Backstage for “Mysterious Mountains” and the peep show

June 5, Colorama Backstage and Performance

Technical Rehearsal

Thursday, June 4

Today is technical rehearsal for “Mysterious Mountains.” The actual tech was scheduled to begin at 7:30 – ish, so we rehearsed on some things before that. We still have some spacing issues, and in general, some inconsistencies in the quartets and duets. We basically run through everything except the walking section.

Jeremy Choate is our lighting designer and Natasha Manley is our stage manager and runs sound. The dancers wear their costumes for lighting, and Natasha has to learn the cues for the sound and Jeremy is trying out different lights as we run the piece for the first time. Everything is going along well, then, during Quartet #2, Lindsey is holding Tina inverted in a lift and Lindsey’s foot twists and down comes Tina on her head, with Lindsey after. Everything came to a halt. I, of course, was thinking spinal cord injury and that Tina was going to be permanently paralyzed and it would be all my fault since I asked them to do that lift. Dancers know how to fall, though and Tina was OK. We started the run through back where we left off and everything was fine. We took a short break and ran the piece again with lights and sound from the booth.

In this context, with the lights, I could see more clearly that spacing in the unison parts in the beginning and end, the gesture lines etc, stand out more and their flaws become very obvious. So we worked on rectifying those problems.

Tomorrow we have a marathon day starting with a 2:00 call for performers at the Wortham Theater for our Power of Houston dress rehearsal and the show at 8:00. And the day after that, Saturday, we have to do another marathon with dress and the show for Big range.

More Injuries

Tuesday, June 2

Today is the day we have to go to Wortham Theater to to have our technical rehearsal for the Power of Movement show. I would rather be dead than go to the Wortham, but I have to go today and on Friday. Most of us ride together from Barnevelder to save on parking hassle. We’re supposed to be there at 6:30, and be onstage from 7:00 to 7:30 for our spacing and tech. I’m familiar with this theater since my group has performed here in the past and we also rehearsed here on a regular basis in the past.

We gain entrance through the stage door in the back of the theater on Preston Street, and sign in at the security desk (Barnevelder doesn’t have a security desk) and go into the building towards the dressing rooms. We must take an elevator into the subterranean depths of the city of Houston where we traverse several hallways and arrive at one of the Wortham’s well appointed dressing rooms which we will share with Sandra Organ Dance Company, Psophonia, and Urban Souls Dance Company. There is plenty of room, with assigned spaces for each group that allow for, pretty much, one chair and mirror for each performer. There are showers and bathroom stalls. (Barnevelder has showers and bathrooms.)

We must quickly get in costume and go upstairs to the theater (elevator, through loading dock, hallways.) Suchu Dance will be following Houston ballet in the program order of the show, and the tech schedule has been arranged to be the same. Our dancers wait in the wings while three young male dancers from the ballet do their run through. (At least they seem young to me, since I’m so old now, everyone looks 12 to me.) Ballet completed, it’s time for us to begin spacing, and the dancers go onstage to quickly walk through the piece and establish where they will go in this new space. Then we run the piece. Everything goes fine, but I am having issues seeing it from so far away, you can’t even see the patterns on their costumes, which were designed to be seen in a smaller theater. As I said I would rather be dead than to be here at the Wortham. We had time to run the piece again and this time, Kristen got a U-shaped cut in the bottom of her foot during the run-through from a bolt that is sticking out on the downstage left wing. She limped off stage and I ran back there from the audience where I had been watching. The dance was going on without her, she was upset and limping through the cross over. Travesty Dance Company was waiting backstage to do their tech after us, and Toni Valle valiantly proffered some athletic tape for Kristen to wrap her foot with. She wrapped her foot and went back onstage to complete the dance. All the while, Leo still has his sprained ankle and is in pain, lifting people for the first time in a week tonight, and it took a toll.

We went back to the dressing rooms (halls, loading dock, elevator, halls) and Kristen cleaned her injury, the dancers changed their clothes, and the Mysterious Mountains people went back to Barnevelder. I meant to get photos at the Wortham, but it didn’t happen.

