Dance Rehearsals (Post #2)

As of tomorrow, I've been working at Eryc Taylor Dance in New York City for a month. I'm definitely now a lot more comfortable with what I'm doing. I've now been present at many company rehearsals, and learned some of the choreography, which is great. It's always difficult to have vacation periods from school where I'm no longer dancing on a regular basis, so it's nice to be involved in dance when I'm not training for the amount of time that I do during the school year.

It's been really great to be so involved in the process of professional dancers. What I've noticed is the most different in comparison with school rehearsals is that they're insanely self-sufficient. This certainly occurs with college rehearsals, but I think the fact that the dancers being paid (so a piece can't be choreographed in a large amount of time) and the expense and difficulties of securing studio space result in dancers that know it is entirely their job, just as much as the choreographers, to make the piece work. They talk through what isn't working as soon as they are able to, and usually figure it out amongst each other really quickly. It made me realize that in my future school rehearsals, I should take greater initiative in fixing whatever problems may occur on my own and with my fellow dancers. I often look to the choreographer for direction, but it seems to be far more efficient to have each dancer working through all that is problematic than waiting for the choreographer to dictate how it should be solved.

The dancers are self-sufficient in their warmup as well. There really isn't the space or the time to conduct a full warmup, and they may or may not do a few exercises together before dancing, so overall they're very smart about doing whatever they can while people are talking or working out other things at the beginning of rehearsal. They don't have the luxury of having class before rehearsal, but they do as much as they can for their individual bodies so that they are decently warm to run the full piece, which can be necessary to do right at the beginning of rehearsal.