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Emily Lemons
Mrs. Lester
Adv. Composition
5 March 2012
Senior Project Speech
For years, dance has been my passion. I have been dancing since the age of two
and it has taught me many life lessons. Throughout the past 16 years that I have been
dancing, I have grown to have a passion for it. I would love to share this passion with
others. I have always considered pursuing a career in dance. So, for my senior project I
decided to experiment with it, hoping it would help me determine if dance is the correct
path for me. To begin my project, I started researching the different issues that a career in
dance could hold for me. In my research paper, I chose to focus on a few different issues
in the field of dance. These issues included lack of job opportunity, physical demands,
low pay, and the many responsibilities of a choreographer or dance educator. I chose to
focus on researching issues in my career field to prepare myself for what I could face if I
did choose to pursue dancing. Although I focused on a few different issues in my
research paper, the issue I faced while working on my senior project was the many
demands a choreographer faces.
Now I’m going to tell you about the process I followed in creating my product.
My project Facilitator is Joan Kall Stewart. When looking for a facilitator, I knew I
needed someone with a lot of experience and someone who would be willing to help me.
Finding my facilitator was easy. I have known Miss Joanie since I first started dancing, I
see her at least twice a week, She is one of my biggest role models and I was ecstatic to

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be able to learn from her. Miss Joanie danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and
performed in many Broadway pieces. After retiring from performing, she began teaching
and soon after opened her own ballet studio. She has now owned the Sawnee School of
Ballet in Cumming for 20 years.
After I chose my project facilitator, I started working on my project. The
following are my steps toward my finished product. First, I had to establish a meeting
schedule with Miss Joanie. It was difficult to find time between our busy schedules to
meet, but we decided to meet during breaks at rehearsals. I also helped with a class every
week to learn the basics of teaching and choreographing. My next step was to find my
music I did not have any problems with this, I found my music quickly after I knew what
I wanted. After finding my music, I had to edit it to the correct length. I had no
experience editing and I found the music difficult to choreograph to, so I had to reedit my
music multiple times. I spent hours getting to know the software before attempting to edit
my music. After realizing that many parts of the song I had chosen were too difficult to
choreograph to, I reedited my music a few times. After finding and editing my music, I
picked a dancer that was willing to put in the extra hours for my project. Once I found my
dancer, Sarah, I had to find the time to meet with her. We decided to rehearse before and
after classes, during breaks at rehearsals, and any time we could spend together outside of
dance. One of my last steps was finding and ordering a costume. I did this quickly and
had no problems.
I also had a few other problems throughout the process I took to finish my project.
Because I had no experience with choreographing before, I found it difficult to find steps
that fit the music. To solve this problem, I took inspiration from other dances and asked

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Miss Joanie for her input. I also had trouble remembering the dance between meetings.
To solve this problem, I wrote down all the steps we had set to the music and filmed our
progress at the end of our rehearsals. As I was choreographing, I noticed that I have a
tendency to repeat my choreography. To help this problem, I limited repetition to once or
twice and asked my facilitator for new ideas. This whole project has been a learning
process for me.
Throughout my project I learned many different things about myself. I learned
that I needed to work on my time management skills. At the beginning of the project, I
waited until the last minute to do my first five hours. After that, I quickly learned that I
could not put myself through so much stress and scheduled my five hours more evenly
throughout my time. I also learned that I like to keep everything organized. I have a
folder just for my senior project papers and I keep that folder with me at all times.
Because of this project I learned to send formal emails to my project facilitator. Other
than that, all of our communicating was in person. Now that I have completed my Senior
Project, I am more interested in pursuing dance than ever. Although it was stressful at
times, I feel like a career in dancing is what I would like. Before this project I knew I
wanted to major in dance. Now that I am finished, I have made plans to attend Brenau
and major in dance, but I am also considering double-majoring with the addition of dance
education. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to be here, do you have
any questions?