a very pippin weekend

wow, this weekend was an unbelievable whirlwind!  i've mentioned before that we are lucky to have a local theatre that pulls in many national broadway show tours throughout the year.  ryan works almost all of them through our theatre stage hands union, and lately i've been working them too.

this weekend the national tour of pippin was in town.  we both worked the load in and the load out, and ryan worked the run of the show too.  the company that orchestrates the logistics of the tours that come through our area has an educational committee that has been running several educational theatre outreach programs lately.  for this show, they arranged for two of the dancers from pippin to teach a fosse-style dance workshop.  i was thrilled that my dance studio was able to partake!

on saturday morning, we all gathered at a local university with dancers from other local studios for the workshop.  we had a little fosse boot-camp and then learned the choreography for all of "magic to do" which is the opening number of pippin.  it was so much fun, and it was great to meet and learn from two of the show's professional dancers.  once the workshop was over in the afternoon, we headed to the theatre venue where the show was being performed in order to see the matinee performance.  the show was excellent and we absolutely loved it!  (i especially enjoy getting to see the shows that we work with the union because it is so neat to see how everything we set up is used throughout the show.)  after the show was over, several of the cast members took time before their evening performance to do a meet-and-greet / question-and-answer session with our studio's dancers who participated in the workshop.

all in all, saturday turned out to be a great day and i'm so glad our studio got to take part in the experience.  it was so nice to expose our dancers to my theatre world too!  (they all know ryan from helping out around the dance studio, so it was cute to see how excited they got when they saw ryan on stage!  i just had to chuckle to myself.)

working the show and doing the workshop made for an exhausting weekend, but it was well worth it.  we didn't get many pictures from saturday, but we did get a few phone snapshots . . .

^we all really enjoyed learning the choreography to "magic to do" and then seeing it performed by the professionals during the show.  i'm glad the university's technical director snapped this picture on her phone of the end pose of the number during our workshop.^

^this picture is a really horrible cell phone shot, but i'm glad we have it as a memory!  our studio director took this picture at the end of the workshop with a few of our studio's dancers along side the two professional pippin cast members.^

love, laurie