Oh, man! How I hate the days after the show ends!! In the middle of all the exhilarating rush and worry, I think about how relaxing it is after the show is over, but to be honest I just want to start it all over again.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I think I am finding my groove.
Allow me to briefly take you step-by-step through some of the highlights last week:
1. The costumes were driving me crazy. As my friend Joy who makes my costumes in NYC will tell you, I am not abundantly skilled in knowing what "goes together". For one dancer, Corinna, nothing was looking right, and I ended up sewing 17 ribbons vertically on a pair of white bloomers (that only takes 5 hours) and then sewing on hot pink transparent material to make a ploofy over-bloomer. I thought I would go insane, but it did work out!!
2. I was assisted in this costume crisis by my friend Marco. We danced together in The Fairy Queen, and he had a break between gigs at La Scala (oooh, fancy!), so he came up to see me, help with the show, and then hop over to Brussels for some modern dance training. Besides helping with the costume, he also took notes during the dress rehearsal-- so important because I was onstage.
3. The tech crew at the theater did their job, but only under duress. Maybe it was a language problem (but I was speaking both German and English...), because they left in the middle of the dress rehearsal, and then were surprised when I told them the dress rehearsal was over. This meant that I had to come in early on the day of the premiere and design the lights without dancers and without the lighting guy ever having seen the whole show. When the dancers came in, we did a cue-to-cue (meaning the start and stop of each dance), and I was barking out orders like a first-class dictator (because we only had 20 minutes before they had to clean the stage).
4. Julia, one of the dancers, happily volunteered to alter her costume!
5. The musicians were supportive and enthusiastic, and I had such an easy time working with them. It really helped that my music partner, Beate Alsdorf, takes ballet classes, and understands a LOT about dance and performance.
6. My soprano was scarily graceful and had a fabulous stage personality. I really got too lucky with her--- plus she looked gorgeous in the full baroque costume.
7. And the dancers!! They both had very different stage personalities than mine, which I think helped the show a lot. And they worked so hard! They really did a great job.
8. After the premiere, I gave an interview in German to a journalist. Whoa. The adrenaline was really pumping...
9. I spray-painted our chairs gold (for the musicians' seats).
10. The day after the show finished, Beate, Jeremy and I went to Amsterdam for a baroque dance conference. I gave a talk about my work, and showed parts of the video taken during the performance. I was pretty nervous, speaking at an academic conference-- especially about modern/baroque choreography because that is anathema to a lot of baroque dance traditionalists. But I did it, and I think it was useful to have this different view out in the open. And several people at the conference were supportive. In fact, the guy who organized the conference said my work was "witty without being totally irreverent".
2 comments:
Wow, I'm tired just listening to you. Glad you feel good about the performances.Did you get enough "buts in the seats"? Sounds like Amsterdam went well. Did you get to do any sightseeing there?
We had really a good turn-out--- 130 people total. Not bad for weekday and the first show. I think we almost broke even.
I didn't do any sightseeing in Amsterdam because the conference was 8 hours on Saturday, and we left right after it ended (the weather was weird and snowy anyway) on Sunday. But since Beate went to school nearby, we ate at some really cool non-touristy places.
Amsterdam is so beautiful. I love it there-- we'll have to go once when it isn't winter!
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