LOTE

Year 8 Indonesian Incursion

by Jackie Ly and Lorraine Nguyen, Year 8

On the 23rd of March, all the Year 8s had the chance to experience Indonesian culture in an incursion! The Year 8s who study Indonesian were split in half, one half watching a movie the other half learning dances. 

Our half was first to be introduced to Pak Aaron, who came to Killester to take a workshop on traditional Indonesian dance. He taught us the steps to the traditional and more modern dances and he taught us about how important hand movements were to the Indonesian culture. He showed us hand movement exercises to help us better our technique. He explained that when learning these traditional dances and hand movements you have to be very accurate. In Indonesia, learners of traditional dance might take about 6 months to simply study techniques before they actually begin to dance, that is how seriously it is taken in Indonesia. 

After we learned three dances, we got to watch an Indonesian movie called “Langit Biru'' which means “Blue sky”. The movie was about a girl named Biru, who was an assertive character, and a bully named Bruno. They were pretty much enemies for most of the film but, by the end, Biru got to know more about Bruno and saw that he also had a good side. Overall, all of us really enjoyed the movie! 

After lunch, we got to perform our dances to the other half of the group in traditional Indonesian costumes. For example, my group had to wear decorated, golden crowns. Another group wore a crown which had feathers! We also wore a sarong skirt and a jacket. After performing and watching the other group perform, we got to see Pak Aaron do some “Pencak silat” which is a traditional form of Indonesian martial arts. It was  pretty unique. In Conclusion, our Indonesian incursion day was a really fun day and we really enjoyed it!

Year 8 Italian Incursion

By Julia Chiem and Courtney Mailing, Year 8

Yesterday, the Year 8s had an Italian incursion.  We did three different things throughout the day. In the first two periods we watched and listened to our visitor Dennis Murphy as he explained some of the history and origins of the Commedia dell'Arte and showed us some of the Stock Characters personalities in mask and costume. He showed us puppets and answered some questions we were wanting to know. In period three and four we watched Shrek 2! We watched it in Italian and had English subtitles so we could understand what they were saying. We learnt that Shrek 2 had a lot of comedy just like the Commedia dell’Arte had and was actually inspired from it. In the last 2 periods we learnt how to do expressions with the masks he showed us! Dennis Murphy asked us to get into pairs and taught us how to act and become a Commedia dell’Arte performer. He showed us that the expressions we made had to come from our body language and the importance of it. We all posed as a statue with our partner with a storyline behind it.  We learnt the history about the Commedia dell’Arte and the big impact it had on all comedy. We liked the different accents each character had. Each character had a different accent that depended on which region they came from. On behalf of all the Year 8s, I can say it was such an experience and was very joyful. Thank you to Ms Noontil & to Ms Gallo for organising an informative and fun day for the Year 8s.