we need the money...

thesis journal entry #1

Rehearsing for the La Salle show tomorrow. My brother Lucas has joked that PBT is now the resident dance company for La Salle Greenhills because we've danced there already four times within the last two months. It's strange to dance for an all-boys private school, they're not the kind of audience I'd expect would really appreciate ballet. So far, they like seeing the girls lift up their legs. Well, they could really have enjoyed watching us dance, but we can never really know for sure what they thought exactly.

My problem with dancing for a private school is they think they can call us over for an 8am show and think it shouldn't be difficult for us. They don't know that we have to be warmed up and made up by eight and we need to take class at 6 so that we can be warm enough for a performance at 8, meaning we have to be up by 5 to make it to class at 6. I know regular people are awake by 5 to get their days going, I just find it inhumane to people who normally start their working days at 2 in the afternoon.

Oh well. To quote Anatoli, though, "We need the money."

He said that in reply to my concern: "What if the La Salle boys laugh at Nino?" Nino is dancing a solo for tomorrow's show, a modern piece set to "Sa Ugoy Ng Duyan," both dance and song bearing the same title. The piece is, I think, about an old man remembering his younger life - the old man thing I got from this gesture that starts the piece, Nino is sitting on a chair and he starts shaking his hand as if he has arthritis. He leaps and stretches throughout the dance, abruptly interrupting these graceful movements with jarred agitations throughout his body, as if he is going insane all of a sudden and then stopping and dancing fluidly again. I think the La Salle boys will watch this and find it hilarious, which is a shame because Nino does it incredibly well - quite impressive really, since he had only learned the dance over the weekend.

We'll see tomorrow. I'm really glad though that the show tomorrow is at 6 in the evening and not at 8 in the morning.

Dancing highlight of my day: I kinda rehearsed Tzigane. Kinda because I am not the one actually rehearsing it, Kit is dancing Tzigane with Ron tomorrow. I'm made to learn the dance so that I can perform it in the future. I don't know what my chances are of actually dancing it, but it's fun to do. Kinda also because, since we're doing it in the back while Kit and Ron are rehearsing and I'm not wearing my pointe shoes, I didn't dance it full out, I just marked it. I marked it because we're performing it in the back, plus I'm not wearing my pointe shoes, plus Nino, who's my partner in this dance, is still in the process of memorizing it. The little that we actually did was really nice, though. Maybe I'm just blowing smoke out my ass but I really think that when I do Tzigane in its entirety, I will do it really well. I hope.