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*

And We're Back!

Today was the audition for the national tour of A Chorus Line. The national tour has been running equity for the past couple of years, but will soon be turning non-eq, presumably to save money. So today Binder Casting held an open non-equity call for female dancers.

With the call scheduled to start at 10:30, I arrived at 9:15 and had the pleasure of being #159. Joy. Luckily they started early and they decided to type. Now, typing is when a large group of guys/girls go into the room at the same time, and the casting director or choreographer, will have them do something simple (like turns) and then make a cut. Often times they are just looking for basic technique and more importantly the "look" of the characters they are casting.

Anyways, they took groups of 35 girls in at a time, and after waiting about an hour my group went in the room. Of course who should be in the room running the audition? The one and only Baayork Lee (see photo)! She is THE ORIGINAL Connie in A Chorus Line and she is just ridiculously amazing. As soon as we got in the room she just started walking up to people saying "Don't wear shorts to an audition!" "You need more lipstick" "You need more makeup!" It was hilarious and not done in a mean way at all, just very matter of fact. I could tell at that moment that this was going to be very interesting. So Ms. Baayork lines all of us up and then one by one we do double pirouettes(turns) on both the right and left side and that was it! The first cut was made and Ms. Lee tells all of us on the way out, "If you got cut, get to ballet class!"

I was kept to the next round and had to wait around for another 90 min to two hours to dance again. This time we learned the combination that Chorus Line was known for, I Hope I get It (Full Combo Starts at 1:03) It was a shortened version, but it was fast, sharp, and had to be very precise. Ms. Lee wanted hands in an exact spot and stated that she wanted the combination done exactly as she showed it, no variations. Several times while going through it, she would say "I'm teaching this too fast, you all are not getting it!" It was never intimidating though, it just made you want to work harder. After finally getting the combination we had to do the combination two at a time across the floor, just to tire you out and then you had to do it two at a time for the actual audition. There was so much energy in the room it was just amazing! When it was my turn to dance across the floor I tried to make sure that I hit every count and really perform it with the intensity it needed and I made the next cut.

Crazily enough the day was still not over, we were all told to come back at 4pm to sing. Oh singing, my arch nemesis, why must you rear your ugly head ALL the time? Now I had picked a song to sing with my voice teacher because I had been intending to go for Sheila. Now Sheila is an older Broadway vet auditioning for the Chorus and she has quite a bit of attitude. She is the first singer in At the Ballet. So I sang a song with more "gravitas" as my teacher would say and after all that prepping and planning the casting director asks me if I can sing something else!..."something a little lighter" So I pick my go to Waiting for Life and all I get is a "Thank you, have a good day". Crap. I've been cut. Really? Really? For once I thought I didn't do too bad and still nothing.

Ah well, despite being there from 9:15am to 5:30pm, and receiving nothing, I did get to spend the day with an awesome lady AND I obviously didn't sing too bad since they wanted to hear me sing some more. So I'll keep going back to the drawing board until I find something that works.

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!

If you see it in the sun then it is so

I debated a long time about whether or not to update this blog with non-audition news. At the moment I have landed my first paying job in a long time and am out of NYC. Thusly, there can be no more audition updates for awhile. However, several people have asked me to tell them about my time on the job, so I have decided to blog about that for awhile. After all, I can always get rid of these posts later and return it to solely my audition endeavors.

I have been out on a job for the past two weeks for a dinner theater in the midwest. I am doing their Christmas show and it promises to be a crazy adventure. You know you are in for some craziness when the owner of the theater tells you that a Santa Claus type figure is going to pick you up from the airport AND when you are picked up you find that you are catching a ride in a car, that can barely go over 50 on the highway and is smoking and making grinding noises all the way to your destination! Heaven help me!

The theater has housing for its performers right on the property so it is only a 2 min walk to get to rehearsal or shows which is really nice. The set up is pretty much like a dorm room. I have been sharing a room with another girl for these past two weeks, and I will be moving into my own room sometime in the coming days after our show opens. The whole cast shares a kitchen, tv room, and bathroom. Which sounds more inconvenient than it really is. I am looking forward to having my own room, but haven't minded the current living quarters at all. Yet there are some ridiculous rules for the housing facility i.e. we are not allowed to open ANY WINDOWS AT ANYTIME! Not if its blazing hot in your room, the room starts smelling like old socks, or you burnt something in the kitchen and there is smoke so thick you can't see 3 feet in front of you. DO NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS OR YOU WILL BE FIRED. Also, they don't believe in recycling....???

Rehearsals for the show have been long. I rehearse seven hours a day six days a week, with an hour for lunch and my body was not prepared for this AT ALL. The show has been stylized in a similar manner to the Rockette's show so there is a lot of kicking and I'm always wearing heels to dance in, which can do a number on your legs. I really wish that I had splurged on LaDuca's (really expensive dance heels) before I got here, but I definitely plan on shelling out the cash for them as soon as I get back to the city.

One thing I wasn't so much planning on was all the ups and downs that go on behind the scenes. We have a really great choreographer and my castmates are awesome. Yet the owner of the theater has been a bit of a pain. He has spent so much money on these beautiful costumes for our show! I mean they are gorgeous, but they weren't created with dancers in mind. We have some crazily complicated and heavy hats that make it hard to do almost anything, including breath or get oxygen to your brain they are soooo tight! LOL The owner is so hands on, that he is consistently butting heads with the choreographer and director on how the show should be run and ends up saying that he HATES the show multiple times a day. Yet the man has no theater experience so he really has no idea what he is talking about. So anyways, major drama over here!

