María-M2-Learning Juggling Acts

My course on Hispanic Theatre, Film, and Performance Art used to be a whole lot of a juggling act. The objectives, methods, and course features were all designed to invite students to think, read, write, debate, and learn about these three media and how their evolution in and with the Hispanic world made sense not merely as individual items, but in constant dialogue with each other. The concept of performance and its many meanings has been the fulcrum that has helped both the generations of students who have taken this seminar for a decade and a half, as well as our guest speakers and performers, and myself, to juggle the wonders of how theatre was born, twice, three times, many times over, day in and day out for centuries around the whole wide world, inside out of stages, to then meet pictures, static and mobile, then digital, to finally face that primitive-looking animal that is performance art. Terrified as I was the first week, during our first module, I have decided to swim head on and am balancing reading and writing (call me Linus, my safety blankie always on if I have something to read and write) with orality and image, self and others, with VoiceThread, with a kinda blog in diigo with a whole new horizon of bibliographic promises ahead of me, and now back to Scholarblog, the medium in which I got initiated this past semester for my Atlanta Architecture class. Waters are dark with lots of juggling acts surfacing, but when I have a bit of free time and I am not demolishing my office so they change the carpet, I watch some other jugglers in Lost, that now ancient TV series, and I feel, like some of my colleagues, wondering, but rewarded and energized.  Whenever I lose my way, I watch the Performance Art piece by Marga Gómez, performera extraordinaire, entitled “Christmas with Cochina.”  Then the juggling translates into learning, and the wheel moves.

2 thoughts on “María-M2-Learning Juggling Acts

  1. Maria,
    I love the juggling idea (and the video )! It describes exactly how I feel at this point. I think back to the performers who spin plates on sticks and try to get 10 spinning at the same time, running back and forth keeping them going. Just when one is going nicely (e.g., I understand diigo), I forget how to access Scholarblog. I get in SB and then feel unsure about VT and run back to it to be sure I am remembering how to do it. Right now I am thinking j would love to insert a link to a YouTube video of the plate spinner but I don’t know how to do that yet! Clearly there is another plate that I need to start spinning. Thanks for the wonderful video.

    1. Marshall querido, I am thrilled you liked both the video and the juggling idea. SB to VT to YouTube to AdobeConnect to diigo to Tweeter back to VT back to SB and so on and so forth. Inserting the video, btw, is not difficult. I come back to Atlanta on July 8, back to the Callaway demolition, and I’ll be happy to give you a hand with that. However, I am sure the instruction videos Leah has posted and the explanations she gave us last week must have helped you figure it out. Hopupup with da fish!

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