Welcome!
I am still having trouble adding the derivative to my video, but I'll try again over the weekend. For today, I will go from what I experienced last Friday. My idea for conducting welcome was to convey to that class that we were singing inside of a snowglobe, the choir responsible for bringing the Christmas cheer. I find that identifying a setting or experience to convey with a piece is a clear way for me to bring across the mood of the piece. For me, that is very important aspect of making music, particularly vocal music. The comments I received from Matt and Andrew were very helpful last week. When Matt told me I was eliciting a heavy sound because I was so grounded, I realized that is really true. Andrew told me that my beat four was consistently even and light compared to my other gestures. Somehow I need to get more of an upward feeling in my music. Maybe this means I should try to trust the choir more? Perhaps I am leading too much. Does anyone have any ideas about how I can get more lightness in my gesture?
Finally, I will try to not mouth the words next time. I noticed I didn't use my score this time but I didn't really listen, either. I went from my own memory rather than from what I heard. I should probably do 50/50 -- 50 from memory and 50 in response to the choir?