clear soon enough but basically it means lots of hours in tech suites programming for different eventualities then taking it into the real world, finding out it doesn't work the way I want it to and going back to square one. There will also be a choreographed piece using the software just in case.

It's all very exciting and I'm already noticing little things in my work that could be changed easily and make it much slicker so I'm off to do my first assignment now... the DVD of the last Blaze & FireBox performance.