After a break and some refreshments, we worked on the notes we hadn’t gotten to on Monday, which began with bamboo and went through the quartets to the end. We spent a good amount of time trying to clarify the ending that goes from the quartet #2 part 2 into the gesture line. There are a lot of subtle music cues that everyone has to know. Subtle because the volume is intentionally low and gradually gets higher. Also, this transition is difficult because the dancers have to switch from counting one way to another ( I guess it’s from half time to whole time? I dunno.) directly, while the music is really low and there is a noisescape going over it.

In all the drama at the Wortham, I had not noticed that Jessica was having difficulty. It turns out she pulled her groin muscle during our run through at the Wortham. That’s pretty serious. She’s going to rest it tomorrow, and we don’t know what will happen.

Getting Closer

meaningful discussions on the touching yourself clump

Monday, June 1

Well, here we are. This is the most stressful week of all, trying to finish everything up and do the shows this weekend. The “Power of Movement” show is on Friday and our Big Range performances are on Saturday and Sunday. Tonight we have no class and are really tacky. No! I mean we don’t have technique class. We begin with Colorama rehearsal and after that we have Mysterious Mountains rehearsal. (I guess that’s what I’m going to call it.)

We ran Colorama twice and Mysterious Mountains once and I took notes for corrections. Here they are, transcribed from my notebook, and translated somewhat (in brackets). I have to abbreviate when I write them since the dance goes by so quickly, and my handwriting isn’t very legible since I’m not looking at the paper as I write, I’m watching the dance.

First run-through:

Js not doing PM w/TJ [Jessi not doing preying mantis -a dance move- with Tina and Jessica]

loose wrist on arm release [everyone should have loose wrists on this step, but they do not]

Js – PM w/LA – LA not luttry [indeciferable, but I know what I mean] enuf [Jessi is not doing Preying mantis with Leo and Ashley, who are not holding the position long enough to register]

Leo back leg on chug w/ A Kr Ly, A not leaning enuf [Leo is bending his back leg when it should be straight in the quartet with Ashley, Kristen and Lydia, Ashley needs to lean more on an off balance step]

Collisions on transitions [people crashing into each other, in this dance, an undesirable event]

K Li rag doll tanked [lift we call the rag doll didn't work successfully for Kristen and Lindsey]

Ch little chug too clunky [Chelsea, apparently doing a chug too heavily, but I don't remember what part of the dance that is now ]

quintet 1 big kick at beginning timing at end [the first quintet has a sharp kick at the beginning and it was not together, and would be nice if they did it with a big swoosh, and the timing at the end with their cascade is off again]

Second run through (I’ll edit it down some, this is taking longer than I thought!)

arc (with drawing of the erroneous arc) [ 2nd arc that compresses from the first, larger arc is too squished together, like a semi-oval not a semi - circle]

Nich & Li – PM to sdarck (messy handwriting) [Nichelle and Lindsey are doing the preying mantis to the back and it cannot be seen, try doing it more to the front]

K & Ch – pm – moo sold [Keisha and Chelsea, in their duet, need to hit the preying mantis more solidly (obviously this is a theme here)

swim [general comment that in regard to the step we call swim down, no one is doing it right]

etc. etc.

The notes for the run through of Mysterious Mountains are voluminous, so I will just give some highlights:

legs up in sbeg [keep legs up in beginning until the count of one]

Js strdny  out in move to daj [ Jessi is standing out of the line like a bump, in the move of the gesture line into a diagonal]

Walking – extra arm thugs alter turn too vague [in the walking series, the extra arm things we added are looking too vague]

looking surprised on 1-2’s [ everyone looks like they are not expecting the 2 count section to arrive]

Keish and Lyd – play with off center more – and stretching beyond comfortable kinesphere [ Keisha and Lydia duet was looking too tame]

clump-stops more tense [touching yourself clump needs the pauses to be very crisp to act as a contrast]

focus too internal [ the touching yourself clump has become a mush, with no one ever looking out of the group]

arms on triplets – don’t just stick them up there [general comment, supposed to stretch and reach with arms and look up at your hands]

ti-butt [Tina needs to stick her butt up on a unison step and she keeps forgetting - I couldn't write her full name out in the notes, but I managed to write butt full out]

etc. etc.

