December 2004 - Rehearsals Begin
Greetings from the 2nd Floor Production Office! December saw a flurry of activity as rehearsals for the June Concert swung into full gear. Join us as Choreographer and Incoming Artistic Director Melanie Rios Glaser shares her insights into the rehearsal process:
I flew in from Germany on Saturday, December 18th to begin rehearsals for the re-staging of dreamChild on Monday morning. I was feeling relieved that getting past the hurdle of flying overseas with my seven week infant daughter had proved easier than I anticipated. Showing up at the studio to meet my cast of 33 dancers totally jet-lagged and having been sleep deprived for about three months seemed like no big deal. I was excited to be back at Saint Joseph Ballet, a place I associate with some of the happiest and most rewarding experiences of my life. (Thus my taking the job as the next Artistic Director.) After all I’ve been through this before; gather the group around you, introduce yourself, try to recruit the dancers who already know you by giving them complicit looks to support you in convincing the others that, despite being an adult, you are fun, laid back, cool, and really hip—which might be pushing it a little this time. That’s when we play a name game and I realize that the part of your brain designed to memorize people’s names is the one that suffers most with sleep deprivation. I look at the name and the face, such beautiful and wondrous faces, but the name…did you say Jacqueline? Cristina?—you remind me of an Elizabeth. Yikes! I’m usually good at this, tonight I might sleep. It only takes a couple of days and some good humor from the youth for me to get it straight, they are forgiving and patient.
I don’t know exactly how to start to work on the re-staging of dreamChild, it is a unique commission for both artistic and personal reasons. It’s Beth Burns’s last concert as Founder and Artistic Director and I will be re-staging two of her most popular pieces. It would be the very rare time that one choreographer allows the other complete freedom to tinker with the work. As Beth described it to the group: she is giving me a free credit card to make as many changes as I wish, which speaks of her ability to release her creation and trust my choices. (Also the case with Dale Merrill who is re-staging Unearthing.) I anticipate the dance will merge our styles and that as a result of this cross-pollenization, it won’t look like either of us. Which is why I think the project is so much fun. It can get a little boring to see myself reflected back to me in the work I do. After all, I get to hang out with me all the time. And what could be more symbolic about inheriting the artistic leadership of the organization from Beth than to come together in this concert through the actual work? I am aware that this new dreamChild project came to be through the years of support, collegiality, and friendship shared with Beth. I do start to worry a little after the first few days that she like what I’m doing with it.
So I start the way I usually start which is by playing or inciting the youth to find movement ideas and to let loose through structured improvisation tasks. Half of my cast are dancers I have worked with in previous years and there are moments when I feel I know them well, that we have shared many hours in the studio together and I find this heart-warming. In fact my rehearsal assistant Teresa Olson was a graduating student the first year I choreographed for Saint Joseph Ballet and she has since gone on to graduate as a dance major from Chapman University and is now working professionally. The cast is outstanding in their readiness to be creative and participate fully, not to be taken for granted with teenagers.
dreamChild was choreographed by Beth Burns in 1996 and revived in 1997. As much of Beth’s work, it is full of strong imagery, meaningful representations, and an underlying spiritual/psychological dimension. The four movements are very distinct, a helpful attribute for the re-staging process. The music by Lucas Foss holds up beautifully as do the costumes. We get together to watch the video of the piece and I am glad for it because I was missing half the story in the version I had taken with me to Germany. Did I see the giants? Giants? What giants? Or the flying boy? Turns out I have only half the picture. In fact this dream world contains Boogie men, Celestial beings, Sprites, Sleepers, Puppets, Puppet Helpers, and the archetype of the precious dreamChild. Characters meet, wake up, and are lured to dream, waft through unsteady ground, exchange places, learn from each other, and dance.
We start with section one which has celestial beings, sleepers, and sprites in it. I extract the movement quality and some of the motifs from the original work, put it in the mixing bowl and add some of the results of our improvisation plus some phrases I had taught them earlier. It begins to bake but I realize I need to go back often to the video to find my footing and solutions to some similar issues Beth must have encountered when creating it. Not surprisingly, I get stuck near the very end of this section. I am in fact stumped for a couple of days and the sleepers are tired of sleeping, celestial beings of moving slowly, and sprites of jumping. By the twentieth time we run it and I don’t see the ending…we all know the choreographer is stuck. Time for tactic #4: shift entirely to something different, let the other stuff sit for a day. It works and we start moving ahead again slowly. I’ve gotten into the habit of dashing out of the studio in search of Artistic Manager extraordinaire, Ben Tusher, to tell him of any new idea. It’s partly to check it for technical feasibility but mostly to share it out loud with someone as invested as I am. My favorite response to one of my bursts was: “Great, but before we run out to buy them, why don’t you wait until the end of the day to see if you still want those ten big, fluffy white pillows as part of the set.” [Ed. note: she did]
On the second week I wake up every morning to see the death toll from the Tsunami wave climbing. My heart feels heavy as I come into the bright, spacious room and I feel strongly that we need to join the lament in an embodied way so as to be able to process at least some of the mind-boggling proportions of the loss. For twenty minutes I ask the cast to follow me in silent movement. I’m not sure of what needs to happen but as I move across the floor walking, running, stopping, propelling myself on my arms, I feel the power of these 33 bodies moving behind me in silence. I leave the studio in a gentle jog and we file past the offices of the downstairs in a silent parade. We need to do it again, this time backwards because I sense we might be joining the two stories together, the upstairs and downstairs for today---the people who work hard to raise the money and put the program together and the youth who participate and make it worth their while. The sadness of the tragedy is still with me but at least it has been integrated to our day.
The end of our two week rehearsal chunk culminates in an informal showing of our work in progress to members of the other casts and staff. Section one seems to be complete for now and I have made progress on section two. I would be at my goal of being halfway through if it weren’t for the fact that section three and four are much longer. Dale, who is re-staging Unearthing, started this on-going joke where we would check in with each other and brag about being finished with the work. He is almost done so I don’t think it’s funny anymore. My puppet soloist is missing for the showing. She is working to raise money for her college applications. Ruby, who is a small, younger girl but advanced for her age asks me if she can do the part. You know it? When did you learn it? I say OK, why not. I ask them to wing a music cue that I was supposed to set and of course, they’re right on. I’m happy with the work we have done and have enjoyed my time with the dancers immensely. As we put away the puppet pedestals, Vincent, who I felt identified with when he described himself as confused in a game we played using three adjectives to describe ourselves, says to me: “I think Ruby did it really well don’t you?” I agree. Now its time to fly back to Germany and let the pot simmer until I return for part II of the re-staging process in March.
Well, that’s it for this month’s Production Diary. February will see the scenic design concepts take shape as well as an original music composition for Dancing Into One. Join us back here at the end of March as rehearsals on the four pieces continue, designs are finalized, and costume and scenic construction begins.