Notes from 'Amahl'

We assembled at the theater at noon to start getting into makeup. LP gave us all makeup advice; C and A worked on their "Mother" makeup as LP and I transformed ourselves into little boys. I stapled my wig onto my head and sewed myself into my pointe shoe; the company warmed up together onstage. After warm-up, Cast B had a few minutes to get into costume for a pre-show dress run.

The run went very well, aside from a few slip-ups (e.g. I almost fell off The Page's back during the fight scene). After that, we had all of thirty minutes to re-group before the opening performance. A was nervous-- we both had a pretty strong dress rehearsal not even an hour ago, is that a bad omen for the opening show? I didn't feel too nervous at the time-- I touched up my makeup, went onstage to run through some stuff during the curtain speech, gave A a hug and told her we'd be swell/we'd be great...

...that is, until the curtain speech ended and the overture began. Sitting there in my opening pose, I must have crossed myself at least four times. And then the curtain went up, and then the show began.

It was magnificent.

A and I were both amazed at how easy it was, how much fun we had, how much we both melded into our characters-- for an hour, we stopped being two dancers and became a concerned mother and her flighty young son. We bounced our energies off of each other and off of the three Kings; everyone had a wonderful rapport onstage, nobody fell down, all the props were where they needed to be, all the extras were adorable, and it was all over really, really quickly.

No, I mean, it was over really quickly. After I exited following my final solo (which went swimmingly, by the way), I just though to myself "Wow, it's over?"
Of course, it isn't/wasn't-- we had our curtain call (wild applause!) and talk-back, and the performers hung around onstage to talk to audience members. All in all, we got wonderful feedback from audience, cast and crew, it was a fun show, and Cast B has one more go at it tonight.

We had about a two-hour break before we met at the theater for the evening performance-- Cast A's show. The company took class together onstage, ran through whatever was needed, and Cast A got themselves ready. A and I hung out in our dressing room and watched the show on the monitor-- it was sort of like Girl's Night/Movie Night, only at work. Our counterparts performed beautifully; C and LP are a wonderful Amahl/Mother duet and they took in a lot of applause.

Today's the last day. We all meet for company class at noon; Cast A performs the matinee and we [Cast B] perform in the evening, the last show. This is my twelfth and final performance with [Awesome People] Dance Company, and there's a small part of me that can't believe it's over already.

"Alright, already, we'll all float on.."