Ballet Central Diary

And we're off!!!

Having just read the entries recently posted by the two lovely girls with whom I share this internet adventure it struck me just how differently we are all approaching this. Rym will delve deep into her soul to find some inner belief and meaning to this Ballet Central rolleroaster. She will then articulate these wonderful emotions, via a keyboard, onto the world wide web almost poetically. Similarly Brenda will also delve into her inner self but rather than writing poetically... she will actually write a poem. So i thought i would begin by stating that if you are expecting to read a memoir depicting my very reasons for living, or indeed a poem, you are certainly reading the wrong weblog, that though is what makes our little weblog tripod so interesting.

I will start then with opening night, not quite the reason our mothers gave birth to us but certainly the closest it has come so far this year. It actually went very well and the Boss was pretty pleased. I was given relatively good feedback and the 2nd and 1st years, having watched the previous night, had boosted me up a bit with their comments about Cinderella pas de deux.

As a celebration for how well the first show had gone, although i'm not going to lie we would have done it anyway, we all decided to have a fancy dress party. However this was no normal fancy dress party. In honour of Rachel (lovely Ballet Central member)having been alive for 19 years everyone had to dress up as something beginning with the letter R. I went as the Rat Pack, not all three of them because that would have looked silly, but just Frank. Some of the more creative people were Dan who was a Roman but who liked to tell everyone he was a Roman God, James in 2nd year who was the spitting image of the scary girl from 'The Ring' and Ruan who was simply 'Rude' (his 10 pound pants with certain anatomical parts attached to them went down a treat). It was all certainly a laugh although it is important to mention that there was absolutely no alcohol, it finished at 10 on the dot and boys and girls were segregated throughout (many thanks to Beth who spent all her time devoted to enforcing all of those rules dressed rather fittingly as a Royal Marine).

When we first heard the repertoire we would be getting for our tour there was certainly much excitement with the massive names that we would be working with. For me personally there was none more so than Matthew Bourne and a couple of days after opening night we finally started learning the big gold ring dance from his 'Swan Lake' (for those of you who are not regulars on the Ballet Central weblog that is the dance of the Cygnets). Scott Ambler (Assistant Director at New Adventures), with a quik cameo from Matthew, came into school for a 6 hours over three days to get us going and i can safely say on behalf of all of the lads it was fantastic. It has been a dream for a few of us to get to dance Bourne's Swan Lake and Scott was great, having a laugh and joke but getting things done very quickly, we had pretty much learned the whole dance in the first two hours. We are not quite sure when that will go on stage but i would guess probably Chelmsford which is the show after next... cant wait.

Perhaps the most exciting thing that has happened to me since i last wrote my entry was the Crawley performance. I am from Brighton and, Crawley being the furthest south we go, all of my friends and faily came. A total of 100 people turned up to see me which was incredible considering the auditorium held 800. I was also really chuffed because I was dancing my two favourite pieces on the tour, 'Cinderella' and the Jazz number 'Do you want to...?'. I start Cinderella with a long, slow walk from the wings and i don't think time has ever gone so slowly, however once i knelt down beside Brenda that was it, the rest is a blur, all i can remember thinking is 's*** i haven't breathed for at least 10 seconds, breathe man breathe' as i was lifting Brenda in the presage at the end. I was really pleased with how it went considering i was probably the most nervous i had ever been and the completely unbiased audience for some stange reason gave the two pieces a humungous applause, cheers mum!

That is all the writing i can do for now, a jog and some stretching is certainly needed although it will undoubtably have to follow an easter egg and a quick kick around with a mate considering i have only one day break until the end of July. Its all fun and games!

speak soon

Tom

Posted by Tom Conlan at March 24, 2008 05:16 PM