Day Twenty-Four

Today we left rehearsal at 4:20!! That is a record for the past two weeks!! I think we were all extremely happy. I expect tomorrow to be easy for me as well, because Ms. Natalya plans on switching casts to rehearse. Even though I will still dance when my double does, I won't have to handle the extreme pressure of having Ms. Natalya's eyes on me.

I had a chat with Ms. Natalya about my performance in classes and rehearsals. She explained to me that I dance by myself to an imaginary audience, even when other dancers surround me. She meant that I dance with my own accents and my own quality, which is perfect for a soloist, but terrible for a corps dancer. She said that I would be great on my own, but that any company I join would put me in the corps first; thus I must learn to make my accents and my quality identical to that of the rest of the corps. The phrase she used was: "You must become like a spy-- always aware of what is going on around you and ready to change in an instant to blend in."

Tomorrow we have another acting class with Mr. Bossov. I have found myself looking forward to this every Monday. This week's homework was to imagine a situation in which no one speaks and perform it to him as group. Our group chose a scene of mannequins and store-keeper.

Gentry, the store-keeper, begins to pick us up, one by one, and place us in a line. Then he adjusts our arms and legs, etc. I think the hard part of this will be to stay in the positions that we have chosen while he carries us. However, if all goes well, this should be a whole lot of fun!!