Rehearsal Rehearsal Rehearsal...

This week started off pretty swell (those two days off last weekend were definitely appreciated by the dancers and our bodies)!

Working on Clowns and Others has been hysterical…as Tim and Heather set each section I plan out which dancers from Richmond Ballet will fit each section best! Our Richmond audiences are going to LOVE this ballet- it’s really comical but has some really charming moments as well. The Prokofiev score is also quite beautiful…I think the Richmond Ballet dancers are a perfect fit. My personal favorite is the "Lions" section. It's all men and very very funny.

We also finally finished Rite of Spring which is awesome because it’s about 40 minutes long. Since we dance in a studio that has no air-conditioning, I’m sure everyone has probably lost at least 2 or 3 pounds in water weight while running this highly aggressive, dramatic, and modern piece. Rite of Spring has elements of cannibalism, sacrificial offerings, a sensual duet between the ‘Chosen One’ and the ‘Warrior’ and a fight scene between the ‘Chieftain’ and the ‘Warrior’. It’s really a fantastic ballet; if anyone ever gets the opportunity I would highly suggest going to see it.

On Tuesday night some of the dancers went to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch some sports and unwind a bit. We convinced the manager to turn one of the TVs to So You Think You Can Dance, because I told him that if anyone claimed dance was not a sport, they could come speak to the tall blonde haha.

On Saturday the gallery building where we rehearse had a huge and very famous art walk drawing many tourists and visitors. Lucky for us, we had people coming in to watch us all day! We even had a bluegrass band right outside the window. We ran all 3 ballets that we had learned over the past 2 weeks.

One of the biggest surprises was that Susan Israel Massey (a School of Richmond Ballet faculty member and yearly participant in The Nutcracker and story ballets) showed up with her husband and daughter! Her daughter lives about 20 minutes outside of Asheville and when Susan heard I was here, they made the trip to come see me! It was such a great surprise, and I was able to introduce her to Heather, our director and to Tim, our ballet master. She watched our rehearsal of Second Line which I think she enjoyed very much.

After our busy day of performing and rehearsing for the arts walk visitors, some of us dancers wanted to blow off steam and decided to hit up a local Mexican restaurant, Papas and Beer. We were greeted with a mariachi band and had ourselves a great evening.

Until next time, kisses- Valerie