Dancing ladies rampage
Jul. 29th, 2005 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bethlakshmiSo... last night was another dancing ladies' night. Kicked if off with a run to Bard Wire so that I am now the possessor of 50 CDs of my voice. Beyond the strange thought my voice trapped in 50 little plastic disks, I'm immensely pleased and relieved to have them in my grubby little hands, and ready to pack for Pennsic.
Dancing lady practice was... hectic, frenzied and just about right.
We're gearing up for potentially two gigs:
- a guest spot in the Desert Moon Dancers show on Thursday night
- a large fire circle party probably Tuesday night - note me not saying where/when - as we haven't totally nailed down the gig, and I don't want to jinx it. :)
That means that out of our ~1 hour of live music, and crazy dance plans, we are forming a total of 180 minutes of performance over two nights, as follows:
- Set A - stuff we've been able to do since June - freshen it up, and go
- Set B - new stuff we didn't have a clue on in June - learning it at intersteller speed
- Set C - a mix of A and B, specially formatted by Anne the Wonder Planner to be both interesting, a good showcase of our skills as a gang, and a way to give everyone who wants to participate a moment in the sun, where she is one of but a few dancers on stage. And all that inside of 20 minutes. It's definitely a finely honed super-ninja skill of Anne's to create fabulous dance schedules.
Fire circle = Set A + break + Set B
Desert Moon Show = Set C
Decidedly a challenge. First - practicing a solid hour's worth of material, much less 1.5 hours of gigness in a 2 hour practice spot is definitely a demonstration of superior time management skills. Second - some of these pieces are about 1 week old right now, so practice still involves serious notes and some re-takes and plotting and scheming. The last piece of set B is new to all of us - last night. Whheee! Thank god we are doing semi-improv.
And of course... being a set of vibrant, talented, brillant ladies, as we are - we are also violently overcommitted in many directions. One of us is sewing and entire Pennsic Wardrobe in 2 months. Several are doing an ambitious co-housing endeavor, building an entire colony of homes from the ground up. I'm smoking plenty of crack with teaching a separate dance class and taking a third (whee!) and still trying to have a boyfriend and a social life. Several have kids - which trumps all hobbies. And the list just goes on. All that on top of working professional jobs - yep, most of these ladies work 40-50 hour weeks, do other serious commitments and make a serious commitment to dance. How amazing is that?
Amazing though it is... we were a total pack of ferrets. Can you imagine trying to get 20 ferrets to stay in one place for 5 minutes? Yeah... that was class. I'm amazed Anne didn't have a nervous breakdown trying to get us all to pay attention to notes. And... on top of a regularly focused class where we dance, and the nice musicians inside the boombox crank out our demands perfectly every time, we also have a music director (a fabulous one) doing the Anne-equivalent in directing the musicians. And of course, the two big throbbing brains of dance and music direction have to conspire now and again, leaving all us ferrets time to go try to eat something shiny.
That said, out of chaos sprang at least the glimmers of a clue. Now we all have a feel for exactly how insane this will be. I don't think it is beyond-the-level-of-human-acheivement insane. Just mildly ridiculously ambitious. :) I think that the class now gets that this is hard (I sure did) and that we definitely need to spend some thinking-time on it, and be more focused next week. Up to now, honestly, it's felt easy, but this is the week where Pennsic springs up with a vengance. I'm just crossing my fingers that the creative process of learn-panic-gel-peak will hit at the right time. If we panic this week, gel next week and the week after, and peak during War Week, we'll hit this just right. That seems good.
The good news is that my faith in the dancing ladies doesn't waver. Many a time I've left class shortly before a performance going "aiiieeeee, what have we done?" and then the next week - kaboom! We have The Big Clue and off we go to great things. I have faith.
Spent a little time after class talking with another dancing lady - the thing I took away was that we both think that this class is a pretty wonderous thing. We have been dancing together for 10 (?or more?). I joined about 5 years ago. The class/troupe began with the original team having no idea how to dance. Legend has it that the first few performances were largely mimed storytelling, because we didn't feel up to a "real" choreography with lots of belly dance movement, but we could handle theater. From that, over 10 years, many marriages, a few divorces, house buying, child-birthing (we had 3 pregnant dancing ladies once), grad school attending (not just me), health problems, deaths of friends and family, and who knows what all - we have stuck together. We've had some personality issues here and there - many of the fences are mended. We've lost some ladies along the way - more often due to relocation than to interpersonal problems. And through it all, we have maintained a caring and supportive vibe, while managing to technically challenge ourselves.
And this week... we just outlasted the owner of the dojo we rent from - he's moving to Florida and has sold his business to his student. Student sounds OK with keeping us, so not sweating yet.
