Cracking Nuts

 

Act II of GDT's Nutcracker. Photo courtesy of Joe Tecza

When I was a little dancer, being in The Nutcracker was the highlight of my year. Every June, I'd start counting down the weeks until auditions. Once cast lists were announced, I wanted to rehearse every day, all day. I loved the work of learning choreography, becoming a character and making the steps look right.
   One year, when I was about 12 or 13, I remember waiting in the wings for my part, watching the sugar plum fairy. She wasn't doing much, just standing there in layers of stiff pale tulle and a tiara that glittered under the stage lights, arms floating by her sides. She exuded an other-worldly charisma and elegance that convinced me there was no other life for me.
    Long story short, there was another life in store for me.
   But that's a tale for another day.

   Given the important role Nutcracker played in my early ballet years, it's unsurprising that it became the first full length ballet I directed after launching my own little school and subsequent company. I've never felt much confidence in myself as a leader but living in a place with very little dance culture has forced me to become one. If I want a ballet to happen---I have to direct and choreograph it!
    I'd been toying with the idea of doing a Nutcracker for a couple of years. After trying and failing to recruit enough professional dancers for a contemporary ballet performance last year, I changed gears and started thinking more seriously about Tchaikovsky's most famous ballet. Last summer, I got in touch with the staff of the David A. Howe Public Library, where I'd performed with The Valley Theatre earlier in the year, to see if their auditorium would be a potential venue. I was surprised and thrilled when they offered to sponsor the production as an official library event. I was also panic-stricken--now I had no excuse not to go ahead with the show. The Nutcracker is a notoriously big undertaking for a first ballet. While many dance companies survive off the show's profits, the sets and costumes are traditionally elaborate and expensive. The large number of dancers, many of them children, required also makes casting tricky.

Party Scene. Photo courtesy of Joe Tecza. 

    We stayed on budget by borrowing a lot of costumes (thank you, Urban Impact Foundation and Steps Dance Studio!), and getting creative with our sets. The auditorium itself is very limited in terms of what types of sets can be accommodated--there's no fly space, for example--so instead of fancy backdrops we used furniture, handmade portable set pieces, and lighting to fill things out. In the future, I'd like to invest a little more in nicer costumes, particularly for the party scene and the flowers, but overall I thought we did very well with the limited resources at our disposal.
   Believe it or not, the hardest part about getting the production off the ground was finding dancers! Most productions have a cast of 100 dancers or more. Genesee Dance Theatre had just about thirty.
Thirty is not a lot. Thirty is especially not a lot when you consider that this number includes, a half a dozen non-dancing performers who played parents in the party scene, and about twenty children. While I did manage to scrape up enough dancers to put on the show (after five separate auditions), it meant cutting out some parts of the ballet. I opted out of doing a full snow scene, due to our inability to actually use fake snow and our very small number of company members available to create a corps de ballet of snowflakes.
     We ended up cutting two of the Act II "variations"--the Arabian dance and the Spanish dance. I just didn't have enough company members to go around! And, while, my good friend Lina Kent flew down from NYC to guest as the Sugar Plum Fairy, I just didn't have the budget for a cavalier. She danced the famous Sugar Plum Fairy solo beautifully and I hope we're able to stage the full pas de deux in future years.
   Production week itself was one of the most stressful periods of my life. We had a fairly sporadic rehearsal period leading up to the show thanks to the Thanksgiving holidays and our first stage rehearsal was, to put it kindly, a train wreck. Missed cues, forgotten choreography, disappearing props, sloppy dancing. I feel no guilt in saying that publicly because I think the cast will agree with me! That disaster of a rehearsal made the next week all the more rewarding. The dancers stepped up their game, applied the notes they were given, and worked hard to make the show the best it could possibly be. By the time we opened  to a completely full house that Friday, our Nutcracker was something I could feel proud of.

