Tonight we ran the dance in the big studio downtown. It’s literally twice as big (at least) as the smallest studio at the school, where we rehearsed on Monday.

As such, we totally lost our spacing and the timing went crazy. The Apollo jump didn’t come off because there was a Siren directly in my flight path (in a moment of glittering wit, I think I literally said, “Oh! You’re there!”) and spazzed into some mutant pas de chat Italien.  

I at least made it to the right spot at the end, though. So there’s that.

The second run was a lot better. We’d adjusted to the space; we knew roughly how fast we had to run and far traveling steps could travel (tl;dr: FAR). 

I hit the turn in second and the Apollo jump dead on, though doing so made me realize something about my brain operates when I’m performing: I click into a mode in which my mind is roughly one step ahead my body. 

This works brilliantly for the choreography that I have down pat, but it’s a bit problematic with new stuff, especially details. 

Like, the arms on the turn and the Apollo jump are hella specific and pretty important, and I have literally no idea what I did with them. I mean, I know I got them up, but whether I kept up and opened after is a major blank spot my proprioceptive “video.”    

On the other hand, I’ll have time to work on that and adjust tomorrow and Friday if necessary. It’s the single newest piece of the dance, so a little repetition will help. 

The girls keep commenting on how I never get a break the dance—how I’m forever dashing from one end of the stage to the other. Before tonight, I didn’t think I actually dashed around any more than they did, but dancing the in a much bigger space me realize that I do, in fact, travel a lot. 

In fact, in the big studio, I really had to drop the hammer to make it from one sequence to another.

Anyway, overall, I think we did all right, under the circumstances. 

Tomorrow and Friday we’re in the theater. Evidently the stage is a little smaller than the studio, so we should be to adjust. 

Honestly, the hardest part for me is judging exactly when to run out of the wings. I need to make it roughly a third the way the stage before my sauté arabesque. 

Anyway, I’m excited about our dance in the theater tomorrow. For now, though, I’m going to roll my legs again, eat something, go to bed.