Jarkko Lehmus Diary

Counting The Days

The first week of the small scale is done. An empty day in Kelso and two solid days of playing 70's porn funk in the dressing room in Costa del Berwick-Upon-Tweed took it's toll with the in-group already descending into a mess of aching bodies and brainfarts. When you rehearse in the open spaces of the studios you have to have your sense of humour intact when you arrive in these tiny venues. Being the consummate professionals we still pulled ourselves together for the shows and delivered, judging by the audience reaction, by the spade load. Everything surrounding the performances was utter hysterical chaos. Luckily for us the hardest bit is done now. We've only got a total of seven shows over two and a half weeks and even these few shows are split between two casts. On the other hand rather than keeping the shows fresh the relaxed rhythm might just unhinge us even more and eventually tip the whole lot into shivering lunacy. Pull yourself together, you maggot!!! From performance point of view it's a case of us just getting used to reducing the pieces to size when the tour is over. I know I'll need to keep the pressure on to maintain momentum all the way until the holiday. Especially because scratching my balls don't burn off enough of the burgers and beer for me to be able to stand proud semi-naked in front of a paying audience.

No paranoia... ©

Just to clarify my earlier remark of the in-group the structure of the small scale national tour is such that the company is split effectively into three groups where two of the groups stay based in Glasgow and do quick hit-and-run shows to the towns of the lowlands and the third group, the out-group, is whisked off ferry- and plane-hopping the highlands and the islands for the duration of the tour. If we were acting like a bunch of rabid monkeys in just three days, I'd hate to think what kind of degenerate state the out-group goes on holiday.

These past twelve months since the last summer holiday have seen us perform at the Edinburgh Festival, doing a quick autumn tour and putting together a new production of Sleeping Beauty and Romeo and Juliet. The year has certainly taken it's toll and performing these huge productions only sharpens the contrast of performing in the smaller venues. It's a steep learning curve for especially the younger dancers who haven't been exposed to the joys of small scale touring before. They're well and truly been inducted into the company come the holidays...

Before the small scale kicked in we managed to indulged in some raked behaviour in Aberdeen and put R&J to bed until the rumoured Chinese dates of next year under the watchful eyes of Krzystof and his boss Ted Brandsen from Dutch National. The show evolved quite a lot, apparently for the better, during the four week run. Personally I've been doing my best to smile when ever possible to purge myself of the bad mojo of Lord C and Tybalt. Reveling in violence and crying for the lost ones doesn't do much to lengthen one's life, I'll have you know.

After a period of stability in the ranks there's a bit of movement again with Mr Gregory Dean heading to the Royal Danish, our Brazilian wonder Luisa Rocco moving to Stockholm to work with the Royal Swedish and Leigh Alderson going err... somewhere. All I can say is "Good luck" and that I hope they all find what they are looking for. While some are moving away others are moving up: due to Ashley's admirable policy of promoting from within the company Sophie Martin, Adam Blyde and Tama Barry have been bumped up to principal status and Vassilissa Levtonova to a coryphee to better reflect their workload. As a note of contemplation I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that since Ashley tends to bring in new dancers fairly young the possibility is there that I'll be seeing the first new recruits born in the nineties sooner rather than later. How crazy is that? I still remember my mum's denim catsuit and oversized square sunglasses! I'm firmly on my way to becoming an old, funny smelling, pervert.

Mr Dean striking a pose with Eve. ©

Bend and deliver, Miss Rocco... ©

...And stand and deliver, Mr Alderson. ©

As looking goes I've been keeping my eyes out for anything interesting out there, but so far all the pieces haven't fallen in their right places. I've still got too many irons in the fire in this company, but maybe Ashley will let me out to play a bit at some point. There are things that interest me, but the life of a project based dancer does not feel like the right choice at the moment and as far as companies go, I still believe that I'd have to be headhunted by someone that would know what to do with me. Let's give these thoughts some time to mature still...

While this year has been exceptionally long the next year will only be ten months from summer holiday to summer holiday. Those ten months will be hellishly busy, though, with the autumn seeing us popping down to London in the middle of the Scottish tour, the revival of Sleeping Beauty, the move to Tramway, a new version of Carmen and the much talked believe-it-when-I'm-there Chinese gigs with R&J and rehearsing of the Festival program during the spring. It all looks like an impending logistical nightmare. Take it as it comes, I guess. I certainly won't be worrying about it during the summer!

And what a summer it's promising to be: a few days in Sweden seeing the extended family, Finland for the friends and the immediate family and a couple of weeks of horizontalness under the Caribbean sun of Barbados and Grenada. Maybe this time I get eaten alive by the carnival carnivores and forget to come back...