   The energy and excitement of the audience during both packed shows was contagious. We actually had to turn people away at the door--something that's never happened at any other show I've directed or choreographed. The highlight of the weekend for me was seeing the faces on the kids in the audience as we came out to greet them (in our tutus and tiaras). One adult members of the audience said, "I've always wanted to see a Nutcracker and this was magical" which is about the greatest thing I could have heard.
    Aside from the fun of dancing in the show (Trepak and Snow Queen), this undertaking was worthwhile if only for the immense confidence it's given me. I used to feel uncomfortable with my own choreographic skills and scared to death of being at the helm of a single show, let alone an entire company.
     With such a successful first show in the books, I feel motivated to see what other possibilities are on the horizon for this new company.
Nutcracker 2015, anyone?

How about that crushed velvet, eh? 

   
 

2014 in Review

       I long ago stopped trying to identify individual years as wholly good or irredeemably bad. Wrapping up months by the dozen, slapping a label on the whole package and stacking them neatly away somewhere in our nostalgia-addled memories does a disservice to lived experience. It's much easier to think of life as generally difficult and full of disappointment and get on with it.
     Kidding!
     Sort of!
     A part of me is convinced the world will end at 11:59 pm each December 31st, so in the spirit of that approaching terror, and because this is my blog, and because I haven't blogged in a while, and because I did this last year, let's take a look back at my 2014.

January - March:

    These months were cold. So very cold. Some stuff happened, but mostly I remember the cold.

One weekend I braved the arctic temperatures and took the leap of attending a pretty Big Important Audition ™ for one of my dream jobs.  I got all the way to the final round of callbacks after not even expecting to make the first (all singing!) cut and had an incredibly positive experience all around. It made me think that I might still be able to do this show biz thing for a few more years and got me itching just to audition, something I hadn't felt in years.

     My new BarreFIT program started taking off at HMAC in the early months of 2014 with two full classes every week. I enrolled in a Group Fitness Instructor certification program to expand my knowledge and make sure I'm up-to-date on the latest in exercise science as it pertains to training my clients. As a Pilates instructor and dancer, I was fairly confident I already knew most of what the program would teach me but as soon as I got the massive textbook full of anatomic illustrations, I knew I was in for some serious hours of study!


     On the performing side of things, I appeared in a dinner theater production, Daddy's Girl with a local community theater group. It was my first time doing a community theater production not directed by Nic Gunning and it was fun to be part of an ensemble comedy show. 

Daddy's Girl at Short Tract Town Theatre

April - May
     I kicked off the month of April with a weekend of performances playing Shelby Latcherie in Steel Magnolias back under the direction of Nic Gunning with The Valley Theatre. We performed at the Nancy Howe Auditorium (at the David A. Howe Public Library) which has become one of my favorite local venues. The auditorium feels intimate and inviting but can accommodate an audience of 300 (plenty for this area) and has a comfortable backstage space. 
    After winding down from back to back shows, I flew to Texas with my husband and son for the Easter holiday. We spent most of our time visiting my family in San Antonio and also sneaked in a couple of days playing at beach in Port Aransas. (Our toddler loved the sand and the seagulls but was terrified of the waves.)
       In May, HMAC presented its annual Spring Showcase. This production was different than the showcases of previous years--I decided to stage a very abridged version of Swan Lake utilizing all of my ballet students. This was my first attempt at staging any type of story ballet and I felt terrified and incompetent throughout much of the process. I'm pleased with how my students pulled it off, though, and it gave me the confidence to tackle bigger projects as a director/choreographer (foreshadowing!).

Steel Magnolias with The Valley Theatre

June, July, August
    My baby turned two years old in June. The rest of the month is sort of a blur. 
  I planted a garden and more than half of the crops failed or were destroyed by critters. (Curse your cuteness, baby groundhogs!) I converted one of our big closets into a writing cave and only wrote there consistently for about a month before returning to the familiar arms of my living room sofa to tackle client work and creative projects.
     Anyway, I did succeed at passing my GFI exam through the American Council on Exercise and taught a ton of private and group fitness classes. I was also able to attend part of a summer ballet intensive a couple of hours from my house and take some dance, Pilates and yoga classes in Buffalo and Rochester. 
September - October
     A new school year means a new season at HMAC! We managed to grow our student numbers again, particularly for my adult programs. Genesee Dance Theatre officially formed after three rounds of auditions and a lot of self-doubt on my end. We dove headfirst into rehearsals for the company's first production--The Nutcracker. In the middle of all of this I also started dancing with another company, In His Steps based out of Dundee, NY, and became a barre/group ex instructor at a local YMCA! 
     With October came my 25th birthday, a fun weekend in Buffalo to celebrate said birthday, and another new part-time job at an independent bookstore and coffee shop. Yeah. I like being busy. 