Out of all of these notes, I think we spent the longest on the touching yourself clump, with many lengthy and meaningful discussions on how the clump could get it’s mojo back.

Some Added Zaza

Jessi pretending to ask a serious question.

Otis

This is how Louie gets it done.

Leo twisted his ankle.

There was a kid’s show in the morning and their artwork was up on the walls.

Saturday, May 30

Today we have a different schedule than usual. On Saturdays we usually start rehearsal at 10:30, but today we start at 12:00. We have to do that because there is a kid’s show in the theater this morning and it isn’t over until 12:00. I hoped I would be able to sleep in a little and get rested, but no luck, I woke up at 8:30 anyway. The Big Range Dance Festival opened last night , so Friday was an endless frenzy of activity getting the facility ready. Also, I performed in the first of our dance peep shows, and my body’s a little worn out. (I’m not 25 anymore!) I also strained something in my right hip and thigh, so I’m feeling a little less than 100%. Kristen also performed in the festival last night. She had a solo, her own choreography, that she showed. Also Joe, our gyro teacher, performed in the festival last night with the company he dances with, Hope Stone. So we’re trying to take care of our bodies. I thought I would be more awake for the 12:00 start time, but I’m not. I feel draggy and prefer the earlier start time.

After gyro, we have Colorama rehearsal. The whole cast is here, finally. Leo twisted his ankle the previous weekend and so he is not doing any lifts and is holding back on some of the movement to protect the ankle. Most of Colorama rehearsal is spent cleaning and on details and timing. The last time we worked on Colorama was five days ago, so the dancers have to take some time to get it back in their bodies. We will be performing this piece in less than a week. We work on correcting the spacing on an arc that the dancers have to run to. It was pointy and less round than desired, and the cue to condense it was unclear. Another small problem was that a lift that Jessi and Ashley do was not being seen because they were doing it at the same time that Lydia and Jessica were doing a big lift with Tina downstage. Jessi and Ashley simply changed the timing of their lift to happen later and I paid attention to it for the first time while I was watching that part because  wasn’t distracted by the large Tina lift. We ran the piece a couple of times with corrections, and then we went over our rehearsal schedule for this upcoming week, with a tech at Wortham on Tuesday, and dress rehearsal and the show on Friday.

Then we had a break and after that was rehearsal for Big Range. Kristen, having been absent on Thursday because she was in dress rehearsal for Program A of Big Range, needed to learn the new ending for the piece and the new spatial changes for the gesture line. There was some work done, too, on clarifying the spacing for the jazz routine ending and the spacing conundrums for the gesture line opening. We got through all of that and we went to the transition between Jessi and Chelsea’s duet and Lydia and Keisha’s duet. I wanted to add Kristen and Lindsey to it. Already, Tina and Jessica come on in this transition, but I wanted to add in Kristen and Lindsey for some added zaza. I was pleased. We only had time left to run the piece once. We’ll be performing this piece for the first time in a week, next Saturday, and I hope it’s ready by then – it’ll have to be!

Kick Ball Change

Thursday, May 28

Normally, today we would have ballet, and normally we would be at Barnevelder, but neither is the case tonight. We are at UH because there is dress rehearsal at Barnevelder for Program A of the Big Range Dance Festival, and so studio B is occupied, since it is used as a dressing room. No ballet because Lindsey M. is performing in Program A, and can’t get to UH to teach us, Kristen is also performing in her own choreography in Program A, and is also unable to be at rehearsal.