So... 180 minutes of live music and a variety of choreographed, loosely choreographed, and complete improv? Pffft. Dancing ladies can handle it. Bring it on.
Dancing lady practice was... hectic, frenzied and just about right.
We're gearing up for potentially two gigs:
- a guest spot in the Desert Moon Dancers show on Thursday night
- a large fire circle party probably Tuesday night - note me not saying where/when - as we haven't totally nailed down the gig, and I don't want to jinx it. :)
That means that out of our ~1 hour of live music, and crazy dance plans, we are forming a total of 180 minutes of performance over two nights, as follows:
- Set A - stuff we've been able to do since June - freshen it up, and go
- Set B - new stuff we didn't have a clue on in June - learning it at intersteller speed
- Set C - a mix of A and B, specially formatted by Anne the Wonder Planner to be both interesting, a good showcase of our skills as a gang, and a way to give everyone who wants to participate a moment in the sun, where she is one of but a few dancers on stage. And all that inside of 20 minutes. It's definitely a finely honed super-ninja skill of Anne's to create fabulous dance schedules.
Fire circle = Set A + break + Set B
Desert Moon Show = Set C
Decidedly a challenge. First - practicing a solid hour's worth of material, much less 1.5 hours of gigness in a 2 hour practice spot is definitely a demonstration of superior time management skills. Second - some of these pieces are about 1 week old right now, so practice still involves serious notes and some re-takes and plotting and scheming. The last piece of set B is new to all of us - last night. Whheee! Thank god we are doing semi-improv.
And of course... being a set of vibrant, talented, brillant ladies, as we are - we are also violently overcommitted in many directions. One of us is sewing and entire Pennsic Wardrobe in 2 months. Several are doing an ambitious co-housing endeavor, building an entire colony of homes from the ground up. I'm smoking plenty of crack with teaching a separate dance class and taking a third (whee!) and still trying to have a boyfriend and a social life. Several have kids - which trumps all hobbies. And the list just goes on. All that on top of working professional jobs - yep, most of these ladies work 40-50 hour weeks, do other serious commitments and make a serious commitment to dance. How amazing is that?
Amazing though it is... we were a total pack of ferrets. Can you imagine trying to get 20 ferrets to stay in one place for 5 minutes? Yeah... that was class. I'm amazed Anne didn't have a nervous breakdown trying to get us all to pay attention to notes. And... on top of a regularly focused class where we dance, and the nice musicians inside the boombox crank out our demands perfectly every time, we also have a music director (a fabulous one) doing the Anne-equivalent in directing the musicians. And of course, the two big throbbing brains of dance and music direction have to conspire now and again, leaving all us ferrets time to go try to eat something shiny.
That said, out of chaos sprang at least the glimmers of a clue. Now we all have a feel for exactly how insane this will be. I don't think it is beyond-the-level-of-human-acheivement insane. Just mildly ridiculously ambitious. :) I think that the class now gets that this is hard (I sure did) and that we definitely need to spend some thinking-time on it, and be more focused next week. Up to now, honestly, it's felt easy, but this is the week where Pennsic springs up with a vengance. I'm just crossing my fingers that the creative process of learn-panic-gel-peak will hit at the right time. If we panic this week, gel next week and the week after, and peak during War Week, we'll hit this just right. That seems good.
The good news is that my faith in the dancing ladies doesn't waver. Many a time I've left class shortly before a performance going "aiiieeeee, what have we done?" and then the next week - kaboom! We have The Big Clue and off we go to great things. I have faith.
Spent a little time after class talking with another dancing lady - the thing I took away was that we both think that this class is a pretty wonderous thing. We have been dancing together for 10 (?or more?). I joined about 5 years ago. The class/troupe began with the original team having no idea how to dance. Legend has it that the first few performances were largely mimed storytelling, because we didn't feel up to a "real" choreography with lots of belly dance movement, but we could handle theater. From that, over 10 years, many marriages, a few divorces, house buying, child-birthing (we had 3 pregnant dancing ladies once), grad school attending (not just me), health problems, deaths of friends and family, and who knows what all - we have stuck together. We've had some personality issues here and there - many of the fences are mended. We've lost some ladies along the way - more often due to relocation than to interpersonal problems. And through it all, we have maintained a caring and supportive vibe, while managing to technically challenge ourselves.
And this week... we just outlasted the owner of the dojo we rent from - he's moving to Florida and has sold his business to his student. Student sounds OK with keeping us, so not sweating yet.
So... 180 minutes of live music and a variety of choreographed, loosely choreographed, and complete improv? Pffft. Dancing ladies can handle it. Bring it on.
