The Yale Glee Club Blog

Casey Klippel '09, the wise old woman of the YGC, on our last few days in Santo Domingo. The last day on the Tour That Broke All The Rules started out by ... breaking another rule. The morning after our closing banquet usually consists of sad farewells and moaning-and-groaning about the early wakeup call. But not on this tour! Banquet technically happened last night (though more on that later), and instead of travelling home today, we had our first free time in Santo Domingo as well as our final concert. Time to rise and shine! Those who rose and shone early enough could take a walking tour of the Colonial Zone in Santo Domingo. Since I am a professional athlete in the extreme sport of sleeping in, my day started instead at our awesome hotel’s even awesomer breakfast buffet (read: tons of pastries, three kinds of tropical fruit juice, and unlimited fried cheese). To be fair, twenty-two of us had toured the Colonial Zone yesterday afternoon. Santo Domingo contains many of the oldest...

Yale Glee Club Workshop Slideshow from Julia Myers on Vimeo . On the Dominican Republic leg of tour, the YGC hosted arts workshops for young people from the town of Vallejuelo and its surrounding villages. "Team Film," an outreach group led by Julia Myers '12 and Phyllis Thangaraj '11, created a video slideshow documenting the workshop experience. The slideshow includes photos taken by the workshop students themselves.

Rebecca Trupin '11 describes an epic YGC day in the mountains of the Dominican Republic. Photos: Josh Schoenfield '10 Yesterday, Jeff told us: Great work today, guys, in handling the unexpected. For sure there will be some kind of surprise tomorrow. Never were truer words spoken. The day began smoothly enough with glorious sunshine and delicious oatmeal (there was fruit as well but the oatmeal earned rhapsodic praise from all who tasted it). We climbed aboard our buses at our hotel and set off for our second day in the remote town of Vallejuelo. There, we separated into Film Team, Dance Team, Theater Team, Writing Team, and Quilting Team to lead creative arts workshops with children from the nearby villages. I’m sure I speak for most of the Dance Team when I say we got well exercised when, at the end of our workshop, the kids taught us salsa, merengue, and reggaeton. After lunch, several Glee Clubbers began spontaneously singing on a balcony. Old beloveds such as “Ride the Char...

Neena Satija '11 and Daniel Olson & Dan Thompson (the so-called "Men of 2012") write about the first day of outreach in Vallejuelo. Photos: Josh Schoenfield '10. [Daniel Olson] The day started out early in San Juan with a delicious breakfast at the hotel. We didn't know what to expect from the massive outreach project we were about to begin with children from around the area of Vallejuelo, a small village 45 minutes from San Juan. We arrived at the Centro Agro where we first met the kids. We shared a couple of songs. They sang a Spanish version of "If You're Happy and You Know It" and we sang "Gaudeamus Igitur". Shortly after, we broke up into the six classes we had prepared for the children. Over the past month, Glee Club members had been working hard on lessons in drama, dance, singing, quilting, creative writing, and film. The glee club is a multi-talented bunch and those talents really showed today. I helped teach the film class. W...

Mari Oye '11, YGC publicity chair, on our arrival in Santo Domingo. A brief post about today's journey. You'll be reading accounts from many more Glee Clubbers over the next few days, as we go up into the hills of the DR to do a sort of creative arts outreach program. For now, I'll do my best to keep you up to date. I'm on the top floor of our hotel in San Juan de la Maguana, watching a thunderstorm. First impressions: This is not Florida. This is very starkly not Florida. It teems in a way that Florida doesn't. It's certainly very beautiful - we drove past fields of banana trees, tall mountains on the right, azure sea on the left. Caroline Mezger '10, from Switzerland, was especially glad to see mountains again. The flame trees reminded Rebecca Trupin '11 of Tanzania. It's also very poor. There are piles of garbage that no one picks up, and shacks of cinderblock and corrugated tin. I woke up yesterday - was it only yesterday? in Winter Park, to...

Michael Haycock '12 muses on the power of music in Miami. The time is 1:39am. The place is room 403 in the Fort Lauderdale Holiday Inn Express. The task is to encapsulate the radiance of the Glee Club’s tour (so far) into a blog entry in a relatively coherent fashion. And then wake up to depart for the airport at 4:00am. Bring it on. The difficulty is alleviated by the fact that my pep talk from St. Luke’s, still bouncing around in the echo chamber of my brain, was particularly appropriate for today’s primary activity. I spoke first of the incredible bonding force Glee Club can have, forging friendships through the traumatic trial by fire of Kernis’ intricate Symphony of Meditations, the triumphant final proclamation of “Ye Shall Have a Song,” or simply series of uninterrupted hours-long bus rides. More than these, however prominent they would be (what else but confinement in a moving vehicle for extended periods of time could inspire impromptu films where getting locked in t...

Rachel Glodo '12 reconnects with the YGC tour in Orlando This is probably the first blog entry written by a YGC member not on tour. As a student taking the spring semester off, I waited impatiently for my darling Glee Club to arrive in my home city of Orlando, Florida. The story is (according to people actually on tour) that the Yale Glee Club spent a good portion of their free time today in Downtown Disney, an area that locals judiciously and invariably avoid at all costs. Pros: Downtown Disney allows you to buy some truly remarkable Legos and get your picture taken with an 8-foot Mr. Potato-head. Cons: DtD refuses to off anything but over-priced food of horrendous quality and over-priced souvenirs and t-shirts, which you will regret buying immediately upon crossing the state line. Fortunately, most Glee Clubbers managed to sustain themselves on $10 spinach and artichoke dip appetizers and waited out the typical Florida thunderstorm in safety. Tonight’s concert was at the Cat...