We’re at UH and we’re in the new studios above the Wortham Theater, not in Melcher Gymnasium tonight, and the whole rehearsal is for the Big range piece. I’ve been preparing for this rehearsal all afternoon. I had to provide an ending for the piece, and I worked on a sound score that morphs into the disco music that we’re using and made up a cheesy dance to go with the music at the end. The problem is that the dancers have to go from not dancing to the music to dancing to the music without stopping the soundtrack and they aren’t consistent with their timing so it’s tricky to get the particular spot where they are supposed to be dancing with the music. The whole piece begins with a brief, unison, vegas – esque  chorus line that morphs into the gesture phrase. Much ensues afterward, and finally we come to my ridiculous King Tut transition. I’m thinking that, maybe, the fact that this transition cracks me up is not such a bad thing, so I’m going to try keeping it. The plan is for the piece to have a circular structure, to conclude the piece with a return to the chorus line/ showgirl type of dance movement at the end. Basically this part is a dance routine, kind of old style  jazz, really old – kick ball changes etc. It is fun doing this movement when we’re such supposedly serious dancers.

For the first fifteen minutes, we all roll around on the floor stretching and warming up, then I teach my dance routine and it seems that everyone is enjoying the humor of it. The next step is for the dancers to learn the musical cue to begin this part, and then we have to figure out the timing for the King Tut entrance, coordinating it with the music. Having that sort of figured out, the next step is to get the timing of the quartet #2 part B to be consistent so that it leads into the King Tut transition with the right timing. I end up adding some distinct sounds to cue the quartet to let them easily know where they are in the music. The soundtrack is a noise-scape with the disco music very slowly fading up, and the King Tut cue happens when the music is still at a low volume, so you have to really listen and pay attention to it to hear the cue. The people in the quartet are doing a lot of physical activity, and it requires a lot of concentration itself, making it hard to hear subtle cues in the soundtrack.

By the time all this gets done, it’s time for break. Louie has packed a cooler of sandwiches, fruit and other snacks.

After the break, we talked about things we saw on the video from Tuesday night. Probably the most heinous and glaring problem was right at the beginning, the line dance. The counts have gotten lost and there are some major spacing problems. Many detailed discussions later, we move to the touching yourself clump, which has gotten mushy looking; each impulse has become overlapped and less distinct. After that we clarified a transition at the end of bamboo. Then we ran the whole piece. The new transition from the quartet didn’t work timing wise, so we worked on that until it was consistent. Then we cleaned the counts for the end of the line dance that happens right after King Tut. That took us to the end of rehearsal.

Dancin’ on the Nile

Tina concentrating on pinning Kristen’s hem

Tuesday, May 26

Today is the day we are doing a video shoot of the Big Range piece in costume and in the theater for the festival’s promotional video for program B. There are tech rehearsals going on in the theater until 7:30, so we are in studio B until then. The dancers have arrived with their hair and makeup already done, as I asked, well, except for a few people. And even if they came all fixed, there is never enough tweaking one can do for one’s look. I had to make shorts for Lydia and Lindsey today, to complete their costumes. Lindsey has green shorts and Lydia has burnt gold shorts. In my haste, I made Lydia’s shorts too small. The fabric is not very stretchy and I didn’t allow for it’s lack of stretch. She can get them on, but they are very tight.

We don’t do the video shoot right away since we can’t be in the theater, and we need to practice beforehand anyway. First, since Jessi was absent on Monday, we go through train tracks so she can learn it. Then we tackle the most awful transition of all: the one going from the end of the quartets to the line dance ending. A long time ago, I put a reference from the walking series there, thinking it might make sense. WRONG! So I am changing it, but I still don’t know what will work. I try several things; I eliminate the two vertical lines – we’ve seen them before – and take out some moves here add pauses there, but it still looks like a big, boring mess. Then I have the brilliant idea to capitalize on a pose we’ve been referring to as “Nijinsky” or “Egyptian” depending on your mood. In this transition, quartet #2 is finishing and I have to get quartet #1 onstage and then I have to get everyone in place for the line dance, and, of course, no one is remotely near where they need to be for the line dance (except Jessica.) My brilliant idea is to have the quartet #1 people swoosh onstage and everyone hit a variation on the Egyptian pose at the same time, pause then the four people farthest from their spots do a simple walking pattern to their places followed by those people closest to their places. Ta – daaaah! It looked good to me for a few minutes, then, fatally, ever after, I burst out laughing whenever I saw it. It got dubbed the “King Tut” transition. I kept trying to fix it, but time was ticking away and I wanted to do a run through before the video shoot. We did a run through, and I laughed at the KIng Tut part again.

