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February 06, 2005
Performance day for Woman
Well, this is going to be a hard web log to write. The past week has been ever so slightly manic, for all manor of reasons. Neophilia has been working every Sunday on their performance ‘Woman’ which took place at The Place Theatre on Thursday 3rd of February. It’s always difficult preparing for a performance when the rehearsals are seven days apart, there is always that fear in the back of your mind that the show isn’t progressing and for all people involved it almost felt as if I wasn’t really happening, all a bit surreal. What made it all the more unnerving were the very real ticket sales. By Wednesday night the show had sold out. At this point we still had several props missing and several parts of the choreography unfinished. For example, Suzie Crowe-who danced the Mother only learnt her dance on the Wednesday, talk about leaving things to the last minute!
Bethany Elliott
Despite all of this we were relieved that our marketing had worked and regardless of the lack of rehearsals, we were just about on target. Compared to The Summer Sampler back in August, this was a great deal more organised, it was only through that day we realised that it was possible to produce all of the aspects of a show and turn a vision into reality. It takes a great deal of guts, but once you’ve started the process and the further you enter it, the harder it is to retract your decision. The words ‘bull by the horns’ spring to mind. We had organised all of the costumes on a small budget, which subsequently resulted in hours of altering and needle work. Here’s a fact for you all, the wedding dress you see in the pictures cost a grand total of £15. That has to go down as the cheapest wedding dress in history! Thank goodness for charity shops. However I wasn’t best pleased when the zip broke and I spent 4 hours trying to get my head around basic needle skills.
Forward to the grand day itself. We were all tired. Beth, David and Tom had been dancing with Suzy Crowe, up in Oxford for the past week, Sheena had recently sat an important exam at University, Gaby had started back with Vienna Festival Ballet, Morgann had Pneumonia and I’d been sat at an office for 6 days a week for the past 3 months (eating chocolate-which may have been why the damn zip broke!) Benny seemed to be the only one still standing. We had to get to the Theatre for 9am for the tech. We wouldn’t get onstage until 9.30pm. The tech went relatively smoothly, I really should praise the technicians and facilities, they exceeded our expectations. Everyone seemed to perk up when they realised that the empty theatre would be heaving with people come the evening.
©2005 Stephen Hudson
The dress rehearsal for the wedding(there was confetti on the night!)
Steve Hudson came to take shots of us during the dress rehearsal and having viewed them all, I’m really thrilled that they turned out so beautifully. Steve is a lifestyle photographer who has shot numerous advertising campaigns for multinationals including Coca Cola as well as a free-lancer who works for private clients and models. He’d never shot dance before, so his approach was far more emotionally based, which resulted in a variety of shots that were slightly unconventional in the dance sector- see (www.neophilia.co.uk) and let him know your thoughts, his email address is on the ‘Contact’ page. Talking of the website, we are about to re-vamp the whole thing, so keep watching this space….
Gabi and Benny
Back to the show. As the audience piled in we could all feel the adrenaline kicking in. We were part of a triple bill (Resolution) along with Dark Ground Coffee Dance and BEA Theatre. We had the closing slot, which was nice, but we were particularly worried when BEA came off the stage to loud applause, it would be a hard act to follow. In hindsight we need not have worried quite so much, since both of the previous works were in very different genres to ours, which is why the audience seemed genuinely happy with the program as a whole. Woman ran without many traumas and the reviews probably will give you a fairly good idea of the general shape of the work-see Ann's review, http://www.ballet.co.uk/dcforum/happening/4831.html. Despite what the critics say I can only speak from what we perceived on the stage, which was rapturous applause. Admittedly The Place was not the really the ideal platform, we may be many things but a conventional contemporary company, we are not. But as Keith Watson –The dance critic for Metro said, “It was highly entertaining and I loved the sound track.” This is what we’re initially about, entertainment. We hope that it did work on different levels, admittedly a little pruning would have been good and I for one would certainly like to ‘tweak’ a few little bits. So far all reviews have been very complementary, which was a surprise since we all felt that we had effectively thrown out the choreographic rule book and gone completely on eccentric intuitions. In short it was a wonderful night, I’m still in shock from the aftermath-which is why this is lengthy and is beginning to ramble on.
Thank you to everyone that came on Thursday, especially Grey Rabbit, Ann and Bruce, for everyone else who came, I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to speak to you after the show.
Signing off (although I will be writing more fairly shortly!)
Poppy Ben-David
Our Gang!!-The Neophilia Massive!!
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