Nothing Personal
It's called show business, not show fun.
Z, I know I keep reblogging you, but I’m seriously fascinated by dance — I’m a musician, so we’re always stuck in the pit, and to see the cogs and wheels and the finished product is always a source of wide-eyed curiousity for me.
Also, does your face ever hurt like a bastard after a performance?
(Also also: best part about this piece from the musician’s standpoint? The choir doesn’t have to sing any words.)
Six: I didn’t know you were a musician! Where do you play? What do you play?
As a dancer I am absolutely, 100% fascinated by music. More than fascinated! I am motivated by it, inspired by it, I feel like I understand it better than I understand words or feelings or physical mechanics, and in fact just listening to music makes me understand words, feelings, and definitely the physical mechanics of my body in a way I am incapable of accomplishing on my own. I just performed a Spanish dance in another Nutcracker, there were at least two steps in that dance that I find IMPOSSIBLE to do unless the music is playing. It’s like the music has some kind of unlocking power, some kind of magic that enhances the entire physical world.
I had the joy of dancing to a live orchestra for that other Nutcracker and I have to admit me and my girlfriends spent a LOT of energy trying to sneak looks into the pit during dress rehearsal, and then also lingering outside the musicians’ lounge. We find you to be very interesting creatures too!
As for what hurts after a performance, my face is a small consideration. The joints in my toes are the quickest to ache. This particular pas de deux wasn’t too strenuous so I was ok, but in the other Nutcracker my dance was jump-tastic and so my ITBs (outer thigh) would get in knots and eventually pull on my knees. In the face area the biggest problem is that all that makeup clogs the pores. Oh, and your lips get really dry from the smiling, by the end of the night I’m putting vaseline on my teeth to keep ‘em slippery.
We LOVE that Snow has singers but not words - it encourages us to make up our own. Which we pretty much do anyway, to every dance. Sometimes it’s to help you remember the steps, or to help you time them correctly. But usually it’s just to be idiot savants clowns. ”Laa laa laa la-snow” was very popular in our dressing room, but between me and my partner the song went “fiirst weee hold-the-wrist, theen stiiiill hold-the-wrist, juuuuump doooown, juuuump and-down, and-soutenu, boureeee, smiiiiiile!” When you hold the wrist and when you hold the hand has to be something agreed upon by both partners and more importantly, remembered by both partners, and one of us (not saying which one) (me) had some trouble with the order of the wrist/hand holds.
