Rehearsals - Week 2

I got an email from my choreographer saying that her flight out of Memphis was cancelled and that she wouldn't be back in Utah until after spring break. After a brief freak-out Sarah, Christine and I came up with a solution.

We reworked the entire rehearsal schedule to allow for 2 hours of singing rehearsal and material with the singing cast to be worked at the beginning of the day and 2 hours of dance rehearsal at the end of the day. This calls the dancers for less time and doesn't increase the burden on the singing chorus. Another important decision was made to rehearse "Horsell Common and the Heat Ray" this week instead of "Thunder Child." I would take the responsibility of rehearsing "Horsell Common..." and Katie, our Choreographer, could tackle "Thunder Child" after she returned.

I got to work on Tuesday evening, rehearsing "Horsell Common..." with the singers. We had just gotten to the end of our 2 hour session when I was greeted by the loveliest sight! 4 new dancers to add to the cast. 3 of them are dept. of Ballet freshman and 1 is a theatre student, huzzah!

From WOTW

From WOTW

I immediately put them into the dance and choreographed about 3/4 of the song by the time we had finished that night. In one rehearsal, we had managed to do almost all of what I scheduled the whole week to finish. Thing were going well.

Things stopped going well soon after however. 2 of the dancers told me they weren't going to be available for Thursday's rehearsal. Something I didn't mind too much due to the fact that we still had 2 dancers left to teach them the choreography later, but come Thursday we had a grand total of zero dancers show up for their call. The two we were missing were eventually tracked down and we were told they couldn't make it because they were "Packing for Spring Break." Spring break was in 2 days. To quote Christine, "Does it take 48 hours for you to pack?"

The remainder of Thursday's rehearsal was cancelled because we couldn't do anything without our dancers and we were forced to cancel Friday as well. Apparently those who were packing told us that it would take a very long time.

Thursday wasn't entirely a waste though. I managed to teach my father, who is puppeteering the Martian creature, his choreography for the dance and run a few bits with the singing chorus. Spring break is beginning just as I write this so I hope people will be a bit more on top of things when they return. I'm headed to New York for 5 days for the Theatre Department's Senior Showcase. It's a pretty big deal but it didn't take me 48 hours to pack...