Friday 18th May
Today was the day of the dance show. I was in rehearsals from 10am to ensure that I was ready for the show tonight.
To start with, we had a full run-through of the show. We didn’t have time for this yesterday so this was the first thorough run-through that we have done. The aim of today is to have as many run-throughs as we can to make sure that we are ready for tonight. The more run-throughs we can do, the more practice that the tech team can get and the better the sound and lighting will be.
After the run-through, I was given some notes form my dance lecturer, Laura. The main note that she gave me was that we needed to look at the last song ‘This is me’. This is the first time that I had practiced the full routine with the wings on. At the moment, the routine isn’t quite looking finished. Laura walked through the routine with me to change some of the moves slightly so that the routine worked better with the wings. We only got the wings on Wednesday so this is the first time that I have practiced this routine with the wings. When I learnt the routine, a lot of the moves included punches however we soon found that when I did this with the wings, it didn’t really work that well and that we needed to make some slight adjustments to the choreography. We did this by making the punching movements more fluent. For example, in one of the moves I originally snapped my arms in and out with my leg. But instead I am now flapping my arms in and out. This looks really affective with the wings and I will practice this a few times from now until the show tonight. Another point in the dance which needed changing slightly was the leap off the block. At the moment, I get up onto the block and then leap off it to travel diagonally downstage to the corner. However, when Laura gave me some feedback, this bit of the routine didn’t really work and she wondered what else we could put in its place. I tried out a few moves and I am now going to do a chasse into a leap. This should look better and will fit with the rest of the choreography.
The other notes included some lighting/technical pieces and possible choreography for the duet with Luke.
After a lunch break, we carried out some admin tasks. This included making a list of all of the people that had reserved tickets. We have reserved 76 tickets which means there will only be 4 seats left for people who may turn up and haven’t recovered a ticket. We also printed off the tickets and made sure that these were all cut up and ready to be handed out tonight. The programmes were also printed. Here is a copy of the programme:
After carrying out all of these admin tasks, I went back into the performance studio to go over the running order of the show with Graham – the lighting/sound technician. He said to me that the more we can go through the order of the show, the better the technical elements of the show will be because he will know the cues better making the show flow better. This run through was very quick and just involved me walking through the show with Graham telling him which routine went where and what each cue was. This really helped both Graham and I because it was allowing me to rehearse over the order of the show and also it allowed Graham to become more familiar with the order and the lighting and sound elements. After this technical run-through, there was going to be a full tech/dress rehearsal with all of the cast at 6pm. This will allow us all to practice all of cues, costume changes and scene changes.
In between the technical run and the children arriving, I began to get ready for the dress/tech run because I figured that I wouldn’t really have much time later on.
The children started arriving at 5:45pm. Sienna was the first to arrive so I spent some time with her, going over her solo part just to make sure that she was confident with it. I then worked with Molly and Sienna to go over the first part of this dance where Molly comes on and waves goodbye to Sienna. When we practiced this yesterday, there was a lot of time in between the small acting bit and the dance. I had a discussion with Laura and we decided to move the acting bit to further on in the track so now this will start about 30 seconds after it was originally meant to. When I had told Sienna and Molly the new timing and they adapted their part, it looked so much better as there was now no long pause in the middle of the track. After running the solo twice and with Molly’s part at the beginning, I moved on to teaching Sienna the other small bit that she will be in after the song ‘Rise’. This is the part where Aurora wakes up from her death-like sleep. Sienna will enter stage in blackout and lie on the blocks as if she is asleep. As the narration says, Aurora wakes up as Maleficent kisses her on the forehead. The 2 characters hug and then walk off stage in blackout. Sienna picked this bit up really well.
Once I had finished teaching Sienna the extra bit, we were then able to teach Luke his extra bit. This involves him coming onto stage during the part of the narration which tells us how Steffan wanted to become king and comes to Maleficent to steal her wings. We didn’t have much time to practice this at all as we had to start the dress/tech rehearsal as soon as possible.
In my opinion, I don’t think the tech/dress rehearsal went very well. A lot of things during the run-through went wrong which concerned me a little in the lead up to the final performance tonight.
One of the major concerns during this rehearsal was that people did not know their cues. This made it difficult because it meant that it affected everyone else who was in that routine/section. The reason why people are missing their cues is because they haven’t been able to attend rehearsals.
I am hoping that this rehearsal has made everyone think about their parts so that they can get it right for the performance tonight.
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