Oh I Just Can't Wait To Be King!

Just getting home from the Lion King auditions, and I can feel the soreness creeping in. Although that could also be because I took my first Graham class since Ailey let out in May. Ok, moving on.

The audition for the Lion King was the only audition besides Radio City to be held at the show's actual home theater. When I arrived at 10am, I headed up to the third floor and was shown to the room where the other girls were waiting, I signed up on the non-equity list as number 41 which was not too bad. At around 10:30am the equity list was called and only 16 equity ladies showed up!!! That is just crazy but I believe it is because the Lion King is very specific technique wise and a lot of people know that they are not the right "type" for it. On top of the equity girls there were about 70 odd non-eq. girls there.

They took in two groups of about 45. I was in the second group and had no idea what to expect. I knew it would be Horton (a modern technique created by Lester Horton/class taught by the fierce Ms. Ana Marie Forsythe), but the level of difficulty was up in the air. I was pleasantly surprised with what I discovered. The combination was all basic Horton stuff, but man did they love a left leg tilt!! (see pic) Mine is not quite as pretty... Any way the combination was long, it was 7 or 8 counts of eight, but you had to repeat it twice, and we had to hold that lovely tilt for four counts each time around. Boo to the whackness.... overall I would say the combo went pretty well for me but on that last tilt hold, I was not on my leg and had to fight for it.....not cute...got cut. But they only kept 8 girls over all from the 85 or so that came. I will definitely be back and I know what to expect now.

Off topic, since I mentioned Graham above see this for a little sampling of Ms. Grahams Night Journey (my fav. the chorus starts around 1:15).

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.