Backstage. Oh the drama of backstage. Combine uncomfortable costumes with bright lights, a bundle of nerves mixed with that weighing feeling of pressure, ballet dancers with a bad conductor, and you have a recipe for disaster. The audience has no idea what's actually going on backstage during a show. It's stressful! Timing is everything and everything is set on counts. If you miss an entrance you're screwed. There are quick changes, wardrobe malfunctions, set adjustments, musical ques and tons of other things to worry about.
Knowing counts helps a lot with entrances. It's really obvious if a dancer comes on stage way too early or too late. The "Oh Shit!" expression on their face says it all. It's such a bad feeling. One dancer was so paranoid that she would miss her entrance, she asked everyone around her to count out loud backstage. "Gimme the one ok? GIMME THE ONE!" I'm sure even the technicians backstage knew the counts by the end of run of shows, but she still needed the "ONE". Stress makes people crazy. There's a lot of yelling and cursing behind the scenes. A lot of which is directed at the conductor. If the music is too slow or too fast it can really screw you up as a dancer. I think its more mental because I remember once complaining about how "slow the music was" one night, only to have another dancer point out that we were dancing to a CD for this specific production. So yea. That was awkward. But other times it IS actually the conductors fault and it's infuriating. Sometimes if the music is really off, mid variation the ballerina might turn her back to the audience for a second and let out a little, "Seriously?!". We all know what she's talking about, and we all feel her pain.
It's really important for a dancer to be musical. Music and dance go
hand in hand. But sometimes we need little "cheats" that help us to hear
the counts of the music. If a big group of dancers are dancing together
and have to be in perfect unison, there might be one or more dancers in
the group that are in charge of quietly singing out the number of the
counts for everyone else to follow. It usually sounds like,
"One.....four.........seven!". The more people aren't following, the
more aggressive the numbers sound. "FIVE!......EIGHT!.....TWO!....UGH!".
Hey, we've all fallen victim to counts, sometimes the music can be
really tricky and hard to hear. For me, I don't actually like dancing
with counts, I prefer to just listen to the music. "Feel the music". Usually I can hear
it, but then sometimes I can be completely tone deaf. Actually, you know what, you should probably just gimme the 'one' just in case.
Finally! My prayer for MORE has been answered. Meow :-)
ReplyDeleteI really love your writing, and I bookmarked this blog right after I found it.
I know exactly what you mean by botching up your entrance. Once, I was early by half a minute (not my fault by the way), now THAT was awkward. I still vividly remember the OMGOMGWTFWHATDOIDONOW moment and the shock that paralysed me until the right time came.
Hope to read more soon ;-)
Hahaha! Thanks for your interest, you made my day :) I will keep writing away...stay tuned! And if you have any ideas on ballet related topics to write about feel free to let me know.
ReplyDelete-Bloggerina
I will.
ReplyDeleteI just remembered a really funny story about music that is too slow or too fast. Obviously it wasn't funny for the dancers back then but you know how time works :).
That must have been ages ago when I still had classes at John Cranko school. 15 or 16 years ago. I was in my first or second year and they had set up a big stage on Schlossplatz, for German Unification Day, and all the classes were performing a piece. Our old chancellor Helmut Kohl and George Bush Sr. were on a visit, we even saw them marching off backstage just before we went up to have a first look.
As freshmen my class was pretty much first to perform (some silly wooden shoe dance) which was lucky for us and bad for the higher classes, because a few minutes afterwards the tape unit went straight to hell. The speed of the music would change. Erratically. It would go slower now, faster then and with it changing the pitch of the music. It was ridiculous. The audience was having fits of laughter, while the Ballerina was really feeling the heat, standing en-pointe, leg at 180° angle in the air and music playing at half speed.
I think I still have a VHS of it somewhere. Gonna have to get this digitized and put it on Youtube.
Oh damn, reading this again I realize I sound really heartless. The dancers were doing great given the circumstances, and the audience was laughing at the botched up music, not the dancing. It was just so.. strange. I've never heard music that was so messed up like that in my life.
DeleteThey also cut the performance short because obviously, you can't really dance to that broken tape machine. Another fine example of how a piece of technology can really ruin your day when it's not working as it should.
By the way, here's a few things you could write about:
- Pieces that you like/don't like as a dancer
- What's working like with different coreographers?
- Learning new pieces: how do you prepare and get the steps/movements into your head? And how much time do you have for learning?
- You wrote you're from LA. What is it like going to a completely strange country that you don't speak the language of, away from family?
- Maybe some unexpected funny situations in live shows that have happened