Updates!!

Well, I've made it to Florida and rehearsals are in full swing!!

My new roommate (aft; a fierce singer girl) and our Aussie dance captain (fore)



My favorite post work hangout aka new age non-drug muscle relaxant



We work nine hour days (officially, which does not count the three plus hours we spend reviewing material together once we're back home and technically "off the clock"). If we're lucky, we have one day off every six days.

A typical day starts at 6am when my roommate (or rather her alarm) wakes me up to work out before our 7am call time. Then we head to the rehearsal studio, where we have a physical/dance warm up for a half an hour (including a killer abs section to Little Mix's "Stereo Soldier," with which I am absolutely obsessed). After that, we have a vocal warm up for thirty minutes with the musical director before we work from 9-12:30 to run segments of music, learn/review choreography, and get the shows on their feet. Then we get lunch, then we're back for the next four-ish hours.

Working for a cruise line has definitely necessitated some adjustment after working for the Met, which doesn't start rehearsals until at least 10am and operates under union sanctions (the most critical to my happiness is the Met's consistent breaks and the greater flexibility in schedule afforded by the occasionally - shall we say - uber involved and engaged opera diva). After spending two weeks in Florida on my feet in character heels nine hours a day without those luxuries of rest periods to which I had grown accustomed, I truly comprehend and value what a union can offer.

That said, I'm surprised and happy that I seem to be able to live up to the challenge! The first few days were pretty rough, and I can't remember the last time my entire body wasn't sore or covered in bruises, but as each day passes I get stronger, the millions of steps of choreo root more firmly in my brain, and the forty plus songs (especially my solos - eek; PLURAL) begin to register in a more supported place

(Dramatic aside: that last bit has required some effort. Doing these musicals, which are essentially nonstop simultaneous singing and dancing, is akin to what I imagine delivering the State of the Union live without moving your upper body, while your lower body is running at a 6.5 speed at a 45 degree incline on a treadmill would be like).

As Saturday comes to an end, I lament the end of an amazingly relaxing day off (I've never felt that I really deserve those days off before taking this contract, and wow do I relish them when they are here).

Next week should prove interesting. Our five-girl cast for Shout: The Mod Musical has been sans an Orange girl for the entirety of the first week we spent learning and blocking and running the whole show. Orange gets in from London late tonight, and we'll be working every day from Sunday to Sunday in order to catch her up. It's going to be a BEAST of a seven day work week, during which I will look forward to this yumminess I prepped tonight, and to Monday, March 11th, my next most glorious day of rest.



Until next time,

A Broadway Baby

Things move forward

It's official! I've accepted an offer to be a principal singer-dancer on Norwegian Cruise Lines. It should be fun. 8 months of an itinerary that spans the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, Panama, Vancouver, and Alaska.

There are some things in my life right now that aren't going exactly as I'd like... but I am appreciating the reality check amidst all my gratefulness and joy.

A good friend sent me Monty Python's "always look on the bright side of life" as the perfect reminder not to make the less awesome cards that life occasionally deals us too seriously.

In three weeks, I will be in Miami rehearsing and getting ready to head out to sea!

Woot!

Art, love, truth

Art is so intimately close to love and truth. That realization is perhaps what I am most grateful to have discovered over the past three years. An artist's job is to use their love to occupy your attention for as long as he or she can, and if that artist stumbles upon some helpful truth in the endeavor, well, that's the dream. Perhaps in that desire to connect, to support, to share, to dream, therein lies the unique opportunity we all have to keep each other moving forward.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the things that really matter. Incidentally, intention work as a dancer, singer, and actor has been the ideal catalyst for that kind of thought. What motivates us to do what we do, to be who we are, to keep fighting for what we believe in despite all indications of futility? It must be some ennui, our spirit, our nature, that intangible, inexplicable thing we all have in common, which manages to keep us moving forward no matter the obstacles or stressors.

I want people around me who thrive on their passion, who tell me the truth, even if they know it may not be the popular thing to say. Life is this push pull. The relationships I enjoy most are those when people are committed to something, no matter what that thing is. There are people whose encounters are more like volcanic eruptions, whose love, truth, and art explodes like some incredible drum roll of hundreds of tightly round timpani drums before the cymbal clash that signal majesty in the making.

Sometimes fit between people and people or people and employment or people and life calling  is no good. It becomes obvious and irrevocable. Looks fade. Things fall toward Mexico and/or stop working. What matters is a person's substance and how true they stay to what matters most. When something matters, you fight for it. That's the most important push back sort of affirmation of our existence that we have.

