March 12 2013

Don Juan in Tech Rehearsal February 2013. Photo: Manuel Rotenberg. Dancers: Stephanie Maiorano & Max Tchernychev.

Daily Stuff: Ran through 24 Preludes. Some pieces are looking very nice. Then I finished the 15th (Raindrop) Prelude with the girls. Now, I just need to do their entrance (the 14th Prelude) but that is going to be VERY simple. The piece only lasts 28 seconds.

Then set Max's 3 preludes. The first one is all turns and beats. Number two is a sort of take on a Russian folk dance, but with some classwork thrown in and the last is actually my favorite.

Since the most famous Chopin ballet is probably Les Sylphides, I thought it would be nice to have some of Fokine's choreography in the piece. Prelude number 7 is actually the famous Prelude from that ballet, but it has totally different choreography. Max's last Prelude is number 20. Its all these sort of Funerary chords. So I overlayed the choreography of the male variation of Sylphides on top of it. I like it because it can't directly sit on top, so Max needs to wait after every couple of steps. That allows the audience to actually see him "choosing" to move when he wishes.

There is actually a lot of that in the whole piece, dancers stating after count one or moving past the last beat of the music.

Afterwards, I had a meeting with a company dancer about next season and ran off to teach at Florence Elementary. Today we learned kick-ball-change and went over our polka. They also got to do two grand jetes in a row, rather than just the one they usually do.