Last Rehearsal Day

A quick video post of our Day 5 rehearsal!! We're ready for tech and showtime!
CC.

Day 3 and 4.....a short clip from our process!!

Well it's now the end of Day 4....so we have some catching up to do! Yesterday started with an early rise for me. I've been hitting the local Nubody's in the early mornings (it's massive and pretty empty in the morning which I love). After some "hotel administrating", i.e. working on stuff back at the Courtney Bay Inn, we all headed down to the Port City Ballet Studio where our friend Sarah Johnson introduced us to a great concept....."Express Barre"!! We loved this fast paced barre without breaks between exercises - it was a great warmup for us in 25 minutes! We plan to bring this back to Hali and make it our own for those pesky after lunch warmups when you just don't feel like kickin' it into gear! Thanks Sarah!

After a great 2 hour rehearsal on the Imperial stage, we headed back to Saint John's famous market (our new favourite place) for some eats. We all tried the Korean food this time.....(extra spicy for me).....glorious!

Day 3 with the Creation group was our first day of crafting the piece. We began to draw on all of our vocabulary and phrases and set the first half to 2/3 of the dance! These ladies were ready for anything and so focused!

Today we decided to have a massive Cora's brunch. This is a bit of a tradition for us when we're touring. We LOVE a big breakfast! Sa (Sarah Rozee) headed to an Ashtanga class where she was told she was "born to be an Ashtanga Master" (nice one). The rest of the afternoon consisted of more hotel admin, some hotel rehearsal for next week, and a ballet barre at the Imperial (gotta keep the bods ready for Saturday night!).

Day 4 with the Creation group was truly amazing and inspiring!!!! We are very excited about this piece and what we, as a group, have been able to accomplish in only 4 rehearsals! The group is such a strong group of 11 females ages 13 to 34, and it's beautiful to see them all moving together. They are going to rock that Imperial stage Saturday night!!

Tomorrow we clean the piece, work on quality and on details! Hope that you enjoy the clip of our process.

CC (Carolle)

Second Day!

The second day is over and it was productive! All the material for the piece is there. The girls learned a lot of movement, like... a lot! They are great! We are going to start putting the dance togheter tonight and it's very exciting.

We found kind of a little indoor market close to the theatre, so we went there for supper. It's a really cute place with goooooood Korean food according to Sa and CC! We might go back today, so maybe Mel and I will get to try it =)

Other than this, today we are going to try an "express barre"! A 25 mins ballet barre with no break between exercices.I have no idea how it's going to be, but we will tell you more about this after we did it =)

Day number 3 in process
Yééééééé!!
T

First Night!

Saint John

And so it begins again - the blogging.... dun dun dun, and similar to our other tours this one is not without an entertaining beginning.

This time however we had winter tires!!! To be honest we feel like princesses because we don't usually have such luxuries. Now mind you we had to pay extra for those at the car rental because they are considered an "add on" in the winter (yeah I know that sounds crazy) but CC was more then happy to get that" add on".

The drive was pretty nice. The Cobequid pass was clear and uneventful (thank god) even though the toll guy told us it was "getting better", what ever that meant. We of course got a little lost trying to get into the city because the roads are crazy here and the GPS doesn't seem to like them. However can you really go on a road trip without getting lost, I think not because its too much fun!.

We started our first day of creation with the residency participants and it was fabulous! We have 10 lovely dancers and it is great fun. Two of them are even driving from Fredericton each night to participate. They had a lot of material thrown at them last night and they did amazing. It will be an intense few days but they are up for the challenge and the piece is going to be really great. We are all excited for day 2.

Our hotel is sweet and the front desk ladies are so lovely. They have helped us out A LOT. We got back to our hotel late last night after the workshop because we had to get groceries. Both of our rooms have fridges and microwaves which is awesome because then we don't have to eat out every meal. Tania and I finally settled in and were going to play on the internet when we sadly discovered we didn't have internet. After calling the front desk we found out we are too far away from the server and we would need to switch rooms. Luckily there was another room on the same floor that had a fridge and microwave and also internet. So at 11:15pm we started our move. Also keep in mind that we had completely unpacked, filled our fridge and our all drawers. So we re-unpacked in another room and were happy little clams until I sat on the bed. Yes its true I broke the bed. I sat on the bed and broke it. Good god. I would like to think it was already broken because come on - I am not that big but hey such is life. So after T and I died of laughter we thought we should call the front desk. I was a little nervous because sometimes they make you pay for things like that in hotels but the ladies were so nice and were more worried about me then the bed. Someone is coming to look at it today but there is no fixing this bad boy and T and I are NOT changing rooms. So last night we made a new leg for the bed which consists of a book and an ice bucket! It is really sturdy and I am completely happy sleeping on the bed all week - I just avoid the right side... ha ha ha.

Maybe we will post a picture of our new bed leg. I sat on the bed and broke it and I am going to leave you on that note.