June 15

6-15-11

At the midpoint of the week, all of the big numbers have been choreographed.  All of the individual "mini" solo roles within the big dance numbers have been cast, and the basic outline of the dances has been established!  Both of the choreographers have an incredible technique for designing the dances; They teach the students the whole basic outline of the dances, and add in details and extra movements as they master the basics.  This allows them to grasp the main movements, and depending on their progress/time left, they can either add more details or work on perfecting the dance as is-I thought that this was a great idea!  And so far, the students have responded really well.

Today marked the first day that I was actually able to spend a good amount of time with the lead actors and spent a lot of time actor coaching.  We began with a little bit of table work, and once more I was beyond impressed with the amount of work each of them had already done on their characters.  After a little bit of table work we worked on their collective presence as the "main couple" and they responded really well.  They showed me what they had worked on so far, and I tweaked it to make their choices a little more effective.

While I am happy that they are thinking of those things, its not always the best idea.  Sometimes, I've found that students can get really attached to a certain idea, and tend to close off some of the conflicting ideas that I would like to incorporate.  While this hasn't been a big problem with this show so far, I have seen it in some of the actors.

I've found more and more that if I had to work with a large group of students, I would rather work with a large group of younger children.  So far, the younger students have been much more coachable, and much more eager and excited to work on different parts of the show.  The older students tend to have their own ideas about what they would like to do during rehearsals, and oftentimes aren't as open to the structure of rehearsal as the younger ones.  Although, this isn't always the case, and every student is different, and we of course have older students that are very coachable.  It's a trend that I have noticed, however, that the younger ones are more eager than the older ones.