I haven't auditioned for any sort of theatrical production in over 40 years, and never one that involved dancing. It's an odd feeling. In class, the instructor is watching to provide corrections. In an audition, you're being evaluated for suitability for a performance; basically a job interview.
Five adults showed up for the audition: four women in their 20s and me (the children's audition was separate). Apparently one or two others were expected but didn't show up.
The casting call indicated that ballet attire wasn't required for the audition, but unsurprisingly the women were all wearing leotards and tights. Three of the women brought pointe shoes, which were mentioned as optional, while the fourth said she was going to bring hers but discovered they're "dead". I wore the same stuff I wear for classes: leggings and dance belt, a T-shirt, socks and canvas ballet slippers. It was hot in the studio, and I quickly stripped off my leg warmers trying to avoid overheating.
The audition started with a short barre warm-up. About half way through I goofed and jumped ahead in one of the sequences but recovered gracefully; it might not even have been noticed. I noticed most of the others made similar or worse mistakes so I felt pretty good about barre.
Centre started with a simple sequence of tendus with simple port de bras that ended with a single pirouette en dehor from fifth to fifth. This sequence then repeated on the other side, of course. For once in my life, I think I nailed all the pirouettes. Then we did some échappés from fifth to second en pointe and back to fifth. This was intended mostly for the three women wearing pointe shoes, but I (and presumably the fourth woman) went along for the ride, rising to demi-pointe instead.
Then we were shown brief segments of choreography and performed them a couple of times as a group. The choreography included some non-classical ballet positions which took a few practice tries to get right. I wasn't confident that I understood bits of the sequence, and I'm perpetually slow starting any détourné (gotta work on that). But my balance was good and I ended the segments in sync with the others and the music. None of the choreography was that difficult, and I wouldn't have any trouble with it with more repetition. I would know better how well I did if I'd been able to watch the others, but I couldn't spare the attention.
The total cast will be about 30 dancers, of which 12 are professionals and 6 are from that school's academy, leaving 12 supporting roles. I'm unclear on how many kids roles they're casting, so they may need all of us adults or none of us.
I don't have a good feel for what my chances are. I flip-flop between feeling pretty confident and discouraged. On the plus side I'm male, a rarity in ballet. And I take class from one of the directors weekly, so she's seen a lot more of me than one short audition (at least I think this is a plus). On the negative side, I'm clearly not a 20-something waif who has been dancing since she was a child. And they may not have a male supporting role.
We're supposed to hear from them within a week. I'm going to do my best to ignore the whole thing until I hear. Or maybe I'll watch "A Chorus Line" again. While I do hope I get it, at least I won't be feeling the line, "Oh god, I need this show!" too personally.
Wow... I've been accepted as a supporting cast member!
ReplyDeleteHi, just wanted to drop a comment to say I found your blog recently and read right through; it’s so lovely to see someone’s progress (and all the ups and downs that accompany it!). I started ballet in 2019 in my mid thirties having never had a chance of lessons when I was younger; I’m really too big for ballet and have no flexibility but keep plugging on regardless! Your post about London did give me a bit of a chuckle as I’m about 99.9% sure the lesson you took at Central was with my regular teacher from the description you gave. The old school shut down a few years back - the new one was due to open for the start of the summer term in 2020 so as you can imagine that was rather disrupted by Covid!! They have a modern building near Waterloo now. We didn’t actually start at the new building until autumn 2021 in the end, although the school itself resumed earlier. At some point during the Covid period we switched from having recorded music to having a live pianist. We did prerecorded classes the first couple of months of lockdown, then started to do zoom classes so we at least got feedback, then we restarted in studio at a few different venues with safety measures like very restricted numbers and open windows - the switch to live music came during that. We occasionally had to go back to zoom classes whenever the government changed guidance! The live classes were often hybrid, with a dozen or so of us in person and another 10-20 following on zoom.
ReplyDeleteHope all is going well with Dream.