Mika F. – Finding My Artistic Identity In Dance And Theatre

My name is Mika Foguel, I go to Elisabeth Irwin high school and next year I will be attending Wesleyan University. Throughout my life I have explored performance art. I started taking drama classes with my friend when I was 8 and continued doing plays and musicals through middle and high school. When I was in elementary and middle school I took dance classes on and off. However, when I was 13, I realized my passion for dance and took different dance classes throughout high school including an intense summer hip hop program at Joffrey Ballet.

I knew I wanted to do a preforming arts based project to grow my dance and theatre skills. I know I want to continue pursuing these fields in college either as curricular courses or as extracurricular activities. I decided to get out of my comfort zone by directing and editing a piece, which I haven’t done before. I also acted in a piece and choreographed a dance routine.

My essential question is: How can I utilize theatre and dance to create performance pieces that explore my artistic identity? I explored my artistic identity in my dance piece by combining my American and Middle Eastern heritage and by focusing on hip hop and my new love for jazz. I explored my artistic identity in my theatre pieces by both directing and acting comedy pieces. I added my own artistry by using over the top characters and situations.

Dance piece:

 

I wanted my dance to reflect my different backgrounds. The dance starts with the music of “Im Nin Alu” by Ofra Haza, which is an Israeli-Yemenite  song, reflecting the the beautiful music, color and atmosphere of my Israeli-Yemeni heritage. I end the piece with a hip hop and jazz piece – “River” by Bishop Briggs to show my American identity.

Directing piece:

Isabella and I found a comedy piece in the New York Times: “A Pandemic Essay That Probably Won’t Get You Into Brown” by Michael Ian Black. The piece is about a self absorbed teen who thinks she struggled the most during the pandemic because she couldn’t do her high school play. I needed to make it work in film, so I decided to start it by Isabella filling in the supplemental questions. We also filmed a scene at NYU’s campus to make it more engaging. We are also happy and grateful that our college advisor Kellen Howell was willing to participate in our video.

Acting piece:

We wanted our second video to also connect to last year. Therefore, we decided to make a video as if we were virtually touring students through LREI. We used a piece from the New Yorker: “Virtual Freshmen Orientation” by Nicky Guerreiro and Ethan Simon. We edited the script, added physical comedy, and I added an opening scene which includes 8th graders clicking on the video. Since the piece is very satirical, this character required me to be more over the top than I am used to.