Ultimate Rehearsal/Legendary Children

Today's rehearsal was full of signs that we're about to have a show:

1. Our costume designer, Kirstan, came with costumes that we wore during a run.

2. Four photographers were at the rehearsal taking photos for the images that will hang on the wall of the space during the performances.

3. The Stage Manager, Kay, came to check out what we've been up to.

4. A new dancer, Alex, joined us for rehearsal and jumped right in!

We only have a few more rehearsals before the show, so it's great to start having all the elements come together.

It also made me think about alternative performance opportunities that artists have and how they take advantage of the spaces and fellow artists that they know. Last night I saw a great show at BRAZIL. A split bill, Legendary Children, between Tess Dworman and Mariana Valencia. This is a studio space rented out for dance rehearsals, but Tess and Mariana were able to turn it into their own with use of projection, set pieces, audience set up while also highlighting the charm of the space (open windows, clip lamp lighting design). By producing their own work, they were free to create whatever experience they wanted. There were no programs, our tickets were friendship bracelets (mine's light blue and olive) and everything about the evening was inviting and down to earth.

Tess began with a solo that led her from posing flirtatiously, to extreme yoga aerobics, to enduring complicated and (possibly) painful sexual acts. Although she appeared casual in her oversized tshirt and Beach Boys soundtrack, her face and focus exposed the complicated emotional underbelly of the acts.

Mariana and her collaborator, Lydia, were two petite explosions fluctuating from dance to violent moshing. They went everywhere with their movement: sex, spit, shaking, sprinting. Again, the faces and focus of the two dancers were the audiences' guides to watching many versions of rebirth. They were cool and sexy and angry and linked in unison and costumes and integrity.

It was so refreshing and exciting to see this happening. And I thought that it could potentially escape forever without being written about and reflected upon. Seeing Legendary Children and being a part of SINecdoche Dance invigorates my belief in this form. There are ideas! There is dance with ideas!