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| | Day One
Posted on 01/05/2008 by Isabella
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We work in two rehearsal periods, each two hours long, each with about 35 kids. They're in groups - first we see acrobats, poi spinners and clowns, the clowns departing to another space with Todd to learn rolling globe and rolla bolla and balancing objects and funny, the poi spinners stepping to the front of the deep stage to avoid clocking each other in the head with their tennis balls on strings, the acrobats at the back of the stage, learning about stiff and tight and trusting.
Because we have a longer rehearsal period this time (14 days instead of 10 to put up a circus with 76 kids! Easy-peasy!) we spend almost the whole first day with the acrobats on basic principles, first trapeze grip (hands on wrists instead of hands, you have more to catch if you start to slip) and counter-balancing by leaning back, then trust falls to show how important it is to be stiff and tight. I show off a little by doing our partner acro routine with Zay, then pulling a girl from the group and repeating the same routine - as long as she's stiff and tight and trusts, I can take her to almost the same places. What they don't realize yet is how important the base is.
Meanwhile, the poi kids, five girls and a boy, are starting to learn the basics - toasters, butterfly, helicopter, weave. Eventually, the poi will be on fire.
Second period, I float between contortionists and tightrope walkers, there's a second group of clowns out in the lobby, the aerialists dominate the stage. I run the contortionists through backbends, split revolutions, arabesques, heel stretches, they walk in their backbends around the stage, trying to get the galloping motion that looks like a spider. I show them a contortion act from Nouvelle Experience and challenge them to each pick a move and copy it.
The tightrope walkers fill me with joy - they are light and airy and full of enthusiasm. We're working with the freestanding structure turned on its side, it's only two feet off the ground, and near the end of practice, we turn it right side up, close enough to the wall to touch it on one side, me spotting on the other, and they walk it at six feet. I hope they will be less freaked out when they have it at performance height if we do a little every day. One of the boys walks the rope like he's sneaking, his shoulders all hunch-y. And a theme for their act comes to me - spies. We'll have them in trench coats and sunglasses and hats. They'll take photos of each other and climb under the wire like possums as well as walking the top. It will give so many places to go, so much choreography - and if the Top Secret File is at the far side of the wire... Well...over and under and around and through and switching places on the wire and jumping and perhaps jumping rope with a "detonator" cord and lying down on the wire to hide from the other spies and who knows what else? I end their session with brainstorming, writing down all the things they can think of that spies do and wear and have happen.
There are so many possibilities! |
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