The audition…
I had worked so hard for this day. Practicing a dance, learning a new song and even preparing a Shakespearean monologue, which I had never done before. My dad and I spent days finding the perfect monologue for my audition. After lots of searching I found a monologue from Midsummer Nights Dream itself. It was my first time reading Shakespeare and I thought it was very weird and didn’t understand it at all. Then my dad explained what it meant and I understood it. The audition process was easier than I thought. I was not nervous when I saw that my friends could do it and that Anita was so nice. Then I decided to just go for it and it was super fun. I now know I can do auditions anytime.
The grand finale rehearsal
It was the grand finale rehearsal! I Finally got to meet the whole cast of the play; the fairies, mechanicals , lovers and more. I was so excited to finally meet all the I would be working with the next couple months, But not every face was a new one because I had already met all the other big fairies and Alisha who plays Puck.
When I first got there Anita was there along with the other girls. The little girls were the first ones to learn their part. Anita asked Sarina and I to assist them so that they wouldn’t get lost when going to their formation, but we quickly realized that Sarina ended up on the wrong side so Ciara did it instead. After that it was our turn to learn our part. It was fun because we got to dance with sticks. We only got one stick for rehearsal but I think we will get two for the performance. At first I felt a bit lost because I had never done a dance with sticks but as soon as the music turned on and we did it up to tempo I felt like I had known this dance for a year. After we nailed the first part Anita brought everyone one the dance floor to learn a really hard move. I want to tell you what I felt, but honestly I didn’t have time for feelings. I had to only use my mind for focus. It was so hard that not even the most advanced crew could so it. Soon when we did it in a circle I realized that all it is a step turn. Then it wasn’t as hard because I knew what a step turn was.
Soon the night was over and it looked great all together!
Half way through!
I thought I had done all styles of dance when Anita told me I would be doing a Dandia and a folk dance.I had never done anything even close to this style. I like how the moves are so different from all the other styles I had learned before. It was also interesting that there were many repeating patterns in the dance. I also loved the partnering and doing things in groups. There is one part where we go in a tricky formation and we all needed to work together to make it look right. There are also so many parts where we are wacking sticks around so we need to be aware of each other!!! All in all, I am learning that while dance styles seem very different on the surface, one you get into it dance is very similar no matter what country it came from. I guess dance really is a universal language.
Polaris Dance Galaxy Festival
I had a great time at the Polaris Dance Galaxy festival yesterday! We got to perform our ballet dance with Titania and all the fairies. We also got to watch other performances and I even learned a spanish folk dance with my friend and fellow fairy Ciara and my mom learned to salsa dance! I also saw a lot of people that I knew like my ballet teacher Miss Allison and some kids from a dance camp I took this summer. Although it was fun there were also so scary parts like when there was an accident on the highway so some of the kids didn’t get there until about 5 minutes until we performed!!! There was also one part when I messed up and sat down to early. Overall, I had a great time! It is so great to be part of such a supportive dance community and share my love of dance with everyone there.
Re-choreographing
On Thursday we had to re-choreograph the Tap/Baratanatyam number. It is interesting because while we had worked on it before, once Anita aunty saw the whole show and how it flowed together she decided to make it different and put it in a different spot and called it Titania’s entrance. We divided the dance into 4 sections. It was super fun because one of the other faries (who wasn’t in this dance) got to play the drums so it was live music. We changed section 1 so that we could travel into a pyramid. Section 2 traveled even more forward but the steps were different. Section 3 was the easiest to do and Section 4 was the hardest, but we came up with an awesome ending pose! Overall this dance needs lots of work but I learned that it is much easier to tackle complex things if you break it up into parts!
Show Run Through
In practice last week we did a whole show run through. It was really fun because the whole cast was there and I got to see every single dance (the duke and duchess weren’t there so some dances were empty) and everybody got to see mine. I was really excited to see how the whole show works. It was very fun because as I was watching and I could see how it tied in with the original story. My favorite dance was called “love confusion” (which there is a lot of in A Midsummer Nights Dream) it is about when Lysander and Demetrius are both under a spell and they both are in love with Helena all because sneaky Puck put a love potion on them. My favorite part was when they have a sword fight over Helena. Its so intense that you totally forget that the swords are plastic and no one will die. It is also great because the fight is choreographed so it still is dance and they managed to add some steps.
I liked all the scenes and I am excited to see how the real show turns out!!
Second to last week!
So this week we mainly focused on running through the show. It was very hard because Shaila (Titania) left this week to go to college. She was in so many scenes! Amita filled in for her in most, I bet it was kind of hard to learn that many scenes in such short time. Shaila had to run through other’s normal rehearsal while she did dress rehearsal because she wouldn’t be here for our dress rehearsal. That was the first time I got to see some of the costumes. My favorite costume was the opening number costume it was really pretty. We also got a poster that said when we need to change, what to change into, who’s helping us and how much time we have to change. I have 4 different costumes to change into, my dear costume, my fairy costume, my village dance costume and my wedding prep costume. Thanks to Alisha for making the poster! Oh thanks to Anita Menon for being there on Friday even thought she had a headache! The think the play will be great!!
Proud to have a grand-daughter like you,i know how you love this art form
Good luck in all your future endeavors
Paati