Ask My Frends - At the Ballet Part II

Part II from Brianna Harnden yesterday. I didn’t mention how much I love this girl. She is so bright and funny. When I think of the days that Neff Theatricals becomes a reality I have a couple people that I MUST have on my team and Brianna is defiantly at the top of the list. As you can tell by yesterday’s post she is much more than a talented Stage Manager. Here is the second half of her post.

"... Kat mentioned that the lifestyle of an opera stage manager is somewhat nomadic. Because one stage manager can probably do all of the shows in the whole season, it can be tricky to get a position, but once you are in, you are likely to stay for years. Ballet stage managers will probably find the easiest time of settling down and staying in one town. Of course, there is the occasional tour to Russia or China, but those are with your own company and are more like a holiday than anything (yet another reason I am in love with ballet).

I do also want to comment on how lovely dancers are to work with. Whenever I tell someone I’ve moved into ballet, they ask a question related to the “diva” attitude stereotypically associated with dancers. I have seen nothing but the opposite. These artists have been in intense physical training for probably 80 percent of their lives, and they are trained to listen to their directors and stage managers. As with any artist, if you show the dancers that you are there to protect them and do whatever you can to help them dance at their highest quality, they will clear the stage when you ask them to. I have never gotten any lip or encountered anyone thinking they are entitled to better treatment than another dancer, which I can not say of any of my experiences in regional theatre. And how can you not respect a dancer? I will gladly work all hours of the day perfecting my cue calling because I know they are always working harder than I am.

I am lucky to have found my passion in the world of ballet. For any stage manager starting out in the world, no matter the genre, the most important advice I can give you is to do the things that scare you; take those big chances. Yes, you may fall flat on your face. But if you prepare, and if you’re good, it really is the only way to get ahead. When I was on my first internship with a major ballet company, I didn’t take the big chance that was staring at me. The stage manager was training the ASM to call Giselle. I would come into the office everyday and he would be studying the tapes, the massive score open on his lap, and I thought, “I could do that too.” I could almost feel that if I asked, I may be allowed to actually call a Tuesday Matinee. But I didn’t ask, because I was terrified I would mess it up. So I missed out on a big opportunity to learn, even if I never got to call a real show.

Also, find a company with people that you love. We have committed ourselves to doing something we love instead of something expected. If you find yourself not getting along with co-workers to an unhealthy degree, maybe you aren’t in the right place. I think this was also part of the problem on that first ballet internship. Still, I fell in love with stage managing dance, and I was lucky enough to find a home with The Washington Ballet, for whom I now assistant stage manage for occasionally. My first job with them was last winter, working on their whimsical production of The Nutcracker. From day one, I knew it was going to be fantastic, and the camaraderie and respect everyone in the company has for one another was immediately apparent. Because I felt so safe, I was willing to take the risk of asking to learn to call the show (even though it still terrified me), and thanks to my amazing stage manager, by the end of the run, I was calling 4 out of 8 shows per week. I simply adored it.

In short, there is nothing in the world quite like ballet. If you haven’t seen a proper ballet, go put it on your to-do list right now. If you’re timid, go see something newly choreographed and modern; the things these dancers can do will stun you. But go see a classic and you will see an art form that truly encompasses all that we are capable of as humans."

Ask My Frends - At the Ballet Part I

A couple of weeks ago we heard from a stage manager about the differences between Opera and Theatre and so I thought it would be interesting to hear the differences between Dance and Theatre. For that I have asked my dear friend Brianna Harnden. I actually help recruit Bri for Webster University and then hired her as an intern at Arena Stage where she went on to become a full-time staff member. Her true passion is with dance and Ballet and she has worked on several productions with the Washington Ballet. As you will see Bri is a tremendous writer although a little wordy for a blog so this will be broken into two days.

“From the audience, it is lush and perfect in the theatre before a ballet. The seats are the same thick velvet as the house curtain, and a little thrill runs through the air as the lights dim and the theater vibrates with the sound of a full, live orchestra tuning to A. From backstage, you are temporarily blinded by the abundant side-lighting required for dance. The dancers take their places, shedding their warm-up clothes and, with simply the straightening of a spine, transform their bodies into highly skilled, taut pieces of art in seconds. It goes dark onstage, and the curtain rises.

