Emily is our guest Blogger this week!
Well this week we've been very busy at Black company with staging The Snow Princess and I can now happily say we are 3/4 of the way through it and it promises to be a stunning piece! Due to doing the Miners Memorial commitments throughout July, September and October, we started the term on a slight disadvantage against other companies in sense of how much time we'd have to prepare our Christmas show piece. Challenge accepted? Definitely. Black company had an extra rehearsal 12pm until 3pm on Monday to consolidate what we had done in the previous Thursday's rehearsal, catch up anyone who was missing then finally stage the second page of script. Everyone caught up with ease and determination so we could move on to our festival celebration dancing. Yes, you heard me correctly, dancing. With not all of us having taken dance classes before, we spent a lot of time devising our pieces by taking ordinary everyday movements of young people/children playing in a festival and incorporating lifts and set beats into it before we all join as a force to make a good old moving circle. Because it wouldn't be a Christmas show without one really, would it? Then it came to Thursday's rehearsal 5pm until 8pm when it started off in a pretty similar way with catch ups, consolidation and then progressing onto the third page of script. However, we had an advantage here as during our devising process, we had come up with a section of this so we worked that into the piece, making it look more effective and with smooth transitions too. Then we all became snow storms so we got split off into pairs to create a twirling, jumping, bustling snow storm. I got partnered with John, who is considerably taller than me (yay for the 5"3 club) therefore making me easy to pick up and throw around a little bit. Usually, I prefer to be the one who lifts someone up and makes sure they're safe in that aspect but I stepped out of my comfort zone and was actually nicely surprised how it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. That was pretty much our week at Black company, but not forgetting Helena's delicious cake that she made for us all! The next day, I was with Scarlet company preparing our version of The Red Shoes for the Wednesday performance of the Christmas shows. Due to the holidays, many were missing so we finalised any positions/arms/legs/movements that had changed throughout being made so we all looked the same once again. My week certainly didn't end there as it was jam packed of Aladdin rehearsals as we enter our 2 week countdown before our shows, be sure to buy your tickets as you won't want to miss it! The Saturday rehearsal was full of correcting and polishing which for me, being a Lady-In-Waiting and a senior dancer, meant learning a new dance alongside the wishes and practising anything we, as an ensemble, weren't sure about. This lead us swiftly into our first full dress run on the Sunday. Ooooo! Personally when you have your costume, it really brings the whole production to life and it's the point when you can really see the final preparations before it moves from the rehearsal room into the theatre a week on Thursday. No first run is ever perfect, but it was an extremely good start and I've so proud of the whole cast. Aladdin's gang were in the moment all the time, the constellations are as cute as always and I could go on forever and ever about all the brilliant things that happened today but I'd be here a very long time. Nevertheless there are things to be sorted next Saturday before our second full dress run on Sunday but I'm so excited to move into the theatre and share this production with everyone!
Well this week we've been very busy at Black company with staging The Snow Princess and I can now happily say we are 3/4 of the way through it and it promises to be a stunning piece! Due to doing the Miners Memorial commitments throughout July, September and October, we started the term on a slight disadvantage against other companies in sense of how much time we'd have to prepare our Christmas show piece. Challenge accepted? Definitely. Black company had an extra rehearsal 12pm until 3pm on Monday to consolidate what we had done in the previous Thursday's rehearsal, catch up anyone who was missing then finally stage the second page of script. Everyone caught up with ease and determination so we could move on to our festival celebration dancing. Yes, you heard me correctly, dancing. With not all of us having taken dance classes before, we spent a lot of time devising our pieces by taking ordinary everyday movements of young people/children playing in a festival and incorporating lifts and set beats into it before we all join as a force to make a good old moving circle. Because it wouldn't be a Christmas show without one really, would it? Then it came to Thursday's rehearsal 5pm until 8pm when it started off in a pretty similar way with catch ups, consolidation and then progressing onto the third page of script. However, we had an advantage here as during our devising process, we had come up with a section of this so we worked that into the piece, making it look more effective and with smooth transitions too. Then we all became snow storms so we got split off into pairs to create a twirling, jumping, bustling snow storm. I got partnered with John, who is considerably taller than me (yay for the 5"3 club) therefore making me easy to pick up and throw around a little bit. Usually, I prefer to be the one who lifts someone up and makes sure they're safe in that aspect but I stepped out of my comfort zone and was actually nicely surprised how it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. That was pretty much our week at Black company, but not forgetting Helena's delicious cake that she made for us all! The next day, I was with Scarlet company preparing our version of The Red Shoes for the Wednesday performance of the Christmas shows. Due to the holidays, many were missing so we finalised any positions/arms/legs/movements that had changed throughout being made so we all looked the same once again. My week certainly didn't end there as it was jam packed of Aladdin rehearsals as we enter our 2 week countdown before our shows, be sure to buy your tickets as you won't want to miss it! The Saturday rehearsal was full of correcting and polishing which for me, being a Lady-In-Waiting and a senior dancer, meant learning a new dance alongside the wishes and practising anything we, as an ensemble, weren't sure about. This lead us swiftly into our first full dress run on the Sunday. Ooooo! Personally when you have your costume, it really brings the whole production to life and it's the point when you can really see the final preparations before it moves from the rehearsal room into the theatre a week on Thursday. No first run is ever perfect, but it was an extremely good start and I've so proud of the whole cast. Aladdin's gang were in the moment all the time, the constellations are as cute as always and I could go on forever and ever about all the brilliant things that happened today but I'd be here a very long time. Nevertheless there are things to be sorted next Saturday before our second full dress run on Sunday but I'm so excited to move into the theatre and share this production with everyone!
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