November - December
        Most of November and December were dedicated to working (and working and working and working) as well as final rehearsals, preparations and performances for Genesee Dance Theatre's production of The Nutcracker. 
   The Howe Auditorium ended up being able to sponsor our production, enabling us to offer the show at no charge to audience members. Local businesses, individuals and families met the rest of the production's start-up needs and, somehow, we pulled it off. I need to do a full blog post just about the experience of putting the show together but for now I'll concentrate on the fact that it was, all things considered, a smashing success. We packed the house at both performances--even ended up turning people away--and received a ton of great feedback. It makes me hopeful for the future of dance in Allegany county.

    Nutcracker about killed me (and resulted in nasty Achilles tendonitis) so while my studio is closed for a couple of weeks, I've been recouping--spending a lot of time eating in my pajamas, playing and trying (with mixed success) to potty train my son, and catching up on my reading. 

      For me, 2014 was a brilliant year for dancing and performing and rediscovering what I value most about those disciplines. As far as my personal life, 2014 felt like one long trudge through a freezing cold wasteland without shoes and a sack of bricks on my back. I wish that the passing of another year meant that trudge was over but I know it's not. 2015 is full of uncertainty for me and my family. There's a real possibility that everything about my life will be different in six months--a prospect that both thrills and terrifies me. 

I'd like to end on a more positive note but this post is too long as is. Happy New Year, blog reader friends! 
     

    

Stepping Back

I'm starting a dance company.
I wrote about it a little in my last post.

When I set the gears in place to form the company, I knew what kind of work I was looking at. I knew it would be a challenge to squeeze in this extra-responsibility to my life so quickly but my single-minded brain didn't care. I could do it. I would do it because I needed to.

Almost immediately after launching the website and an IndieGoGo campaign to raise the funds for our first performance, I felt like something wasn't quite right. My husband started questioning whether I thought the timing was really right. I insisted it was and kept moving forward with plans, looking through dancers' resumes and trying to figure out how everything would be funded.

We went on vacation to Texas over Easter where we discussed further whether a summer performance would even be possible. I've decided to take my husband's advice and postpone any further work on an official first performance for the company. We think a show can happen in the fall, giving me the summer to get a solid group of dancers together. I need a few months to focus on being a mom and a wife and that book I'm editing first. I can choreograph ballets today or five years from now or ten years from now but my son is only going to be a kid once. I don't want to miss that.

It doesn't feel great to back track. I hate it. I want to be able to do everything all the time. Learning my own limitations is tough.

Seeking Dancers for Summer Contracts

Big news! I'm launching a dance company! 

This past year, I haven't been able to shake the feeling that our rural area could use its own dance company. My head's also been full of all kinds of ideas for ballets and other works that I just can't set on my young students. So it's time. The pieces are falling into place and I'm aiming to launch Genesee Dance Theatre with a small performance this summer! 

My two biggest needs at this point are dancers and funds. If you'd like to support my new company financially, you can make a donation here. 

If you'd like to be a part of the company, take a look at the audition notice below and get in touch. Initial contracts will be just for summer rehearsals and performances (2 -3 weeks) but I am also hoping to extend longer term winter contracts to local performers (or those who'd like to make themselves local for our season!). 

Since this is a brand spankin' new company, I also appreciate help getting the word out. Tell your friends and get ready to see some fun and innovative dance in the Genesee Valley region. 

Casting Notice 

Genesee Dance Theatre is seeking versatile male and female dancers for short contracts in July 2014. Dancers must have excellent classical ballet technique. Contemporary, modern and jazz dance experience is a plus.  Rehearsals will take place in Houghton, NY (Rochester/Buffalo area). Housing and transportation will be provided for NYC-based performers.To be considered for an audition, please send an email with your resume and headshot to info@geneseedance.org. Performers of all ethnicities and body types are encouraged to apply.