have i ever mentioned that i sometimes have that actor nightmare, where you\u2019re in a play but you don\u2019t know your lines or what you\u2019re supposed to be doing, and you have no time to prepare? it\u2019s a pretty common dream. <\/p>\n
but tonight it was kind of a reality. except in a ballet. <\/p>\n
which is funny, anyway, that i\u2019m IN a ballet. but in the first act, after the “garland dance,” kevin and i have to strut onstage and circle around and then sleeping beauty herself appears, for the very first time (as an adult, as opposed to in the prologue when she\u2019s a plastic baby).<\/p>\n
we haven\u2019t rehearsed this very much, not really, and each time either julie, the head of the ballet company, has told us when to come on, or we\u2019ve been very late.<\/p>\n
tonight we were early. very very early. the garland dancers were onstage, as were a bunch of other dancers, i think they\u2019re the girlfriends of sleeping beauty, and we thought they\u2019d completely stopped dancing. they did stop, BUT NOT COMPLETELY.<\/p>\n
so we started strutting out, and all of a sudden they were STILL DANCING and we were right in the middle of them and they looked a little confused and of course we realized we were much too early but there was nothing we could do, we couldn\u2019t run back behind the curtain, so we kept walking and it wasn\u2019t pretty. at all.<\/p>\n
and the thing is that there are only TWO MORE REHEARSALS till the real deal. really only one rehearsal, because on friday night there will be an audience and it would be quite mortifying to cause yet another ballerina traffic jam in front of people who are there to watch the show.<\/p>\n
the ballet dancers, they have to WORK throughout the ballet, dancing dancing dancing. and like i\u2019ve written, all we have to do is parade around and sit down. and we can\u2019t screw it up! <\/p>\n
in the third act we have to enter and we\u2019ve only done that about two times, but luckily there are a bunch of little girls who follow us on, and they know exactly where it\u2019s all supposed to happen. so one of them says “GO!” and we parade out. last night one of them said GO but it wasn\u2019t reallly time, but i think they figured it out amongst themselves, relieving us of any of the burden.<\/p>\n
but that first act, i hope we do it right. we don\u2019t want to leave the dancers standing there onstage with nothing going on, but i just couldn\u2019t bear going on and having all the dancers suddenly trying to walk exactly where we\u2019re walking.<\/p>\n
tonight it was even more clear just how hard they work. they have three guests artists for the show, all guys, and one of the guys did a dance with one of the ballerinas and it looked so beautiful and effortless and good. but then he came offstage and was crouched in the wings and i watched him as he panted and panted and sweated and sweated.<\/p>\n
very very hard work.<\/p>\n
all we have to do is keep our smiles going through the third act. this is a very long act, and tonight since the guest artists were there we saw the actual act and it lasts about four years. we have to sit there smiling and chatting a little, and my mouth got so very very tired of smiling and i started to feel like it couldn\u2019t possibly look like a smile anymore, surely it must be a weird grimace. and my lips got chapped.<\/p>\n
but gil, he has to stand up for the whole thing, plus he has nobody to interact with, so really, we have it easy. plus of course we don\u2019t have to dance.<\/p>\n
tomorrow, costumes.<\/p>\n
ok then,<\/p>\n
grace attempting to stop looking up plane fares all day long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
have i ever mentioned that i sometimes have that actor nightmare, where you\u2019re in a play but you don\u2019t know your lines or what you\u2019re supposed to be doing, and you have no time to prepare? it\u2019s a pretty common dream. but tonight it was kind of a reality. except in a ballet. which is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6JLYy-dQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}