First dance rehearsal

Saturday was the first rehearsal for nennivian*'s Magic at Midsummer piece. I'd been excited to get going for a while, and on Saturday I had a blast. I was a bit nervous for my own performance; I'm not a bad dancer once I memorize my steps, but it takes me a while to learn the choreography to get to the point where I can go through it smoothly and fast enough. But I feel like I followed along really well, and I didn't even confuse right and left that often (which has been a lifelong problem of mine.) Charlotte's choreography is really great-- it's fun to do, it tells the story really well, and it has neat moments where one phrase will have similar but not the same elements of a different phrase that connect them and contrast them at the same time. It's very clever. She also did a great job of teaching it to us; I think the clear way she could describe it and then demonstrate it really helped me get through my typical difficulties absorbing the movements for the first time.

There are several cast members from HTP's Midsummer in this show, and I like the fact that all of us are playing different roles in this show than we did in the other one. I am Titania where I used to be Puck, Plesser is Bottom where he used to be Lysander, and Zanna is Puck when she used to be Hermia. Heck, we even have some Midsummer crew members who now took on roles-- Marissa the costume designer is Hermia, and Jenna helped with makeup and now is Helena.

It felt like a great workout, fun to do and actually physically demanding. I am lucky, I think, that my partner for a lot of the movements will be Plesser, who is strong enough to help me out with some of the paired ones like the dips. The only downside is that I am now very sore. Scratch that-- most of my body is just fine, but my thighs are pretty ripped up. Charlotte incorporated this one move that I was flattered to hear was inspired by my performance as Puck, the movement that was kind of Puck's signature, crouched down on the ground with one leg bent and one leg fully extended.

Once we started doing that, it came back to me just how rough moving like that was on a body that isn't used to it. I'm walking kind of gingerly now, and getting up and down stairs is a real pain. I had lofty ideas of practicing the steps a little every night between rehearsals, to get them more solidly in my mind, but I think I'll have to just stick to spending some time visualizing them until I'm moving better. But I think I'll be okay soon. As it was during Midsummer, I expect I will be uncomfy at the very beginning of the process while it's new to me and at the very end of the process when I'm doing it every night for the week leading up to the performance. :-)