When in doubt...elbow, wrist, hand

Its that time of year again folks. The Radio City Rockettes held their yearly auditions this year and I have been running all over the country...yes the country. Since the Rockettes hold highly publicized open call auditions every year you can always expect there to be a massive amount of girls from all of the world flying into New York for this one day, and 2010 was no different.

I guess you could say that I take Radio City auditions pretty serious, getting a custom-made leotard, dyeing shoes and tights, training specifically for this type of dancing. Its a little insane, but as I grow more educated in the process, I'm beginning to feel like while it may not be absolutely necessary it definitely doesn't hurt. I believe that if you really want something then you have to approach it like you mean it. (Which is also why I'm reluctant to even post this update in fear of jinxing myself. LOL)

Anyways, on Thurs, Apr. 29, I showed up to Radio City Music Hall at 8:50 am to find a line of girls spanning almost two street blocks. Lots of girls came in groups, but this year I came by myself so I got to spend the next hours amusing myself in line. Now the audition officially started at 10, but it wasn't until 11am that I was close enough to the front door to get the forms every auditionee is required to fill out and discovered that I was #292. Craziness, since the line behind me was equally as long as the line in front of me. Once inside everyone turned in their head-shot and resume and was given time to change, stretch, and apply makeup.

Around 12:30pm, almost 4 hours after I arrived, I was taken into the audition room as the fourth group of girls to be seen. The room was packed as they were seeing 75 girls at a time which meant there wouldn't be a whole lot of space to see. Linda Haberman, the director of the Rockettes began teaching a quick jazz combo and then it was time to do it 3 girls at a time. Then it was time for cuts.

(Sidenote, Linda is the first female director of the Rockettes and has taken them to a new level of technicality and amazingness. She is however also intimidating and a bit scary.)

After making the first cut we were taken into the red room for height measurements and to wait until everyone had been seen before we could continue on to the next round. Finally at about 3pm, the remaining girls went back into the room and we added more choreography onto the original combination. Again we performed three at a time and a cut was made. Despite the fact that I swear Linda continued to make funny faces at me, I was allowed to continue on. Next was tap, thank goodness, and it was a simple routine with no arms, and a lot of basic time steps and breaks. It was more all about keeping the rhythm than anything else. After getting through that it was one more round of cuts, and then the girls that were left were invited back for call backs the next day. By this time of the 500 girls that tried out about 36 were left and I was one of them. Yay!

As Friday morning rolled around, I realized how exhausted I was from the week, but I had to get myself over to Radio City anyways. Today they would be videotaping the girls as we added more onto both tap and jazz combinations from Thursday, learned a new jazz combo, and did the famous eye high kicks. I couldn't help but feel off my game and unfocused for the first part of the morning. I felt like the judges were giving me weird/judgmental looks and allowed it to affect my confidence, but still put in a decent performance and since no cuts were made I technically made it to the end. We were told at this point that she would be making decisions by end of May/beg of June and that was it.

Now, since I'm borderline obsessive about somethings, I had already bought a ticket to Los Angeles in case I didn't make it all the way through in New York, I took sometime over the weekend to get some corrections on the audition material and then jetted off to L.A. Sunday afternoon. The audition process was the same, only that just 200 girls showed up out there. I made it to the last 31 or so girls out there and feel like I did a lot better. No more real/imagined looks from those running the auditions and a lot more focus...shout out to Red Bull! So now we will just wait and see. I hope I get it. *smiles, prays, crosses fingers*

I love my job! I love my job. I love my job?......

After thirty shows I can safely say that I am over this show. Tired of putting these stupid reindeer antlers on and squeezing my feet into Laducas (yes I bought them hehehehe) with two pairs of tights and socks on. Its so funny that no matter what a person does, if you are banker, doctor, or entertainer in the end its still a JOB and sometimes you REALLY would rather be doing something else. As the curtain goes up 2x a day, 5 days a week I say to myself silently "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job" But its getting less convincing as the days go by.

The show itself has been going well. I have managed to keep both of my shoes on my feet while out on stage, despite the fact that they have broken twice and at this very moment have a safety pin keeping them together. I have made all my costume changes and have not gone on stage missing any item, even though the zipper broke on a costume and I had to be safety pinned into it. Go Me! But there is one thing, one thing that continues to keep me from getting my shine on....

The ridiculously slippery stage. I will reiterate that this is a dinner theater; however, what I failed to mention before is that they serve the food buffet style and guess where the buffets sit? Wait for it...Wait for it... ON THE STAGE! Yes that's right folks. I dance on a stage that minutes before it had hundreds of people on it helping themselves to mashed potatoes, green beans, ham, a multitude of other things and lets not forget...the butter. Now, the management here will tell you that they make sure the stage is clean when they take the buffets down and they will also tell you that they clean the floor regularly. However, as someone who stands front and center during the Candy Cane tap number and feels her feet shooting out from under her unexpectedly almost daily, I will tell you that is a load of crap. Also, there is nothing like the look on an audience member's face as you come spinning towards them, Candy Cane flying, clearly out of control. They fear for their lives I tell you! Therefore, I have modified how hard I dance. I've decided its definitely better to be a little tentative then to face plant on the stage and stab the kid in the front row in the eye.

