Tuesday, June 22nd

Today is the second and final day of off-campus shooting! Hooray! We are having fun and learning a lot, but this June sun is brutal, and all the crews are already baked from yesterday. I have to be even more vigilant about protecting my students from the sun!!

I did pretty much the same thing as yesterday. One of the crews got done early so they got out of the sun and into the film trailer and began to log and capture their footage onto the computers.

Tonight's evening performance was awesome. The ballet instructor, Giana Jigarhan, used her students to demonstrate a typical ballet class, with exercises on the barre and in the center of the floor. She showed a short video of an amazing ballet duet. I enjoyed the performance, although I don't think she did. She is from Russia, and has lived in the USA for 10 years teaching at various ballet companies, but her English is not very good. Actually I think it's a lot better than she thinks it is, but you could tell she was extremely nervous.

After Giana's presentation, was a performance by our percussion teacher Valerie Naranjo. This is her third year to teach at OSAI. The woman is amazing. Not only is she an extremely talented musician who travels the world learning songs from remote tribes in Africa, but she is also amazingly warm and gracious. Her credits include being twice named world percussionist of the year, she did the percussion arrangements for the Lion King on Broadway, and for over a decade has served as the percussionist on Saturday Night Live. All this is over shadowed by her shining spirit. Naranjo began the performance with anecdotes intertwined with solo percussion pieces. Later the OSAI percussion students joined her, then the 58 person OSAI chorus took the stage, and finally she invited the entire audience to join them on stage and dance.

Needless to say all the cabin meetings that night were a buzz with enthusiastic and inspired students..and counselors!

(8:30am - 11pm = 14.5 hrs) (TW = 41.5) (GT = 200 hrs)