Showing posts with label dance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dance. Show all posts

Monday, September 15, 2014

Experimenting with a new Video host

Everyone knows "Youtube"is for video! If you are interested in having multiple views so you can boast about how popular your video is then Youtube is the place to be. I recently heard about Wistia and decided to check it out. This is a video hosting site primarily for people who have web pages that promote products but there is a special offer that interests the hobby videomaker and that is to have a free account so videos can be linked to Facebook and Blogs.
I took some snippets of video at a recent event and edited them together - and making the snippets even shorter - just to try things out for myself.
I doubt if you will be too enamoured by the music - by being close to the large speakers I have very distorted sound - plus the sound from Korea and from Japan is very different to Western music.

I am happy with the quality of the video that I am getting from Wistia - uploaded from my MacPro as a Quicktime movie and converted by Wistia. I hope you find the video interesting. The Gold Coast, which is 75klm South of Brisbane is home to people who originated in many different countries. Approximately 33% are from places other than Australia so we have a very rich mix of cultures. Wonderful!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Culture on the 'Coast

I have done so many things this past week that to write a story about what I have seen and done actually stops me in my tracks! Where to begin!
So to be feminine and non logical I am writing about today first!
It was a hot "summer" day today with the temperature over 30'C and the air was filled with the haze of smoke from grass fires (most likely the fire brigades burning-off the long growth as a safety measure)so wandering around was rather exhausting. But at the same time stimulating.
Today many of the different cultures that make up the people who have made the Gold Coast "home" had made a great effort to demonstrate either their dance, music or their foods. It was the Gold Coast Multi-Cultural Day.
I had barely managed to charge my batteries for my Nikon and my Bloggie camera after two days in Toowoomba but I was so pleased that I had made the effort. The colour and the sharing by everyone was wonderful to see. I stayed three hours and in that time I travelled the world!
I had actually arrived ten minutes before the first "show" (Three stages in action, non stop - and all free) and a brightly dressed Chinese woman encouraged me to sit down and she told me so much about the group she belonged to. It is a strange title for a group of dancers but I will share it with you - "Global Federation of Chinese Business Woman of Australia" (Yes, womAn not womEn)They practice a kind of Tai Chi and martial arts with swords that looks more like a beautiful dance than a type of aggressive attack/defence skill. I took some Bloggie of the sword dance so I will share it later on.
When the ladies posed for a photograph for a friend, of course I could not resist grabbing one myself! Don't they look gorgeous? The woman who was chatting to me is in the centre at the back, in green. Surprisingly most of them did not speak English at all.
When the performance had finished I made my escape (or I would still be talking to the Chinese lady!) and made a bee-line for one of the other stages. On the way I came across three little girls in yellow costumes. They looked so beautiful. I chatted to them and asked them if they were going to be doing some dancing somewhere soon. I asked if their mother's had done their beautiful hairstyles and the floodgates were opened! They turned around so that I could admire them all the better and showed off this hand movement and that dance position until I asked them if I could take a picture of them. I took one but the next thing was that three more children were called over - and then more, so I have three photos of these delightful children (different number in each!) who later were on stage demonstrating Indonesian Dance.
What surprised me was that some of them did not "look" Indonesian - but they may have either an Australian mother or an Australian father. (remember that you can click on the pictures to see them larger - click on the "back" button to return to this blog!) They did dance beautifully - I made a point of returning to the stage for their performance.
While waiting near a stage for a different show - it was an Indian song and music demonstration - I was joined by two little girls who had obviously been to the face painting. I can strike up a conversation with children very easily and these two were just so sweet. I asked them if they would mind if I took a photo of them since they looked so gorgeous and I asked them to put their heads close together and look at me - here is my lovely shot of them.
Don't they have the most beautiful eyes? The face painting is lovely too, not the mess that you sometimes find! I wish that I had found out if their mothers wanted a copy of this photo - maybe they will find it accidentally by finding my blog!
I have so much to share that I will be writing again tomorrow!
AJ

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

India comes to the Gold Coast

I saw a small advert in the free paper that told of Bollywood coming to Mudgeeraba (my home town) and wrote it on my calendar. The days went by and I heard nothing more until one shopping day I spotted a leaflet pinned to a notice board.
So it really was "on". I rang a couple of people to see if they would like to join me but they both had other engagements - Tuesday evenings are usually free for everyone! So Colin and I went on our own. we were not disappointed.
The evening was a travel presentation by "Mudgeeraba Cruise and Travel" from our shopping centre, Mudgeeraba Village, about a rather special trip to India they were organising. The evening began with an AV presentation of the trip that is within the "Golden Triangle" of India's most notable cities.
Following this presentation came the dancers - three very talented Bollyfunk Dancers from Brisbane under the leadership of a vibrant and ever smiling Andrea Lam. I will include a video of the dancing in a second blog.
What a wonderful display of the diversity of dance that comes out of India! We all did so enjoy it.
Then it was the audience's turn! We were encouraged to come out and learn a few moves! The magic of the dance seems to be in the hands and fingers - the pattern of the fingers and positions of the hands is wonderful to see. Although we all tried our best we still did not manage to look so elegant!
When the evening came to a close we were all presented with a bag of goodies.
Expecting to find a travel brochure inside we all peered into the bags and were astonished to find it filled with several glossy books on different regions of India as well as three DVDs. On our arrival to the evening we had been given a thick book containing wonderful images of cultural events and places in India so this bag of interesting material was in addition to that.
Now I must take a look at the video I took of the dancing and then take you to India with music!
AJ