Category Archives: performances
Too Tired to Write an Entire Post
… So please enjoy this screenshot of a screenshot of “Fade to White.” 😉
More soon!
Professionalism: Evidently, I Haz It?
Our performance last night rocked the house. We legitimately got an ovation of stunning enthusiasm, which melted my heart and went on after the curtain came down and made us hug each-other as we scurried off the stage.
That was great.
We were all together, the choreography worked, I hit the turns and the jumps, and the partnering bits were on point.
But the thing that made me proud of myself, be honest, is that I danced 3/4s of our piece in just one shoe and almost nobody noticed. One my friends who’s in theater noticed that I only had one shoe and thought it was intentional 😀
The shoe started peeling off almost immediately, and within the first minute was barely hanging on by the toe. It would definitely have come off in the next bit and potentially tripped someone, so I neatly flicked it into the wings on the upstage-right leg of a running figure eight and just went on without it.
Since it was the right shoe, this made The Apollo jump—which in this dance lifts off from and initially lands on the right foot—a bit alarming, because shiny tights are hella slippery. I did it anyway, a more cautiously than I wanted, but evidently it still looked good.
Anyway, all the girls were amazing, and I can’t wait to dance with them again.
I also can’t wait see the video. I’ve seen a 20-second pirate clip that looked pretty great!
That’s it for now. I had class and a 2 hour rehearsal today, so I’m ready for some R&R.
Tomorrow is a day off, and maybe even Tuesday 😉 We’ll see how it goes.
Coda: Apparently the faculty was very much impressed by how well we mastered quite a complicated dance in very little time.
I’m just exploding with joy it, still.
The Luxury of Lying Around
It’s 9:34 on a Saturday, which means that usually I’d be in the midst of being slowly fondu-ed to death in the interest Of Art.
Instead, I’m loafing in bed, reading the Internet, and generally being as lazy as is humanly possible.
A bunch of us who are who normally take the 9 AM advanced class on Saturday but who are dancing tonight decided to opt for 12:30 class instead. That way we’ll likely be on form, but not cooked, and there won’t be 10 hours between class and our performance.
I still woke up at 8 AM, and as such in disappointed in myself for failing to take full advantage the situation and sleep in properly, but what can you do? The cat and my bladder conspired against me, but I got a decent night’s sleep regardless.
There’s this terrible paradox about days like this one; to short-run performances. We’re performing exactly once, and I’m terribly excited about it, so I simultaneously want it to time to go and also want to savor every second of this day.
I suppose this is a good time for a of literal Zen: à le “Present moment, only moment.”
The moment of the performance will come either way.
Right now I can enjoy reading, resting, my husband, and our cat (who is being maddened by the sounds of birds visiting our roofline).
All things in moderation, then: including laziness.
20-Second Photo Post :D
This is us with our fabulous impresario:
… BG told me to be a good boy and arrange my knees croisé 😀
… And this is me goofing off my dressing room tonight:
…I hold this exact pose for like 30 seconds at one point during the dance. Okay, so it’s prolly not *really* that long, but it feels like forevar. Also, try not to cross your legs this much in arabesque a terre, because it’s sketchy as heck. I see my supporting arch rollin’. I’m hatin’.
My right hand is essentially behaving, but my left hand is like, “Um, Don Quixote? Maybe? Just a little?”
Tomorrow, WE DANCE!
PlayThink 2017!!!
I just got notification that we’re in for PlayThink’s performance showcase this year!
It’s official!
I have a couple of months to teach D our choreography and work any kinks, which should be plenty of time.
My inspiration! 😀
For this act, I’m putting together an acro/ballet/physical theater piece to Charles Trenet’s classic, “La Mer.” I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. The piece is built around a couple of bumbling tourists at the seashore. Since its 100% mine, I’ll post rehearsal clips once we start working on it.
You guys, I’m so excited! This will be our second year teaching, but our first year performing at PlayThink.
I can’t wait!
You Guys, This Is really Happening
OMG OMG OMG
This is how they assign you your Ballet Spirit Animal.
OMG OMG OMG
I am, in fact, about as tired as I look in this shot. Heckin dark circles doin me a concern.
OMG
This is actually the girls’ changing room, where we all hung out after we got changed because mine is tiny.
That is all.
Tech Week Rehearsal #2
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.
History In Our Tights
When you have a ballet company full of people who need to be able to to lay hands on the the right costumes at the right times, there are any number of ways to keep things sorted.
One of them is to write the name of the dancer who’s using a given item somewhere inside said item.
Our fitting today was peppered with exclamations of, “I’m wearing Bovard’s tutu!” and the like.
As for me, I have no idea whose tiny, tiny, tiny little shirt I’ve got—honestly, I was too busy being afraid it wouldn’t even go over my head and failed to look—but I can at least identify the history of my tights(1).
