Opening Night

Just got back from the shoe shop....it's midnight, so I'll do a quick post about opening night before bed.

We started our day with warmup and notes at 11:30, and a dress rehearsal (with some invited students) at 1:00. Sarg (Marcel) also came to watch which was really nice. As you may know from previous posts, Sarg is our usual tech director....who is about to get married in a few days - so isn't working with us this time. What a devoted member of the team though....thanks for dropping by Sarg and we'll be thinking about you this week! Anyhow, it was a pretty good run of the piece this afternoon.....Coach (Mel) and Catherine had a couple of really key notes at the end though that we thought about, discussed, tried out afterwards and then put to work tonight......making all the difference. I'm not sure what we would do without our outside eyes!

We left the theatre around 3:30 for a dinner break (time to eat and ice my knee - it's ok...just needs ice and advil). We came back to the theatre for 6ish to work on some notes on stage, do make-up, hair and warmup. Backstage before the show was a busy place!!! Producers was in full swing tonight in the mainstage (PS: singers are much louder than dancers warming up), but it's a great place to be back there with so much creative talent in one building! Also, Lishe's sister Katrina surprised her by flying in from Toronto (for one night) to see the show!

8pm showtime...We opened with a pretty full house tonight, but more importantly a very warm house. The work was very well received and there were a few tears in the house tonight. We felt good about the performance - both emotionally and physically....this work is such an authentic and full experience for the dancers and we feel so fortunate to be doing it!

After a lovely reception, some of us grabbed some food and drinks at the shoe shop.....I'm telling you...this piece makes us eat like crazy!! We all said our goodbyes to our amazing lighting designer Ron....he leaves on an early flight in the morning. Thanks for everything Ron!

Ok. I'm off to sleep. We'll see what the reviewers say over the next couple of days! only 3 more shows left....I can tell that it's going to go too fast!!
CC