Hello! It feels like such a long time since I last posted. Last week in place of posting we had the opportunity to chat online with prospective students. I had the privilege of being in the international chat. It was lovely to meet you all and hear your questions about Wellesley! That day was quite the marathon day: chatting from 9-11am, classes from 11-4pm, making a backdrop for our ascenDance show and then dress rehearsal until nearly 11pm! So much gets done in days at Wellesley. Whenever I call my parents to tell them about my day my mom always exclaims, "All that happened in one day!?" But this is what makes life exciting, yes?
Awhile ago I promised to talk about ascenDance so now seems like an excellent time to do it. ascenDance is a contemporary ballet organization on campus. We're a young org; our founders Kimi and Jenna just graduated in the class of 2010. Basically ascenDance was created to increase dancing opportunities for contemporary ballet dancers of all levels and increase the campus's exposure to contemporary ballet. As an ascenDance policy, we don't audition so anyone who wants to be in ascenDance can participate. The other cool thing about ascenDance is that we really encourage students to present their own choreography. How it works is each person who wishes to choreograph chooses a piece of music and a cast of dancers. The choreographer holds rehearsals once a week up until the show teaching their choreography to their students. We do one main performance a semester but we are also often invited to guest perform in other shows on campus.
Our performance this semester was quite fun. We had an awesome theme: dances from around the world. Each choreographer chose a different culture to highlight and we ended up with Russian, French, African, Polish, Spanish and Chinese inspired dances. We also had a bunch of guest groups on campus come and perform too like an Irish step dance group, the Belly Dance Society, Wellesley College Dancers, Blue Jazz, Dance Collective, etc. In years past we've done a bunch of awesome shows too. Here's a link to a piece we performed last Fall which was called Rhapsody of the Undead and choreographed by our founder Kimi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvZUXg6ABTY We really like the Gaga…
And now for our place of the week: the arboretum. A few weeks ago we hit peak leaf season in the Northeast and the Wellesley College campus looked like painting with all of the gorgeous colored trees. One of the best places to enjoy these lovely fall colors on campus is the arboretum. The arboretum is the perfect place to have a picnic or do some outdoor studying. It's so tucked away into campus that you will literally forget that you are in the suburbs or close to Boston at all.
