JEANNE TEACHES DANCE

Today was a little more hectic than usual. In addition to our evening performance in Modesto, my students had their winter recital earlier in the day back in Sacramento, so I stayed until my last class had performed and then made the hour drive solo to join the rest of the company. I arrived with about an hour and a half to do my makeup, warm up, and shove some food in my face.  The shows at the Gallo Center for the Performing Arts always seem a little more special to me because the Gallo is the first place I performed Posada Navideña with IMBA.  The stage is spacious compared with the Wells Fargo in Santa Rosa, and of course, having actual dressing rooms is always nice.  I only wish there was some place backstage where the flooring was carpeted rather than cold tile - trying to warm up and stretch on a cold floor always feels a little counter-productive. The show tonight went beautifully.  The IMBA dancers are always such an inspiration to me.  They...

I will now take a moment to pause from the Posada Navideña tour and share with you this wonderful video about the Youth America Grand Prix:

Doing homework backstage.  Photos by Abelardo Cisneros. Yesterday morning we woke up  at 6:30 to get ready for blocking at the theater at 8:00am.  My phone bit the dust Thursday night, so I'm relying on the photos of others until I can get a replacement.   It's been both unnerving and a refreshing change not to have my phone - I'm relieved to know that I can still find my way around a strange city without the step-by-step help of Google navigation (as wonderful as she is at coming up with varied pronunciations for cities such as "Los Angle-lees.")--maybe I won't be kicked off "the island" after all. Dominique applies the colorful folklorico makeup.    Following the 9:30am school show, I took Abelardo to Vertex Climbing Center for his first bouldering experience.   The gym was small, but had a decent number of problems for us to work on, and it's pretty hard to beat "$8 Fridays!"  Whoever's setting must have a grudge agains...

David revamping my Angel costume.  Photo by Theresa Wargo. Over the next month, I will be documenting my holiday performances with Compañia Mazatlán Bellas Artes . I play "The Archangel" in Abelardo Cisneros' Pastorella ballet for their annual Posada Navideña show. Last night was about preparations. Before going to bed, I finished preparing my new pointe shoes for wear; ripped out the suede lining, tore a 1/4 of the shank off, pulled out the nail at the heel, roughed up the leather soles to prevent slipping (also managed to rough up my thumb by accident), sprayed the insides with clear lacquer, applied Jet Glue to the inside of the tips and left them in the preheated oven (turned off) to dry overnight.  I took inventory of everything I usually use during the performance.  Since this is my third year dancing the same role, I have made adjustments here and there to simplify what I take with me on the road.  I packed all of my stage makeup, hair supplies, tig...