The show itself is about a little girl who's siblings don't believe in Santa Claus and she asks Santa to come help her convince them that he is real. Santa takes them all on a magical journey to change their hearts and minds about him. In the midst we dancers the "Holiday Bells" appear as flying reindeer, soldiers, candy canes and rag dolls for a total of six numbers. Not to mention my own special appearance as one of the three wise men in the nativity scene! It has been really hard to get the precision dancing down, we are always struggling to keep our lines straight, dance exactly the same, and be super sharp, but the show has slowly been coming together.

These past two weeks have flown by and we are going into tech this week, which promises to be some very long twelve hour days. Our show opens on Thursday evening and will run until New Year's Eve! I'll be sure to keep you all updated!

OMG OMG You Guys!

So Monday was the chorus call for the tour of Legally Blonde the Musical. As a side note, can I just say how much I love this show?! It seems crazy, but considering my favorite movie is Clueless, at least I'm consistent. Anyways, the call was at 10am and I arrived at 9:15 with my ideal outfit (a teal blue tank top and short white skirt), hair down, ready to look as cute, preppy, and cheerleadery as possible. Again, it was packed, my goodness I think more girls are moving to New York everyday. The musical had reserved two rooms at the audition center just to hold people and you still had to tip-toe around to avoid stepping on people.

As I walked onto the scene I notice this huge line coming out into the hallway and I'm wondering what the heck is this for? It turns out that this was the line for non-eq girls to sign the non-eq list. Now, I have never stood in line before to sign the list and was truly perplexed as to how this was going on. It turns out:(long explanation coming) When some non-equity girls arrive at the audition the equity monitor and the official sign-up list weren't there yet, so the girls found a piece of paper and made a non-official sign up list. When the equity monitor arrived, she honored the unofficial list but she made the girls re-sign themselves up. However, some girls had left planning to come back later and were unable to reclaim there spot.

As I got up to the list I noticed that there were names missing..i.e. 63 and 65 had a name by them but not 64. Whoever the original #64 is, I'd like to apologize but you snooze you loose, I put my name right on into that spot and went to find a spot to sit.

The wait was long as usual, at least three hours, and I was still in the second group of non-equity ladies to go. I was so excited to get in there because they had a live drummer to go with the pianist. As we enter they have a lady from Telsey casting and the asst. choreographer greeting us. They both tell us how cute we all look and then we get down to business. We begin learning the number that Elle performs as her substitute admissions essay to Harvard (just the first 30 sec). Its supposed to be sharp, with a little hip-hop feel at times and was really fun! It was only 4:8 counts long and we learned it quickly, did it in a few times in smaller groups and then it was time to do it five at a time.

As each group goes, I notice that the asst. choreographer is writing stuff on people's headshots but he is not separating them into piles. Its my turn to go and I'm having so much fun! Yay cheerleading, how I miss you! I did a clean cute routine and tried to see what the guy would do with my headshot. I think he put a dot on it....what the heck does that mean when I saw him writing words on everyone elses? It didn't matter anyways, because as the last group finishes performing, they informs us that they aren't going to be keeping anyone to sing or to dance again, because they aren't really looking for anyone at the moment but they will be keeping our headshots on file...Booooo to the whackness! Talk about anti-climatic and considering I want to be in this show I was even sadder. Sigh, this is the chorus call scene.

Catch Me if You Can

The new trend on Broadway is turning popular movies into musicals and today's audition was no different. The Leonardo Dicaprio movie Catch Me if You Can is coming to Broadway and has been previewed in Seattle's 5th avenue theater. The audition was held yesterday and it was crazy in there! The call was at 10 am, and the monitor basically shooed all the non-eq girls out into the hallway where we had to wait just to find out if we would even be seen for the day. At ten he announced that we were to all "go away" until 12:30pm. Now, I had gotten there at 9:30 so waiting for three hours was highly unappetizing and I didn't have anywhere to go in midtown anyways. So a friend and I went upstairs to the 2nd floor of the audition studio and just hung out for 2.5 hours. If I'd have been by myself I know I would have taken my little tushie right on back home.

Now I have learned that hanging around no matter what the monitor (guy/girl who is running the waiting room) says is key when you are a non-eq. When he first made his announcement he said that they would probably only see the first twenty non-eqs at 12:30 and I was number 78, but I stuck it out until 12:30 and guess what? They saw all of us! This was so nice of them because they really didn't have to do that and I am grateful that they were willing to go that extra mile. Especially when 136 equity girls alone had shown up for the call! Just proof that if you really want to get seen, you hang in there until they close the door in your face.

Since, we were non-equity there really are no rules for how they hold our auditions. So they bring all 75+ of us into the room at the same time!!!!! And guess who is there?? The one and only Jerry Mitchell (pic)! Mr. Mitchell is an award winning choreographer who worked on Legally Blonde , La Cage Aux Follies, Hairspray, and a multitude of other shows many of which are on Broadway. Anyways, here he is in person teaching us the choreography for his show! The material was really simple, he and his assistants taught us 4:8counts which included the Charleston (Thank you Miss Tauna!) and dancing pretending we had a hat on our head. All 75 girls went through the combination twice, then Mr. Mitchell broke us up into five groups of fifteen and each group got to run the combo once. Then as each group went through it for the second time he hand picked girls to go stand to the side. Surprise!!! This was the audition. I think a lot of people were shocked! Personally, I think that I gave it my all, but I was not hand picked....(frown face). Anyways, the girls the girls that were kept, stayed behind and learned some more of the combination and then a few of them were told about callbacks.

I think there is a twofold lesson to be had in all this. One, stick around no matter what the monitor says if you REALLY want to be seen and Two, when you are learning/practicing a combo in the audition room always remember that its part of the audition too! Not just when its three at a time and they have your headshot in front of them!

Overall, it was a long day (3.5 hours waiting) for 15 mins of time in front of Jerry Mitchell, but no complaints. Hopefully I can impress him on Monday at the Legally Blonde auditions!!!!!!