Outside of the show life has been good. We lost a girl to injury and that was really sad, since we have become our own little family out here in Springboro. We then had to have a replacement come in, which has meant more rehearsals, but no increase in pay. Booo. During down time we crochet and knit, yes apparently we are all secretly 65 year old women. Thus far I have successfully made a hat, a scarf, and a baby blanket. Its obviously not the most happening of places. I miss NYC and my home and the countdown to return is ticking loud and clear!

And so it begins

The show has begun! Yes that's right, let the Christmas music and images of Santa permeate your very being. Despite the fact that it is barely November, people are coming to see our Christmas Spectacular. We opened the show with a Thursday matinee audience of 300 people. The show is about 90 minutes long and features a host of dancers, singers, and an abbreviated version of the Nutcracker performed in bear and hippo costumes! Yes thats right, people in bear costumes run rampant around here and I am grateful everyday that I am not one of them.

For myself, I felt opening night was pretty good. It was really the first time we had run the show all the way through from start to finish. So the timing of a lot of the costume changes was a bit of a surprise. At the start of the show we are reindeer bringing Santa to little Virginia, Susie, Nelly and Johnny to convince them that he is real AND magical. We have these ridiculously huge head pieces which consist of a brown curly wig, derby hat, and two huge styrofoam antlers that light up! I am beginning to get discoloration on my forehead these hats are so tight.
From there the children in the show begin reading The Night Before Christmas and thats when the Nutcracker scene comes into play. The next number I'm in, however, is soldier. With my ridiculously huge pants and extremely uncomfortable hat that chokes me for the entire dance, I march around keeping my knees perfectly straight and feeling my IT bands lighting on fire for a full 4 minutes, but the audience loves it! We close out the first half with a candy cane number in these lovely red and white, leggy Santa suits. Its my favorite costume!

The second half opens with a welcome to Santa's toy shop and we wear these great big puffy sleeve green velvet numbers....they are huge and awkward and make us look like football players. I almost laugh out loud every time I put it on. Then Santa brings the a little girl named Suzie's doll to life and guess what that's us again! All of these numbers convince the children that he is real and they all live happily ever after. But wait! Santa has one more present for you! Baby Jesus! Guess who gets to be a king and wear a big curly beard? Me!!!! Clearly the highlight of my night as you can imagine. We close out the show with the red Santa costumes and a precision kickline. Blam! Over and done.


Sorry for that ridiculously long description of the show. Now for the drama. You would think that after all that is over and the first show is complete, we would get some sort of congratulations from crazy owner guy....but, no. Instead, we are told that SOME of us are bringing down the quality of the show and that he is thinking of firing some people!! You could feel the morale of our little group just plummet and on top of that we had to rehearse for 1-2 more hours directly after the show was over. So now, everyone is basically dancing for their jobs every night. Because, stress always makes you perform better....oh wait it doesn't? Too bad!

Being tall has its advantages....

So today was the much awaited Wicked audition, but I wasn't there. What the heck could I have been doing instead? I was at a much smaller, non-union audition for a Christmas Spectacular. It is a small dinner theatre in the midwest, the pay is nothing, but I figure I have to start somewhere and the odds of landing this gig would be much higher than Wicked so I weighed my odds and delayed my big Broadway plans.

This show is basically in a "Rockette" style and they were looking for 5'7-5'9 girls which definitely worked in my favor. They had already auditioned in New York twice before and hadn't found what they were looking for, so off I went to dazzle them on their third go round. There were only 18 girls at the audition and one of them was a friend of mine from home! It was looking like a great decision to come on my part.

The choreographer began teaching a tap routine which, I must say, was more difficult than the combo the Rockettes had taught this season and I was totally unprepared. There were several turns and jumps, it was very fast, and at the end there was a kickline where we had to lineup with the other girls. He took a good amount of time to teach it, which was nice because I was really struggling. I finally felt like I had it down, and of course I mess it up big time when it is my turn to perform it....yikes. Each group does it two times and I get it right the second time but at that point I figured it was all over for me.

They kept me past the first cut, and I thought they had totally lost their minds, but I wasn't going to complain. From there we learned a VERY simple jazz combo. I mean it was ridiculous, we did it four at a time again, but they made no cuts. They then lined us up by height and we did the kick line all of us together and that was it! The director of the show gave us a really long talk after that about all that would be expected if we got the job and where we would be staying and how many days off we would have and then told us they would let us know by Monday. There were still 13 girls left at this point and they needed 16 for the show. Now I don't know how many they had chosen from their other auditions, but these are still odds you can't beat.

Now the question becomes, if I were to get this job, would it be worth being away from home for 2.5 months for basically nothing. At least I'd be getting paid right? Which is something I haven't experienced in a year now......everyone has to start somewhere.