Me, Myself & Opera

Finally after struggling so long with this excerpt, I did the performance yesterday night. I think that I didn't do so well because some actions were done too fast, some angles were not perfect and the feelings were not strong enough. Before the show, I messed up my hairstyle! I was supposed to do the rojak hairstyle which look like this: I messed up and I did not get the desired results. I looked super ugly.. So fortunately, that day I got my wig back from May... So I used that in the end and looked like a regular gzx dan.. hahaha Picture of Susan~ And some various pictures of me during the show.. I was very nervous and stress for the first minute. My hands won't stop shaking.. I was the only performer on stage.. All eyes were on me. I very stressed! Some photos were nice but some were rather blur. I kind of like the dress.. It was designed by some costume designer in SG. On the final rehearsal, I asked uncle what are the major problems with me. He told me it's catching t...

Ok, my performance is coming near already. It's on next Monday and I am quite stressed out. I am stressed out yet I got distracted by my PS2. I can't believe myself. I splitted my free time to playing games and practicing. I have remembered the movements for YZX but I did the movements for the sake of doing them. There is no feel and uncle pointed that to me several times. Haiz.. that's hard because feelings won't come. It won't come just by you know.. 'forcing' it to come. So 2 days ago, we (uncle and me) went through 2 or 3 movements repeatedly trying to catch the feel. 2-3 movements are very little compared to the whole thing but we don't have time to go through all of them. Uncle just tried to give me a taste of what having feelings in movements is like. The movements we went through are the 'aching feet' (the one I mentioned before), 'bravery' and 'suffering' parts. I think the aching feet part was emphasized so much because ...

Never expect to see Jay Chou and Lee Hom to appear in my opera blog ba.. hahah.. Many people thought that since I am learning chinese opera, I must have liked to sing those chinese oldies or huang mei diao in ktv. Most people always ask me this question when they first go to KTV with me. They will think that I prefer to sing oldies. I don't deny that I sometimes do sing some old songs but the majority of the songs I prefer to sing are chinese pop songs. May always say that I sing weird songs.. cuz I like to RAP~ Hahah.. You didn't see wrongly lor. I like to rap. I think it's hard to associate an amateur opera actress to rapping ba.. It's like 2 very different kind of things. Well.. I got vast tastes.. :P Anyway, May said that she never understands my rap cuz I sound like chanting prayers. Actually rap is a very interesting form of music. You have to distort the pronounciation abit (just abit!) to make it sound smooth and you need to follow the rythm very accurately. Mis...

So much on blogging about yu zhen xing. I told Franxxis that I will put up a video of the part I am learning but I didn't have the mood to do it till now. This clip shows the opera version but for our performance, we will be singing in Nanyin version which will be much slower. This clip has got a lot of very nice movements unfortunately, I don't have much time to practice. Don't think I can do very well in it.

Well, COI's events have died down and Ang is back in TW again. So we are now having a super long break. 1.5 months I guess. So, it's back to SL. I just love the way that SL and COI seldom clash.. I hope they never will! Since I got nothing to blog le, I will blog about my progress with Yu Zhen Xing. I got my first lesson yesterday and it didn't go very well. I don't have to sing for this performance, I only need to do the movements of Yu zhen xing starting from 'ling lu qi qu....' (Most of your probably don't know where that is but nvm, it's not impt). Mei-Er will be singing. So it will be like a nanyin singer singing while I do the movements at the side to express the song's feelings. That's good because I can concentrate on the movements. If I have to sing myself, I think I will suck because this song is so hard to sing and the movements are hard to do too. I can only do one of them at a time. Yesterday, our objective was to remember the basic ...

I will be doing Yu Zhen Xing's movement for this coming guan yin dan! Well, at least something for me to look forward to. My world became so boring and my future looks bleak. At least now that Uncle is going to teach me Yu zhen xing, I will have something to do and forget my troubles for awhile. I will not be singing tho, mei-er will be singing and I will do the movements. I love to learn movements lor cuz they can also be incorporated into other opera types and I can learn more on how to express feeling through movements. I have stopped to learn singing Nanyin for some time already simply because I don't have the heart to do so. I am too troubled and upset to learn anything and even if i got for the nanyin class, my mind will be at somewhere else. Hopefully I can concentrate and focus when uncle teach me...... Hopefully I can forget my troubles and focus.

'Er Jin Gong 二进宫' is one of my favourite Pekin opera piece especially the one sang by Li Sheng Su, Yu Kui Zhi and Meng Guang Lu. The 3 of them are fantastic singers. Li Sheng Su twist around the notes just like water flowing. So smooth! Yu Kui Zhi's voice is so powerful and can reach super high notes! I happen to come across a clip of the 3 of them singing this 'Er Jin Gong'. It was so good. The 3 of them took turns to sing clearly showing the difference between a dan, a lao sheng and a hua lian. In Pekin opera, each category of roles have their own unique singing style. Look at 'Er Jin Gong' you will see that lao sheng and hua lian sang in different styles.

YH just sent me some photos of MLJ again and they were taken by dearest Xin En. She always take those candid photos so I thought I might post them up. Quite funny lor. Someone else taking photo of us. Haiz, my face forever so oily no matter how much powder I use. That sucks! Can't remember what I was doing in the above photo but it looks funny. Taking photos of other ppl for my blog. I believe I was posing for someone to take photo because I won't sit such a nice pose normally. Hahaha. We taking photos with Bee Lay. Me and my mum were resting lor since I got no more scenes and only need to wait for 'xie mu'. We were in our normal resting pose then suddenly Xin en took this photo. My mum's hair is messed up. Well, today we acted 'Hui Lan Ji' in Espolanade but I didnt take any photos at all..The afternoon show was quite messy but the night show was ok. I was in charge of subtitles since I not acting. Quite relax lor and I got a nice view of the stage, can see ...

Amai is very fast. She posted photos and clips of our performance on the night right after our performance. My father sent us (YH, my mum, zx and me) to Bukit Batok CC to do our make up. The make up room was very small lor and May and a few others were already doing make up. It was about 3:15pm when we arrived but me and YH very steady, still went to eat lunch then we head back to the room to do make up at around 3:45pm. I finished my mkae up at about 5pm.. but May is still doing make-up. She is so slow lor forever. Must spend 20min doing make up for each eye. After doing make up and hair, we walked over to block 235 where our temporary stage was. It was so damn super hot at the stage. My god.. there was no aircon and everyone was bustling around doing last minute touch ups and as usual, ang is in a bad mood. She is always in a bad mood during performances. Miss Tan in her cute mini caiyi. Me at the super hot backstage.. can melt there lor. This costume I was wearing belongs to MAY. I ...