In his own words: Chuma’s first two weeks at Alonzo King LINES year-round program
This September, Chuma Mathiso started at LINES’ year-round pre-professional training program in San Francisco. Read about his first two weeks, in his own words.
The first week at LINES was amazing and joyful. I met some of my friends from the summer intensive, and made some new friends. The ballet classes are always fun–and very intense sometimes–but it’s worth it. Gyrokinesis has been very helpful for the body and injury prevention. I learn a lot each and every day from the students and from the teachers. I am very happy to be surrounded by positive people and amazing dancers. We learn from each other and help each other in any way we can.
We ended the week with a shared class with the second years. Natasha Adore Lee taught us contemporary and camera, which includes learning about filming, including angles and framing and filters, which was very fascinating and exciting to do. We were given a task to go home and make videos of ourselves and edit our own videos.
The second week of LINES was very intense but fun as always. We had contemporary and ballet. Most of the time Natasha, who is an amazing teacher, teaches us contemporary, and this week Sandra Chin also taught us. This week our main focus was the film project for Natasha. I went to the beach to film my video with my friend Valentine and my partner Alex. It was amazing to be at the beach for the first time in the States, a very inspiring moment for me. We did a lot of shots before we got the shots correct. On Friday everyone showed their videos to seehow we managed to edit and apply the knowledge we had. It was fascinating and motivational watching all the videos of other people putting their creative side on something different. Some videos were so funny, some videos were sad, some inspiring, some intense, but all in all it was so beautiful watching all the videos together as combined first years and second years.
After class, I was on my way to taking a bus home when my friend Valentin called me to go out and have some fun since it was Friday. We decided to go out to Chinatown. We went to a lot of Chinese stores which were very interesting.The whole place is filled with beautiful people and beautiful buildings. We also ate at a Chinese restaurant. It was so amazing for me, as a person who just had the first Chinese meal in his life. It was a great experience to finally go out and see other places in the big city called San Francisco. Thanks to my friend I got a glimpse of some parts of the town.
Through your generosity, Chuma’s transformational year at Alonzo King LINES pre-professional training program is possible. Gugulethu Ballet Project thanks you for your support.