Rehearsal #1!

Today was my first rehearsal as a BDC dancer!!!!

There are 6 dancers in the company and surprisingly, I am the youngest one. All the other dancers either have a degree in dance or have danced with other companies... wow I sure felt young and out of place, but I guess we all have to start somewhere!

We did another Limon style warm up, which was probably the hardest thing I've done all week, and definitely shouldn't be, which means I need to start taking more ballet because I am WEAK-sauce!! I don't know if this is normal or not but my throat definitely hurt in a non-scratchy (more of a painful lump) kind of a hurt towards the part when I started sweating, I think I'm just out.of.shape...

After the warm-up we talked about the company and introduced ourselves (this is actually the point in which I realized I was the youngest one, not by judging everyone else's ages by how they look, because to be frank, that may be the thing I am worst at in my life, maybe.). So far so good, we're all in our 20s (except Traves, the artistic director) and love dance (thank goodness!). We have Traves (like I said, the artistic director), Liz, Katie, Mikale (I really just took a shot in the dark on how to spell that one...), Michelle, Sarah and me, that's BDC! :)

After the intros Traves told us about what he hopes to do this year with the company. He said that the past few years have been "lay-low" years (I'm assuming it means more like just getting by and not really thriving as a company), but this year is the "re-vamping" year so he's excited about the possibilities! He said he likes all different styles and types of dancing and choreography so we'll hopefully be doing a little bit of everything (except hopefully NOT hip hop... because I'm the whitest girl you know and trust me, it's not pretty...), so that's exciting. He is debating on how he wants to structure our performance pieces this year, his first idea is called "Bite" (like hors d'oeuvres [I googled how to spell that, just in case you were wondering]) because it would consist of many different little pieces. The second idea is the evolution of man, (pointedly [not ironically, in case you were in my lit class last semester] he's hoping for a performance at the natural history museum in Balboa Park) it will start out "gooey" and move through the different stages, come to an electronic "era" and then end in the "fall" of man. We will see what he chooses, both sound interesting to me at least...

Traves also told us that he really wants to take the company outside of San Diego. He wants to perform at things in San Diego for sure, festivals, shows, whatever else we find, but he also is hoping to travel (at this point I had to make sure I wasn't drooling). He said in the month of September, JetBlue (airlines) offers a deal that for $600 you basically have an unlimited ticket for the entire month, and if the company can find the dinero, he's thinking we can fly all over, New York, Boston, wherever else we can find performances! (I legitimately had an excitement outburst at this point, which was a bit embarrassing, but I definitely said [hopefully not yelled], "Yes!" at a random point in the conversation)... He also said that if any of us have connections anywhere that we could try to set up travel dates and such (Deirdre Hawkins will be receiving an email from me this week ;) ). Anyway, that was my excitement about that... I'm really hoping it all comes together that way, I am STOKED at the opportunity to travel and dance and not have to pay for it :) what a fantastic deal!

The rest of our two hours were spent rehearsing (duh). The first piece we started was a technological/electronic/computer-y sounding piece (at points it kind of sounds like a computer is about to blow up, although, as Matthew tells me, computers can't blow up... well, this one can...). Traves said this was the weirdest it was going to get and we started at that. Didn't get very far, but it's started which is super exciting! We then moved on to the next piece called "Pulse" which BDC has done before, but since Traves loves it so much and it was from a long time ago, we're bringing it back! Unfortunately I'm one of two understudies for this one (He wants at least 1-2 understudies for each piece, because "things happen", [smart man]), but it's a really cool piece, lots of rolls and cool effects (and the understudy role will rotate so I'll get a chance to be in something else for sure!).

So far the company is a blast to work with, and once we spend more time together and get to know each other better I have a feeling rehearsals and performances will be even more fun. Unfortunately I have to wait another entire week until our next rehearsal, but as my Positive Psychology (yes, that's a real class that I'm taking for units at PLNU) professor (shout out to Dr. Kim Schaeffer, aka Schafe-dog!) we must be excited about the future, but also present and happy in the moment, maybe for this whole next week I will just keep pretending I'm in rehearsal? Haha just kidding, but I really will be looking forward to the next one.

**DISCLOSURE** Just a heads up, it's spring break week here at PLNU, and I got clearance to be able to stay on campus (for some ridiculous reason ResLife kicks us all out during this break) so I can work in Admissions, so I am home alone ("home" being my on-campus apartment), and there is the possibility that I will get very bored, which may be the inspiration of any random blog posts that come up that have nothing to do with dance... just warning you! Matthew is taking me to the zoo tomorrow...