By Alexa
For our last show of the season, Ballet Idaho put on Christopher Stowell’s version of The Sleeping Beauty. Although I knew it was going to be challenging, I had no idea how much of an undertaking it would be! One of our stage managers nicknamed it “Sleeping Beasty” because of how difficult the whole production was, and I feel like that name really embodied our struggle for the last few months of the year.
We started working on it back at the beginning of March, and since we weren’t performing until the beginning of May, I thought we would have plenty of time to be prepared. Spoiler alert – I was wrong!
Our version had a prologue and then 3 acts, so it was essentially 4 acts, and I was cast as something in every act. In the prologue, I was a lilac attendant, then in Act 1, I was a garland dancer. In Act 2, I was a nymph, and in Act 3, a cat page. I had never been so busy! Or tired! In prologue, Act 1, and Act 2, I was onstage for 15 minutes or more in each! And between prologue and Act 1, there was only a 3-minute pause to change between my two roles which was so stressful. But I was so grateful for all the opportunities I got to dance.
In the rehearsal process, after we learned everything, Christopher Stowell came for the last few weeks to put everything together and give us feedback on our dancing. Those days were long, rehearsing 11-5, and with only an hour’s break for lunch. But since the ballet was so long (over two hours), we barely got through it, even with 5 hours of rehearsal! So, artistic staff made the difficult decision to only have one cast perform for most of the roles, since we didn’t have much time to rehearse in the theater. That meant I would be doing 4 things in every show! I was excited, but a little nervous.
Once we got closer to the show, we started running it every day, which was so hard physically. I was exhausted, and a lot of the company members were as well. But once we made it to the theater, it was better, because much of the time was spent on the set and transitions with costumes. And the shows ended up being so much fun! Exhausting? Yes, one hundred percent. But I had such a fun experience performing one last time on the Morrison Center stage. I will never forget it, nor my year here!
