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Okay. I have no idea to explain what is going on in my head, so Shannon told me to just post a blog and look at it tomorrow, then try to understand it. As a final project, I really want to combine modern and Khon. They are complete opposites, but modern is currently more popular than Khon, and people are currently losing interest in Khon. Such as, there are very few masters at mask making, partly because they either don't have heirs or they can not find anyone to become their apprentice because it is such a low paying job. These people base their lives off of this and because the general public has lost virtually all interest in the dance, these people lost their way of living. The traditional dances are still popular in Thailand, but they still aren't what they used to be thousands of years ago; a person could dance as a certain character their whole life. I guess I'm aiming for some type of appreciation thing. And the only reason why I switched from Thai dance to general dance was so that I could combine Khon and modern to make the final performance a lot easier on me. Shannon knows about modern and her teacher said that I could borrow any of her students for the performance, when Shannon told her about it, so she would be a good person to interview. I could also easily make a project if it's more general. I could even do little experiments about the popularity of the dances and how/why people have a preference. Plus, it's really interesting, too. Like, dances have been developed to express the emotions of people facing great suffering, show beliefs, etc. They can also be very spiritual. Not to mention, everyone usually dances atleast once a day. My main focus would most definitely be Khon because I love it and think it's so beautiful and it fits with anthropology well.

Essential & Foundation Questions

As of now, I am working on my essential and foundation questions. It's actually very difficult at the moment because I'm not entirely sure as to what I exactly want my project do be. It's all still a little vague. However, Shannon helped me a bit with some ideas of foundation/essential questions and I began to write down a few more. I'm not sure if any of them are very useful, but I'm starting to get a better idea of what I'll be aiming towards. So far, here are the questions that I have:

• Why are particular dance types more common than others?
• Why do different dances appeal only to certain people?
• What things do all dances have in common?
• Do particular dances regain popularity? Why? How much time passes between popularity spurts?
• Do dances express certain things relating to the times that they are popular?
• Why do they lose popularity?
• Through changing the dance or combining others, can it regain its appeal to the public?

So I guess I'm working toward maybe finding out why different styles of dance change and disappear so often, why some reemerge, etc. Something along those lines. =D

Essential Foundation Product

So far, the last catching up thing that I have to do is the essential and foundation questions, then deciding what I want my product to be. After talking to Shannon a lot about dance (specifically modern), I have possibly been thinking incorporating modern into the product so that maybe the choreography would be a little easier and possibly a little more creative, so that it wouldn't really matter much if I missed little details in the steps. Also, the costumes would most likely be a little easier to make because mixing it with modern would mean that the costumes couldn't be as heavy and clunky as they traditionally are, which would be a lot easier on the dancers. So, that's always a possibility. =D