We moved into the theater at 7:30 and worked on the duets, since I could tell from their state in the run through that they needed some attention. Also needing attention were the quartets and the new transitions. We decided to do the video after the break.

Delicious celery.

After break, the dancers got in costume and finished fixing their hair. While waiting for Louie to get his equipment set up and the theatrical lighting in place, the dancers tried some of their lifts in their slippery polyester shirts. It was fine. The lifts worked.

So the video shoot happened. The dancers looked good. I laughed at the King Tut part. We still don’t have an ending, but Louie said he liked the non – ending the way it was. Hmmmmmmm…….I’ll have to think about it. This is the closest thing to an actual performance that this piece has had so far, and I think it was a really good thing to get the dancers in a performance mindset. Not only did Louie tape it on his own camera, but he also taped it on the camera that is set up in the theater that records directly to disc. That meant I got a copy of this run through right away. We decided to watch the video right then. The dancers had seen none of the previous videos of the piece, so I hope that watching this one was a useful learning tool that will help them hone their performance. I still laughed at the King Tut part, even on video.

Train Tracks

Monday, May 25

Monday night and we have Teresa’s modern class. There is a lot of activity at Barnevelder today since the Big Range Dance Festival opens this week. We have had people tech-ing here all day for the dance gathering and for program A. Yes, it’s Memorial Day, but ever since we started this festival eight years ago, every Memorial Day has been a work day for us and a rehearsal day. Every year at this time I say, “This is ridiculous! Next year we’re going to arrange things so we don’t have to work today. I want to be outside having fun like everyone else!” But that never happens.

Since next week is tech week for Suchu Dance, tonight’s class will be the last Modern class for this rehearsal period. Because the theater is occupied with technical rehearsals, we are in Studio B for class and move into the Theater after 8:00.

In the theater, the dark scrim has been put up for the run of the festival, making an already dark room even darker – bad for my photography efforts. Tonight’s rehearsal is split between Colorama (8:10 – 8:45) and the Big range piece (8:45 – 9:40.) Leo and Jessi are out of town today, so we have to rehearse Colorama with two holes. Again I try to abbreviate the Colorama rehearsal, but end up taking up the whole time anyway. Basically we solidify changes made at the last rehearsal, and talk about some movement details. Then we have just enough time to run it before we have to move on to the other piece.

The Colorama piece is pretty exhausting and it leaves the dancers for the Big Range dance physically spent. For the Big Range dance, we take some time improving a transition between the quartets that was basically a mess. It becomes “train tracks,” at least that’s what we call it. It helps giving these type of names to specific parts of the piece, and it happens quite spontaneously. It helps, because it is a lot easier to say “train tracks” than to say, “the part where quartet #2 finishes their part B and quartet #1 is coming back onstage to do their part B and everyone is doing the same movement from the very end of the big phrase except the knee fall is slow motion and everyone travels side to side through each other instead of on the diagonal as it was originally choreographed.”

Most of this rehearsal is spent solidifying the changes we made on Saturday, and some cleaning. Soon enough, it’s time to run the piece, or else we will get out of rehearsal too late. We need to be running it more than once per rehearsal, because it is better for the dancers to do it, than to spend time with me discussing and trying changes. I mean that you shouldn’t just keep running things with problems, because those problems will just get reinforced, but there comes a time when the dancers really need to just do the dance, to mentally and physically get it and get better. Tonight is not one of those nights when we’ll get to do it more than once.

