Rehearsal #5: Dancing with the Improvisors

We rehearsed last night in a mirrored dance studio at ACT, largely because our regular space was booked but also so we could do some serious dance work. We started with the standard dance warm-up, made all the more interesting by the option of looking at yourself in a mirror doing it. Then we went into the choreography teaching exercise.

Alyssa took a small group of 4 people out on to the ACT balcony and taught them a wonderfully simple dance that involved standing in a straight line while bouncing and leaning in different directions. Of course, I do not do it justice. It was wonderful. Karen took the rest of the group (one of the assigned choreographers had thought they were on the schedule for next week) and put us into a long sequence of stepping around and crossing each other. Again, I do not do it justice, but large group numbers are very effective.

From there we moved into some couples dancing. We always work on couples dancing in Let It Snow rehearsals, but so rarely do we do it in shows. I’m not sure why. I’d love to see it and do it in a show. I think one hurdle is that it’s hard to do in groups because everyone has such a tenuous grasp of the footwork that they can only do it over one span of distance. With every couple traveling at different rates, traffic jams become problematic and messy. But maybe one couple doing some dancing behind someone singing a solo would be easier to work into a show? I don’t know. I’ll have to hunt for ideas.

Then we warmed up our singing voices with some Dona Nobis Pacem and did a Color/Advance exercise. We did it once telling a story and then we did it again singing a song. It was amazing how much more natural coloring is while singing. We often talk about not putting plot elements into our songs, and I think that exercise really drove home how little plot you need in a song. I think I even learned more from directing the other person’s song than I did singing my own.

Then we moved into some faux opening numbers. “Faux” because we didn’t focus on the words at all. We mostly sang gibberish. The focus was on the backup dancing. We worked on developing movement to go along with our choruses and on crisping up the background dancing during verses.

I think the biggest thing we learned from all this was “Commitment”. Commit to your movement, and it’s ok to put all of your energy into one gesture rather than having lots of extraneous movement. As clay said “have a moment, not a seizure.”

We also learned that having a “leader” during the backup dancing behind verses makes them so much easier. So, commit to being the leader. Either take control or if you sense that you’re in charge, go all the way with it. And, perhaps more importantly, don’t be afraid to say what you’re doing. Tell everyone in plain English what attitude you want them to affect or what dance move you want them to do or what direction you want them to go. It’s easy to forget you can direct movement with your voice, but it’s so helpful when people do it.

Then we closed by singing some solos (or rather having everyone sing their own solo simultaneously) with the focus being on dancing during the song, either while singing or during a clearly defined dance break. Frankly, in terms of my own work, I’m discovering that I like exploring footwork more than arm or torso movement. But I also discovered that the more footwork I did, the more natural arm and torso movement became. I’ll have to push that further.

(Sunset from the ACT balcony last night)