Dear Sanna - Finally back!

Whew that was a long tour indeed! Fun, tiring, stressful, frustrating, amazing - I think I went through just about every emotion over this month. It is impossible to tell everything in just one post, so maybe I will try to post about each subject in segments.

First segment: Casting

So, in the typical fashion of this company, there was no such thing as casting, even after arriving to the first hotel. The next day we had class at this tiny studio nearby with extremely scary slippery wooden floors (which the company immediately coated with a thick layer of rosin) and planned to have a few rehearsals.

Well one of our principle male dancers told the director weeks before he was having pain in his foot, but everyone just ignored this. At this point, before the tour even began, he could not dance at all. So we spent this day replacing him and working out the parts which would be affected. If you remember, the part I always stress about is all about stamina, so I wasn't particularly happy about not having a chance to at least run it that day, since it had already been 2 days since my last rehearsal of it. They did, at least, tell us that my cast would be performing in the first show (the next day).

We ran it before the show, and I actually felt okay. Wheezing and completely out of breath, as usual, but I survived. Our next show after that was a few days later, and we somehow managed to find out that my cast would perform that show and the one after. The second of these two shows was one where a girl from the other cast (let's call her Amanda) had family and she asked if she could perform there. I also told the director that it didn't matter to me and Amanda really wanted this show, but the director said probably not because this was an important place where we were performing and Amanda and her partner might not be good enough. After that performance the director asked me if I had family in the audience. When I said no, the director replied "Oh I thought you did. You know Amanda had a lot of family here, why didn't you say so?" That was frustrating. But I think the director knew exactly what was going on and didn't cast Amanda on purpose.

The other cast performed the following day in the worst theater from the whole trip, and again in another small city. The third time they were supposed to perform, Amanda had pain in her foot and couldn't dance, so we all pushed and somehow my friend and original partner got to dance in her place. We were all really happy she could have at least one chance to dance it, although it must have been really hard, not having rehearsed in almost a month, and never having done it with Amanda's partner. She did well, though.

So in the end, I performed 9 of the 12 performances of this program (there were 3 other performances of a different program, so 15 altogether). I was happy I was trusted to dance in the end, as first cast, too! I was constantly corrected to have more confidence in my dancing, and sometimes they said it was better. It's hard to fake confidence, and even harder to really have it, for me, so even the slightest improvement makes me happy, and probably even helps with the problem itself.

Good to be back! More soon,

Janie