Nutcracker is over, and you’ve just gotten back from an absurdly long break. You’re sore and exhausted, and starting to question why you’re doing this whole ballet thing to begin with. So what do you do?
You start learning a new ballet, of course.
Generally, when we’re about to start learning a ballet, we start with variations, which are little two to three minute solo dances. Kristopher, who does all the choreography, teaches us these in our pointe classes on Mondays and Tuesdays. He uses this time to decide who is going to get what part. Next, right after the cast list comes out, we start learning the corps work, which is everyone on stage dancing as a group. This is because there is more corps work than anything else in a ballet, and it involves a large number of people and is therefore the most difficult part to do well.
Learning the choreography is one of my favorite parts of being in a ballet, even though it’s really challenging. You have to constantly be paying attention to every little nuance and have it down after only hearing it or seeing it once or twice. Sometimes, you’ll learn five minutes of choreography, and then have to go back and change half of it. Often, you have to hold on to choreography for weeks at a time, waiting to do it again.
It’s not always so fast paced, though. There are also times when we go over how to get in a position 10 times or more, often trying a slightly different way each time. We’ve spent entire hours doing nothing but trying to do a couple of steps in a line, sometimes only for the steps to change in the next rehearsal anyway. It takes a lot of patience sometimes, and a good memory.
A couple of weeks ago, we started learning pieces of corps work for our May performance of Swan Lake, and let me tell you, these rehearsals are fast. We managed to basically complete Act Two, which is half of the swan dances, in only a couple of rehearsals. And we just kept on going to Act Four.
As hectic as it is learning all this choreography, I love doing it. At least, as long as I remember all the steps.
