Technical Rehearsals 07/01/09

Finally the day of performance has arrived!

Strangely, though, I didn't feel like I was preparing for a performance, all the usual nerves were gone, replaced by the 'holiday feeling' generated by ludicrously early start and the anticipation of a long journey.

We all arrived at the airport at around 6.00am, sleepy and cold. By the time we'd checked in, gone through passport control (rather traumatic for me - my jeans buttons were beeping, resulting in being pulled to one side and searched) it was time to get on the plane.

I hate planes. I should point this out at this juncture. REALLY hate 'em. Luckily the plane was quite empty which meant I had a whole row of seats to myself during takeoff. I also had prescription drugs! Way hey! I seated myself, but to my consternation there was no window blind! Pants! I'd have to remember not to look left. DO NOT LOOK LEFT!!! I munched my pills and hunkered down for takeoff... Half an hour later I was still locked down in my seat, muscles seizing up, brain all pink and floaty, still waiting for the wings to be sprayed with de-icer! Damn! Thankfully the flight was uneventful, we landed safe and sound and my drugs hadn't knocked me out too much. I relaxed on the train and by the time we reached Tilburg I was wide awake and ready for the day.

After dumping our bags, puzzling over the somewhat unconventional toilet arrangements at the Central Hotel and quickly wolfing some food we headed off to the theatre for technical rehearsals.

The theatre space was lovely; huge, lofty and monochromatic, very clean and sparse with white floor and black curtains. Oddly, or so we thought, there were no wings. Although we agreed that this looked amazing, it did give us something else to worry about, the practicality of our planned stage entries.

Techs started late, partly due to us arriving at the venue later than anticipated, partly due to the technicians not being ready, which meant we hadn't had time to warm up properly. We walked through the dance, checking lighting, sound etc, but also our entries and cues - very important! Spacing for the quartet was a minor issue as we were threatening to move into Jo's violin-playing spotlight near the end due to the dance's gradual drift from stage right to stage left.

After techs we had a quick coffee with Zoobin then went into a studio for corrections/ amendments.

Zoobin amended some of our opening pieces, Eilidh and Jo came away relatively unscathed, a slight staggering of some of their movements resulting in the two following one another rather than being simultaneous. Holly and Marianna had to focus on making connections with each other and the audience, Holly also had to exaggerate her contractions and jumps. Our trio was not altered too much either, apart from my dropping Heather on the floor needed to be faster and less careful. I was very worried about this. Although Heather said she'd be fine and was near enough to the floor at the drop point not to suffer any injuries, I was still nervous about doing this and worried that I might not do it properly during the performance because of this small anxiety. I understand the effect Zoobin was trying to create with the dropping and know it would look much better than my original catch, I just didn't like doing it. The quartet was the piece that received the most amendment, Zoobin urged us to speed up our movements. We had previously been moving quite slowly, probably imagining Jo's violin to be slower that it actually was in practice. Zoobin cut some small yet fiddly sections and changed some movements to make them less ponderous and quicker to execute.

Just hope we can remember them all for the performance!