Oh wow! Where to begin? Well, why don't I do it chronologically? That's always a good way: start from the beginning. lol
Well, we've been working real hard for this RenFaire gig and we were quite happy with our program... at least I certainly was. We all participated in choreographing our lovely dances and we were ready for the gig.
Saturday morning, I woke up relatively early to get ready for the first day of the RenFaire. Lovely husband got up early too to accompany me that day. That was uber sweet, as we had friends over the night before and he got to bed rather late (I excused myself at a relatively decent time to get enough beauty sleep).
We met at Parvaneh's house to practice one last time and get the jitters out of us. It worked out great: we did a few mistakes but we knew that it meant that the performances themselves were going to be near flawless because the mistakes were already made. ;op Several pictures were taken and all was good.
Fast forward to when we get to the actual faire. The "stage" (which is really just a grass area) was a bit smaller than last year. And then we saw that there was no sound system; only a little iddy biddy boom box. Oh geez! I put the CD in and try the boom box to figure out the power of that thing... Man! The sound was barely audible at a good distance. Crap!
So we send Susan (aka Stella), our former director, to talk to the lady in charge of entertainers, as we know that Susan interacts well with said lady. Lady was appalled and went on the hunt for a better sound system... only it meant that our first performance was most likely with the little iddy biddy boom box.
Indeed, that was what happened. The music could be barely heard in the second row and it could definitely not be heard in the third row. People were not staying too long to watch us. I don't blame them: it must have been as if we were doing some Zen dancing or something... Actually, hubby said that our coin belts were louder than the music! Thankfully, he also said that we were amazingly timed in our jingling... well, we could barely hear the music but we could hear it enough. So that performance was rather a bust... but it went okay, given the sound problems... well, and there was wind, which hindered the sword piece (those things can catch wind! Oh my!).
The second performance was much better thanks to a more decent sound system powered by a generator... The only glitches this time were the wind (when the sword ladies started their piece, there was hardly any wind but then it picked up... so much so that Khalidah's sword fell off her head in a weird manner (it was on her head and then, zweet, it was behind her, on the ground!)) and the fact that the SCA heavy fighting started halfway through our show. I have been to so many SCA events that I'd rather watch anything but heavy fighting but to people who are not used to it, I can see how it seems more interesting than belly dancers.
After the second performance, we went to Fionn McCools for a good pint of beer and just winding down after the stressful day.
Sunday, we met again at Parvaneh's house but, this time, we were more calm... maybe we were tired... but we were definitely not jittery anymore... If only we had known what was to come!
We get to the Faire and the grass is rather damp (it had rained during the night) but the sun was way bright so we figured that it was going to be rather dry when we were going to perform. We go to our performance area to make sure that the sound system and generator were still there... they were. Cool!
Time for our first performance of the day. Our friends have a hard time getting the generator started but then it works fine. We start our program and about midway in the intro piece, the generator stops... and they can't easily make it start agai. Oh geez! A little bit of panic (and dread) was felt... At one point, I yelled, "Stella, we need music." So I said to the girls, "Let's do some improv." So Susan (aka Stella) starts drumming and the nice people who drummed for Gabriela (another belly dancer) helped with the drumming. That was so sweet! We do something akin to what our intro piece normally is but improv style. Anyway, it worked.
And then the generator was working again. Phew! Everything is working beautifully. We may have been a bit more tense during the pieces but, hey, that's understandable. Now, we are doing the last piece, the exit piece... and the generator stops again. DAMMIT! Stella drums again and we do some improv again and everything is (somewhat) fine and groovy.
What can I say but: THANK GOD WE ARE TRIBAL!
And one more thing: NEXT YEAR, WE'RE HAVING REAL MUSICIANS!
So. Given that the generator thing is not reliable, we decide to go talk to Istanpitta who had offerred to potentially play for us. They had asked us, too, to perform during their 1-pm set. So we head over to talk to them and we ask them how long they want us to dance with them during their set. They say, "Well, the whole set, if you want." We said that we would but we all internally had an "Oh sh!t" moment as we had never performed improv in public... well, except for an hour earlier during our first set.
We do the Istanpitta set with them... OMG! That was so much fun! No one froze, everyone was following the music beautifully, we were all pretty much in sync... it was almost magical. And it just flew by really fast. Woohoo! I am so proud of us! Actually, after our impromtu performance with Istanpitta, I asked Suri's husband whether we were smiling enough while doing some improv. He said that we were actually smiling more. I guess that we didn't have to think about the move that was coming up next so our minds had time to think about smiling. lol
Btw, do check out Istanpitta. They are awesome! www.istanpitta.com
Then it's our last performance. We had asked Istanpitta to potentially play for us for the performance but it turns out that the generator was working this time. I decided to do the entrance piece with them as our music since they had walked all the way to where we were performing. Khalidah, in her intro speech, did mention that Istanpitta were playing later. It was kind of a hard decision to go with the regular music but we had worked so hard to do our beautiful set. I'm not sure if it was the right decision but that's the one that I made. I hated being the director then... oh geez! Everything worked out right for this performance, though.
I am afraid that I may have flustered Istanpitta a bit by using the recorded music... Parvaneh and I decided that the best thing was to go and talk to them. Well, Parvaneh did the talking; the lady was most gracious. All seems to be well... I think...
So, we had a number of problems this weekend but we rolled with the punches and kept the show going. Definitely, we want musicians next year. It is so much easier with live musicians. We have a whole year to prepare! Woohoo!
I am really proud of us, too, for the improv... that was probably the kick in the behind that we needed to finally perform improv. If it would have been a planned thing, I can so picture us being overly cautious and planning a choreography of sorts to make it easier, which would not have worked as well. Now, we just did it and it worked. Sweet!
No comments:
Post a Comment