Nov 21 2011

Rehearsal for SDB's Alice:Wonderland. Photographer:Manny Rotenburg. Dancer: Arielle Meads

At yesterday's Nutcracker rehearsal I had some time to clean up rat and soldier choreography. Rehearsal is mainly made up of three different things. Discovery, which is the fun part. That includes the teaching of the existing choreography to the dancers or the creation of new choreography. Fixing problems. Which is either working with the dancers to execute the steps correctly or re-adjusting the movement for the dancers or re-choreographing it. And Repetition. Drilling the thing over and over again until it is in the dancer's muscle memory. The LAST thing you want is a group of people onstage who are trying to remember what comes next.

I also readjusted the end of the Snow pas de deux. The pas ends with a sequence of tricky lifts. Depending on the Snow King and Queen sometimes it takes a few tries at it to see which sequence works best for this particular couple. I think we found our answer. Of course, it took the Snow King tossing the Snow Queen into the air about 50 times to figure it out, but thats life in the rehearsal hall, :)