I remind the dancers that tomorrow, Tuesday, we’re going to have a video shoot of the piece, in costume and in the theater, so that Louie can have something to put on a promotional video for program B of the festival. They need to arrive in make up and with their hair done, if possible, so that we don’t spend any rehearsal time, precious at this point, putting on make up and fixing hair. Lydia and Lindsey  still don’t have shorts to wear for costumes so my major task tomorrow is to buy fabric and make shorts.

Enacting Change With Slithers

Saturday, May 23

Yesterday, I discovered that the video of rehearsal for the Big range piece would play on my computer, so I got the chance to watch it and make notes for changes in the choreography after all. Much of my dissatisfaction with the piece falls on my transitions. They are awkward and sluggish and stop the forward momentum of the piece. Also, there are structural issues. Going into bamboo doesn’t make any sense after the touching yourself clump. The quartets are too long and I get bored and the dancers are tired during the last third of them. The quartets and duets are too generic in some places, they need some “flava.” In general, the dancers are still, in many instances, not consistently doing the movement as originally intended. But that’s all OK. It’s fixable. I have my notes from the video and things will be better. We still don’t have an ending though.

It’s Saturday, and that means Gyro at 10:30. We’re in the theater today. We begin class, sitting in our chairs (Gyro class starts in chairs) and a wasp is flying around coming very close to people. After Lydia’s unfortunate indoor bee incident, we are all very unhappy to see this wasp. Luckily I have my trusty bug – killing flip flops with me and the wasp is soon dispatched. After class, we have an hour of Big Range rehearsal, before lunch. Armed with my notes, I start enacting change. My plan is to split up the quartets in two parts each. Each quartet was based on the entire big phrase, and that’s just too long. So the quartets are split now into parts A and B. Quartet #1 will do part A, then Quartet #2 will do their part B, then Quartet #1 will do their part B, then Quartet #1 will do their part A. Interesting transitions have to be created to go in between. Also, we tackle the 2-count part that I thought was too controlled. I suggest trying the movement with a more tossed quality and making it move through space more, and that helped a lot to make that part work. We mostly get through all that and it’s time for lunch.

Louie prepared some lasagna. That almost broke me, but I had delicious celery instead.

Next we had Colorama rehearsal. Leo is out of town this weekend. I’m hoping that we will soon, maybe today, be at a point where we are no longer fixing things, but can run the piece, give notes, and run the piece again. We needed to review some of the changes and problem areas first, though. There was one part in a quintet that the timing in the lift cascade was off and that group worked on fixing that. The piece is starting to gel more. Lydia fell during the run through because I had asked her to look up while she was being lifted. She did and discovered why she was looking down during the lift: she’s moving backward in the lift and needs to see where she’s landing.

I am trying to scale back the Colorama rehearsals, since that piece is in somewhat better shape, and spend more time on the big Range piece, but I ended up using the entire allotted time for Colorama anyway.

Back to Big Range.  Another troubling part in this piece is bamboo. It is a disjoin to go from the touching yourself clump, where everyone is together with an intimate feeling, to bamboo, where everyone is standing apart and a duet is going on. It’s very much like the section early in the dance when the first duet occurs, and it’s doesn’t make any sense, as far as continuity is concerned,  to go back to a feeling from earlier on in the piece. My solution was to add more slithers. There is a part in bamboo where Lydia and Tina slowly pass very close to Lindsey, waaaaaaaaaay in her personal space. I call that the “slither.” So I add another one with Jessi at the beginning, and have the other dancers, instead of standing separately, gravitate into pairs and slither simultaneously with the Lindsey slither. The whole bamboo is now more intimate. Then we have to get from there into the first quartet, and the plan is to have the pairs do the same movements as Tina and Lydia do for the end of their duet. The net effect of these changes,  splitting up the quartets and having to make transitions in between the parts A and B, and having the group do the end of Tina and Lydia’s quartet is that there is a lot more unison movement with the whole cast onstage. Prior to this, other than the very beginning, there was no group unison. I had been resisting having it, but the dance needed it, I think, to make everything hold together more.