Miguel [Angel Ruiz] has some interesting thoughts on the nature of self love and the nuances of functional relationships. In his philosophical prose piece the Four Agreements, he posits the value of committing to the following, which I think may help lead you where you want to go:

1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Take nothing personally
3. Make no assumptions
4. Do your best, always

There are times when I have difficulty with all four, to be perfectly frank. But every day is another day. Also, I am pretty impressed with anyone who endeavors to be better. I like the Ruiz idea that "You don't need to justify your love, you don't need to explain your love, you just need to practice your love. Practice creates the master." When you find the right job, the right friendship, the right relationship for you, there's this instinctual knowledge and feeling that it's right. In the mean time you'll be doing all this practice in self love to get yourself ready for the great love of your life.

Working Through Some Things

You'll tell me of these frustrated dreams
Constructing a world where all you seek to achieve is futile distraction 
vagabonds accost us on subways
Life cuts your phone out of your jeans' back pocket and
Scores your heart with wasted possibilities

To cope, you cleanse your pallet with well balance liquids and smooth over the rough edges of an existence so desperately desirous to be made unique

That is where a love lives.
In errant moments lost in alphabet bars
In shared dreams, witness to the singularly soulful promise of a few eager fingers interlaced with a few other equally eager fingers.

There is that enviable ease of living
Longed for by many
Achieved by so few
Punctuated by the clarity of earnest tears restricted by subzero temperatures and laughed out of substantiation all for an illusive sense of self preservation

Somewhere floating in lower Manhattan, there is a love held captive by the intimacy of the grasp of your forearm
A glance of pressure along the inside of my knee

Disguised by the clever capitulations of world weariness, disillusion, and poorly cloaked need.

There is where a love lies.

Someday you will show it the excellence of all it has been promised. There will be veracity sufficient to color a life and love hard won.

Until then, that opal moon beams soothingly over missteps and black bunches of balloons and siphoned expectations and waits for the day all is changed because the sun rises at just the right angle to dispel all doubt.

In that pocket of horizontal space between sunrise and moonsleep, inexhaustible, unafraid of dying, that is where a love lies.

Don't Sleep In The Subway

Is not only good advice ... apparently it's also a song!

What a DAY. I've been sparing with my posts because most of the past week has been focused on practicing the virtue of patience game (as per usual). On a whim, I submitted my headshot and resume for a dancer position on Norwegian Cruise Lines, thinking that I'd just go get a free dance class out of it.

Instead, they respond back asking me to prepare two motown pieces to audition for a featured singer in a new Broadway production that they will be creating for one of their ships. It's choreographed by greats like Rachelle Rak (of Chorus Line, Fosse & Chicago fame) and Tiger Martina, so it would actually be an incredible opportunity! They called me back on Friday, and again today (Monday) to sing more material, and later to dance.

While between auditions for Palace Theater in New Hampshire and NCL callbacks, I finally found out today that none of the four girls who were at the end of the Zorro audition have heard from the casting personnel, which could mean a whole host of different things. Ultimately, the most important of those is there's no telling when or if we'll hear, and this is not an industry that affords much waiting.

Got to the end, I think of the NCL callback and am off to bed a tired and quite fulfilled little puppy.

Cheerio!

Keep Calm and Do Epic Things

Despite some unpleasantness at the homestead, this week is off to a raging start and will be utterly consumed by rehearsals, performances, auditions, and resuming my regular tutoring client load. I worked out with my trainer this morning at 7:30am to make sure I could get to the Met on Time to start rehearsals as a cover for the new production of Parsifal, one of Wagner's last completed works. 

We're diving right in and already I can tell it is going to be EPIC. The incredible director Francois Girard has his very French head in the game. His team is so thoroughly prepared that it's a pleasure to watch them work. I seriously cannot WAIT to see the set design in person, as it looks promising.

According to his perception, "Parsifal is not just an opera—it’s a mission. At the end of his life, Wagner was trying to reconcile all the aspects of his spirituality. It’s a sacred piece in the history of music." —François Girard

Sign me up! 

In between rehearsals now, printing some sheet music at the Lincoln Center library for callbacks later this week. It's going to be one of those fly-by-the-seat-of-my-dance-pants sort of weeks. Can't wait!

Hugs,

A Broadway Baby

All's Quiet on the Eastern Front

After the holidays and a brief respite before barreling back into performances, auditions, and clients, I find myself in need of a reminder of the benefits an attitude of gratitude can yield.

Thanks to the Scientific American, via friend Sonali, for the perfect opportunity to break my long absence.

The Scientific American: Accentuate the Positive
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gratitude-map-invites-use