There is nothing more amazing and beautiful than watching ballet - except watching it from backstage. From the wings, you can see the dancers breathe. You can hear them mutter through frozen smiles at their partners before a particularly difficult lift. And my goodness do they sweat! The audience can see none of this, and to them it looks effortless. As a stage manager of ballet, I love that I get to see the secrets of this magical world, and be a small part of it.

The week before last one of our mutual friends wrote to you about the world of opera. Today I’m going to give you a little peek into the world of the ballet, and hopefully give you a feel for what it’s like to stage manage dance.

Like Kat and Jared, I was trained to stage manage for regional theatre. The basic organizational and communication skills you need to be an effective stage manager are the same across all fields of live entertainment, but there are many interesting deviations between forms. Ballet is an even more intense version of opera, I think. Gone are the days of feeding actors lines. Gone are the days of sitting behind a table in the rehearsal hall going through one page of script over and over, constantly erasing your blocking notes until the page resembles crumpled newspaper. Ballet is all tech and performance, quick and dirty work for a stage manager.

Let’s start from the beginning of a stage manager’s work on any one particular ballet. The first major difference is that they often work alone. In larger companies, they are likely to have one assistant, but 90% of the responsibility of the team still falls on the stage manager. Usually they begin working on a show 2 to 3 weeks before it goes into tech. This work is done usually in front of their TV at home, because the great majority of ballets are in true repertoire - meaning the ballet in question was choreographed, designed, rehearsed, perfected, and archived as many as 173 years ago. (Obviously in the case of those ballets, only the choreography is that old; the sets and costumes are newer.) The stage manager learns the choreography and music by watching a VHS or DVD of the piece from the last time it was recorded. Sometimes, if that particular company hasn’t done the ballet before, the tape and all set pieces and costumes will be sent from another company. Larger companies with fancy equipment have DVDs that actually include a feed of the stage manager calling the show, making the job of learning the show even easier. Still, without an extensive knowledge of how to read and (this is important) feel music, calling the hundreds of cues involved in a full-length classical ballet can be daunting.

A week or so before the big opening night, a team goes down to the warehouse and pulls out all of the set pieces and costumes and shines them up a bit. The dancers have been in the studio for a few weeks learning their parts by watching videos or learning from Ballet Masters, who are generally former principal dancers who know the choreography to many ballets in immense detail. Because these Masters deal with the pressings of play and pause on the stereo, the stage manager generally only has to attend one or two rehearsals in the studios. I like to lurk around more often because I find it fascinating, but most of the learning is done off of the archival tapes.

Another major difference: you don’t have to touch or check a single prop. You are there to call cues. That is all. Your assistant doesn’t even have to touch or check a single prop. Of course, as stage managers and perfectionists it is hard, and you’ll find us subtly glancing about the stage to make sure that the prop handlers have set the fake rat in the fireplace, tail facing downstage. To be honest, the job of an ASM in Ballet is not very difficult: they are basically there to patrol the stage and deal with any crises that pop up that the stage manager won’t be able to handle because she is in the midst of a huge cueing sequence. The assistant makes sure the proud moms of tiny ballerinas don’t sneak backstage to take pictures and get in the way of huge rolling staircases. They sit with the little girl who threw up on the stage left wall until her Dad comes to pick her up (glamorous, I know). They keep an eye on the Stage Manager’s water bottle and box of tissues. Keep the Dancers happy. Count to make sure there are 8 white butterflies and 8 blue butterflies at the top of Act Two, which is extremely difficult when the butterflies are actually dancers strolling about in the wings, never standing still, and constantly returning to the dressing rooms to get hairpins. Oh, and they all look exactly the same for about two weeks, with the identical costumes, makeup, and bunned hair.

The stage manager guides the team through the technical rehearsals, obviously working the most closely with the lighting designer. This process is very similar to it’s regional theatre counterpart, so I won’t go into too much detail. It’s like stage managing a huge musical with no lyrics. And once you settle into the run, which can be three or four weeks for a show like the Nutcracker or three or four nights for what we call a “series” piece (usually consisting of three shorter, more recently choreographed dances), it is just like the run of a big musical."

More to come tomorrow. . .