When the wheels on the bus don't go round and round.

It all started to go wrong when Tony lost a wheel. In the first five seconds. It is safe to say that our presentation of West Side Story could have gone miles better. In fact, I think the only way it could've gone any worse is if our robots had gone up in flames.

"You! Cut up posters!"
"You! Put up the posters!"

The day of presentation I still wasn't sure if it would all come together. Most of Friday was spent running on adrenaline. Right up until the last minute, Ryan and I were furiously programming as fast as our laptops, software and NXTs would allow. In retrospect, I feel it was when our group first really came together as a collective whole. At the last possible time slot we had, whilst waiting for the group before us to set up, ready or not, we were loading the NXTs with the programs.

"You! Bring me Maria!"
"You! Bring me Tony!"
"You! Go to the kitchen and refill my water bottle!"

Delegation at it's best. But when it came our time to take the spotlight, it was well and truly a team effort with all 10 of us setting up set, lights, backdrop, machines, speakers, seats, tables, laptops, cameras, tripods and every other vital cog in the West Side Story Machine. At times through the process I often felt our group was fairly disjointed with perhaps a lack of communication at times between those working on the logistics and visual aesthetic and those of us working on the programming but those last 10minutes before it all went to custard, we pulled together to what could've been a pretty damned awesome show...

...if Tony hadn't lost a wheel. Hindsight is always 20/20 and so in retrospect, the smart thing to do would've been to restart those first five seconds but instead, we watched the robots stumble around in some half hearted choreography. We were prepared for only minor readjustments of pathways with spotters ready at every corner and edge of our stage.

We didn't recieve too much of a crit at the end as, well, there wasn't a lot they could comment on for lack of a proper presentation. We knew well that things perhaps didn't look that fantastic and in itself this lack of critique was more painful than any critique we could've gotten. Regardless, I am confident we have enough paperwork and planning to pull it together and can redo filming of the choreography, perhaps section by section. A major flaw which would've arisen even if Tony hadn't suffered a tragic injury would've come from the fact that where we were more or less confident of each individual section of choreography, we had never quite strung them together, partly because of the sheer size of the program which the NXTs and software suffered with and consequently kept crashing.

Again in 20/20 hindsight, I had an idea which would've offered a humorous solution whilst still in keeping with the spirit of presentation. I half jokingly suggested that it would've been funny if we'd had a 'half time' or intermission where while we'd reposition the robots to proper formations, we could pull curtains and pass out juice and cookies.

Performances over, everyone flooded out of the room eager for the weekend. The West Side Story crew could only laugh and pack up our stuff. Beanbags provided a wonderful safety net when the adrenaline rush finally crashed, sanctuary until we could gather the strength to go back into the world.

It was definitely a challenging project trying to bring so many elements together and in quite a large group with the additional challenge of learning the software and the robots. I felt I had a bit of a leg up with my performing arts experience in that I knew how to put together a show but in the end, it all came down to the collective which pulled together well in the end. The programming half of the group I mostly worked with I feel we got to know each other quite a bit from working in close proximities for such condensed periods of time (with much more to come!) To some extent we had minimal control over our groups with again some element of random assignment. My group was formed on the basis that Louisa and I had already met and established a friendship on orientation, before even day 1 while Ryan and I had eyed each other up in terms of creative and enthusiastic potential over the first week or so. I also enjoyed the atmosphere of hard work and enthusiasm that was building over the entire group of BCT students over the past week.

On that note, I really enjoyed seeing what the other groups came up with. I was impressed by the Swan Lake Presentation as a whole in their ability to convey narrative through the movement and construction of their robots, aided by the slideshow. I thought the ballet as a style of dance would be hard to represent so I thought it was clever that they instead chose to represent the narrative and meaning behind the dance instead, whilst some of that grace and elegance of ballet still managed to come through in their choreography.

Though it was of a bit of a disadvantage in terms of audience accessibility, I liked the concept behind the Black Grace group's presentation in the corner of the room as it reflected the theme and ideas behind their dance. They mentioned they had trouble representing the scene which was very minimalist but again I liked their use of pattern and the significance behind the images they chose to present as part of their set. I would've liked to see more of the choreography as their robots looked cleverly constructed and their intentioned behind the choreography sounded good.

I liked the Stomp group's use of the buckets and noise makers and I feel it managed to tap into the essence of Stomp where the focus is not just on the dancers, but in the sounds which result from their interactions with their environment and others. One of the most amazing things about Stomp is how the performers perform seemingly 'random' actions which fit perfectly into the pattern and rhythm they create and it is perhaps this randomness which helped the group representing this play on this element of the random, wheather it was intentional or not. They mentioned they had started by trying to choreograph based on compositions down to the beats and bars, similiar to my approach in breaking down the music into a storyboard and timeline, but as we have all found, it is difficult to program the robots exactly due to overwhelming variables. Though I feel their set could've been a bit more successful, I liked the concept behind it of the 'robot trash' which showed their background research into Stomp.

In anycase, all things aside, I think we all throughly enjoyed the show and had a few laughs...and maybe just a few tears too! Perhaps I will stop here as many have complained of the length of my blog entries...