All's Well that Ends Well...In New York!

I am so stupid excited right now!

Last week during the snowpocalypse, my friend Reesa and I were both trapped inside for a while. She is living in New York City, and I'm of course here in Ohio. Both being from warmer climates, neither of us is dealing with all the snow in quite a sanguine manner as others are. Meaning: we're cold and cranky. We started chatting on AIM about the cold, the lack of food in the house, and how much we missed the blazing hot Texas summers (ahh....105 degrees and 99% humidity...you never seemed so wonderful...), and eventually ended up talking about what the heck we were doing all the way up here in the cold.

Reesa has been working with a really great company in New York called Bare Shakespeare. As she put it, they are working to strip away all the layers that tends to build up around a production of Shakespeare's plays and instead focus on the actual words he's using. Her thought, and it seems to be very successful, is that if the actors truly understand and feel what Shakespeare wrote, the play becomes more real, more visceral and more approachable by both the actors and the audience. From the reviews I've read, they're doing great!

Anyway, during the conversation, it came up that they were going to be tackling "All's Well that Ends Well" next - and then things got interesting fast. Would I like to come to New York and teach a dance workshop for their performance? Would I ever!

So now I'm knee-deep in the play, doing research and altering some period (and not so period) dances for their stage. As added fun, we're going to be searching out more modern music for them to dance to - keeping the period steps. We do this all the time for fun and for practice, and while it seems silly, it is actually a great way to teach, and has a surprisingly strong visual impact. Dance is dance; the movements tell a story, and it doesn't always matter what voice one uses to tell it if the end product elicits the emotions the director wants.

End of March! New York City! So excited!