1. Courtney Yost
AP Literature
Ms. Tillery
18 April 2012
Senior Project Speech
Dance has always been a passion of mine and has helped me through some trying times
in my life. When I was younger, my father passed away and I had no clue how to deal with it.
So, I used dance as a creative outlet and to help me with all of the grief. Dance, throughout the
years, has helped me overcome all the struggles in my life so far. Hi, my name is Courtney Yost
and for my senior project I choreographed a dance and filmed it. I began going to dance classes
when I was eleven, and even though I don’t take classes anymore, I still enjoy dancing very
immensely.
My research paper was on the history of dance and how it has impacted the way we
dance now. It is related to my Senior Project because it helped me look deep into the emotions of
the moves, rather than just doing the steps with little to no emotion. From my research, I have
learned that dance was originated to help express emotions and was done with meaning and a
purpose. The information I gathered gave me the inspiration to choreograph a piece with drive
and passion.
My finished product is a video of the dance that I choreographed. I chose to do this
because I wanted to challenge myself this year and learn if I would ever consider being a
choreographer for anything. I also chose this as my Senior Project because dance has always
been a special part of my life. Since it is such a special part of my life, I spent an excessive
amount of time choreographing the dance and making sure that there was a deeper meaning to it

2. other than it just being a simple choreographed dance. It was a difficult task for me considering
the fact that I have always been the dancer and not the choreographer. The process to making my
product was incredibly trying and it took me quite some time. It took me hours to even find the
perfect song for my vision of the dance to come to life. I went through searching my iTunes, to
looking on Pandora Internet Radio, and even searching Youtube to try and find music. I ended up
picking a song by the band AFI called “Prelude 12/21”. After I found my perfect song, I started
working on the dance. It took me a while to figure what I wanted the dance to look like, but
once I got over a few hard moments, it began to fall into place. Then, once I was done
choreographing the dance, I had a friend come over and help me film the dance.
My Project Facilitator, Brittany Krupnik, was my old dance teacher and mentor. She
helped me fix a few things and really helped me with the emotion that I needed in the dance to
make it stand out. Though, with her busy schedule as a dance teacher and my busy schedule as a
student, we had little time to actually get together and work. Through the phone, she helped
approve the song and told me whether or not she thought it was a good song to dance to. After I
finished filming the dance, I sent that to her and she said she was very proud of me. I wish I was
able to work with her more, but the time I had with her was very helpful.
The challenges I faced ranged from problems with picking the music to choreograph my
dance to all the way up to lacking inspiration when choreographing, which would make the
process much slower. I solved my music problem by looking through looking at some old songs
that I saved on my computer a few years ago. Then, after that, I choreographed the first twenty
seconds of the song, I ran into a thing called “dancer’s block”. It is where, no matter what, you
lack inspiration for a while. I encountered this problem a lot of times when choreographing and it
became rather stressful. I overcame it when one day I just told myself that I had to come up with

3. something very soon. So, when every part of the song was choreographed, I went to film it and it
did not go as smoothly as I had hoped it would have. I had difficulty finding the right amount of
light that I wanted for the video and where I wanted the camera to be at all times. I dimmed the
lights slightly and placed a lamp where there needed to be the most light, and found a center
angle to the camera that I thought looked great. Once I had found the right angle, I had to go
back and adjust a few things in my dance so that certain movements could be seen properly.
This is my product after surpassing the list of things that I just mentioned. (Show video)
I learned from this process that it takes a great deal of perseverance and dedication to
choreograph a dance. I learned a lot about the history of dance and how it originated. I also
learned that I would not mind choreographing dances again or as a living, but that I do not plan
to pursue a career in choreographing. Instead, I plan to major in Musical Theatre at Arizona State
University in the fall.
From this project I have learned that I do not want to be a choreographer and that I will
stick with just being a dancer, rather than a choreographer. I feel that the senior project was very
challenging, but it was worth it once you completed your product. However, even though I liked
the final outcome, I did not enjoy the extra work that we had to do. Overall though, I found the
senior project to be a great learning experience and to be rewarding.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to my presentation. I hope that
you thoroughly enjoyed my video as much as I enjoyed making it, and I hope that you learned
that dance can help you through the toughest times in your life.