- SPOILER ALERT: they aren’t BW’s, though that would have been super cool.
I know the dancer, KW (no relation to BW, though they both have beautiful eyes), whose name is written inside my tights. He’s very good. I hope some of his excellence rubs off on me!
I was, in all honesty, really rather surprised that I fit into the positively miniature clothes I tried on today—I was particularly alarmed about possibly exploding the tights, as they just had me slip them on over my own tights, since we trotted down for our fitting in the midst of barre. But they went on just fine and did not experience catastrophic seam failure and actually felt quite nice (and silky: I don’t own any shiny tights, but maybe I should).
The funny part is that I got completely re-costumed at the last minute(2) because BW spotted a shirt that, while stylistically quite different (like, night-and-day, ancient-and-modern different) from his original idea, really fit into the look of our little miniature company rather nicely.
- And might, in fact, still get re-re-costumed yet. I am apparently pretty much standard Ballet Company Medium, so the possibilities are more or less endless.
Everything got changed, including the shoes: ironically, to the only standard men’s ballet ballet shoe color I don’t already have in my stable. Fortunately, the color in question is grey, and almost every ballet company in the world has a herd of grey shoes connected with Nutcracker’s rats. If all else fails, BG’s feet are only a little bigger than mine, and he thinks I should be able to borrow his.
Evidently, the ensemble works quite well on me, though I didn’t get to see it. We were down in the Mysterious Cavern of the Wardrobe, and there wasn’t a mirror down there. I’m not sure whether I’m happier that I didn’t, because that prevents me feeling insecure about specific things, or if I might have preferred to have a gander at it after all.
I’m leaning towards being very much okay with not having seen how I look, possibly on the “if you can’t see it, it can’t see you” principle—like, if I haven’t seen any specific things about which which I might feel feel insecure, then I’m effectively hidden from the Insecurity Monster that lives somewhere in the neighborhood of my amygdala.
It’s an interesting thing, anyway, this odd little dose of animism, if you will, that has the lot of us mildly giddy about whose bits of costumery we’re borrowing.
That said, I’m not going to investigate it too closely just right now.
Even my wild overconfidence could stand to benefit, after all, from the occasional magical feather—or from KW’s magical tights.
The Onliest Boy Rides Again
… I mean, not literally rides, honestly I’m staying off the bike until April 1st because I have so freaking many rehearsals been now and then that the last thing I need to do is add even more exercise.
But I’m pretty sure that in addition to being the only boy in my piece, I’m the only boy in the whole show.
Honestly, most of me is totally like:
…And a little tiny part is aware that I should probably temper my innate overconfidence with a small measure of humility.
…
…
…Nah. I’m good .
40 More Seconds
After a rough start (I think the weather made us all boisterous), we sketched in 40 more seconds of choreography tonight.
I spent much(1) of the rehearsal standing around in 1st arabesque à terre while we worked two different bits in which I, standing there as such, am the still point.
- The rest of the time was petite allegro, running, more petite allegro, more running, even more petite allegro, demonstrating grand assemblée en tournant, even more petite allegro, and two full runs of all three minutes and ten seconds of the dance. Holy cats, do I need to locate my jump rope. Yea verily, my cardio sucketh.
I think the effect is going to be pretty neat. Following a section with much bourrée-ing, I chassé through and hold the 1st a-à-t whilst eight of the girls 2nd a-à-t, then collect back to a fondu-soutenu-y thing before leaping and flocking away to do pretty things stage right.
Immediately after the first flock departs, the other four girls envelop me (still bravely holding my position) into their flock, and then we do pretty things stage left.
The experience of dancing this bit of my part is rather like getting off of one train, watching as it sails away, then getting drawn into a second train amongst your fellow commuters.
Assuming, of course, that one is in the habit of arabesque-ing on the train platforms (regarding which I think I’d better exercise my right to the fifth amendment).
This was from our second rehearsal, not to mention a different part of the dance, but I really like this moment. Ironically, I’m invisible in this screenshot, except for my hands, which are in dead-bird mode.
One of the things I quite like about this piece is that it is not always the girls leading me or vice-versa. Sometimes they lead me; occasionally I lead them. At other points, I’m just part of the stream. (Evidently of commuters. On the bourré train.)
I’m curious about where we’re going next, as we’ve reached another partnering bit that is, per BG, sort of a little hommage to Apollo. For me, tonight finished on a total cliffhanger as I couru-ed my butt to downstage right and finished in this lovely lunge with arms extended à côté.
Evidently the girls are going to make use of my arms, and I’m burning with curiosity as to what, exactly, that means.
At any rate, I just hope they put them back when they’re done, because I am definitely going to need them, if only to shove food and so forth into my face after the performance, as one does.
Anyway, it’s past my bedtime. I’m taking a rest/cleaning day tomorrow, since both Wednesday and Thursday promise to be long days.
danseur ignoble 