In an ideal world, I would love to be able to focus on one dance for every clean up that we have scheduled.  But as is the case with theatre, it never feels like there’s enough time.

Yes, we are all blocked and choreographed, but the cleaning of it takes so much longer than I always expect that it would.

Last night, we cleaned  Brass Band, Cry at Weddings and Rhythm of Life.  The latter two are pretty traditional musical theatre style dancing, and when you see them you will know what I mean.  There are Fosse-esque elements added to keep with the feel of the rest of the numbers.  Well, Weddings and Rhythm are looking very, very good (I need to make a very minor change to Rhythm once I find out about the lighting), but Brass Band was my major concern.  It’s going to be a great number, and I am not just saying that, but whew-eee when I saw it at a run though on Saturday, I swear I was going to hyperventilate.  I’d say that two maybe three people remembered most of what they were doing, and everyone else looked at each other with confusion written all over their faces.  With the director watching this hot mess scatter across the stage, I could tell that the cast felt uncomfortable too.  So, I couldn’t be too mad at them could I?

When we began cleaning up last night, they remembered a lot of the number, but I had to re-teach the second half once more and with the same questions to answer as the first time I taught the steps, we ran out of time to run the number full out two or three times like I had planned. Don’t get me wrong, some great things came out of the run through and the clean ups, but the less that we’d have to clean the more amazing the show will be come opening night.

Until next time, break a leg!