New Adventures

SWAN LAKE - REHEARSAL DIARY 2009 - WEEK TWO

Week two has come to an end, though I have neglected to have a bath this time round. It’s partly due to guilt, how can you not feel guilty when all you see on TV are adverts of cartoon children crying because their parents weren’t conscientious enough that now the climate is killing the whales and penguins. I did however feel like sleeping until sloths could fly (I think it would take longer for sloths to learn that than pigs to be honest, giving me slightly longer in bed). But I digress… we started the week a little differently with a discussion of the character of the swans with Matthew Bourne. This was very helpful as it gave us something to focus on within the material itself. Sometimes there is a danger when something is very technical dance wise, that you end up dancing for the movement’s sake, instead of remembering the context of the movement and what it actually is you’re trying to portray. We went through what we thought were the signature moves within the choreography, what qualities we were trying to embody, express and how we might go about doing that.

After a day of cleaning the material of Act 2 and trying to fix spatial problems and pathways, we went on to Act 4. Act 4 is, as anyone who has seen the show will know, very different from Act 2. It was something I didn’t quite get at first and that’s that most of the material in this act isn’t supposed to necessarily look “nice”. It’s supposed to have a creepy, nightmarish quality; which is vastly different to Act 2 in which we are graceful and beautiful. In learning it, I somehow had the impression that it wasn’t going to be as complicated or difficult to learn as Act 2 had been. That must have come from the fairies under my fridge because if anything it felt like we’d had our heads put in a blender. Some of the material which the medium swans do is quite cyclical, yet slightly different every time. The arms break on 5, then 8 the second time; there’s half a head roll the first time but a full one the second time which goes back into half way through the sequence but in a different tempo. The cyclical nature of the movement adds to its nightmarish quality, like something that can’t be broken out of, but makes it very confusing to learn. However there is much to make up for the difficulties in learning the material. I myself always find it great fun to play the creepy, sinister characters, and there is ample opportunity for that in this act.

The Swan Lake Company in rehearsal at 3 Mills Studio's

There is also jumping on and off the bed, which is quite fun too. Though I think the stage management crew have a little cry when they see what we’re doing with it, it must be like a health and safety nightmare. One swan for example, has to climb up the back of the bed, which is at least eight feet high, and swing himself and one leg over the top; then climb over and onto the bed without using his arms. The bed itself is raked, being low at the front and getting higher towards to back. All the other swans have to jump onto it, without using our arms, in quite rapid succession after one another. My swan has to jump on at the very back, as I think I mentioned last week. This actually turned out to not be as hard as I thought it would be, though it’s a little unnerving when the person who has jumped on before you has failed move his legs and feet from right where you are about to jump, and only does so right as you are taking off. I can imagine the edge of the bed not being very pleasant to a shin bone.

There’s one section where we are on the bed and killing the Swan, we’re supposed to look very vicious and menacing. I’m at the front of the bed with my back to audience along with another swan, blocking the view of what’s going on. However, once we’d finished doing it with the music we turned around to find that most of the people were laughing, hardly the reaction you are supposed to get from the most vicious part of the show. The reason, they soon told me, was that in my enthusiasm I had been wriggling and gyrating my bum around in not quite a menacing manner. I had in fact looked like I was trying to entice the swan to death rather than eat him alive. One of our lovely dance captains Kerry Biggin had even failed to mention it the first time so that I would do it again… I’ve yet to think of how I’m going to get even. Which reminds me, I’ve had one or two people coming up to me and asking me not to show them in a bad light, and to those people I have something to say… I’m open to bribery…

By the end of the week we had finished all the material from Act 4 and so began doing runs of the whole of both acts 2 and 4. Even in the rehearsal space without any lighting or set both acts are very powerful. Now all we have to do is build up our stamina. Which reminds me, I wasn’t dreaming when I heard that we were advancing from 8 – 1 to 10 – 1 press ups. It was very real. Though now we are going to start a short circuit training session before class instead ran by Ross Fountain and Luke Murphy from the company. It’s a good kick start to the day when you are feeling like your heads rolled up in a ball of marsh mallow.

We had also learnt some of Act 3 by Saturday, so we have a little head start on the girls who are coming next week. We’ve been told that we have had very good concentration levels these past two weeks, and that we shouldn’t let the girls’ presence change that. Though, to be honest, that’s like asking a nest of wasps to sit still whilst you poke a thorny stick into it. But anyway, we shall see.