Watching You Watch Us

I always know when we're getting close to opening a show because Linda Besant starts bringing groups of people in to observe studio rehearsals. I hope our audience doesn't mind that I snuck a picture of them watching us in our natural habitat.


This was a rehearsal for the Act I pas de trois. Christopher and Lisa are sitting next to the CD player in the center of the room (at the left side of the photo), which is their usual vantage point from which to best see all the dancing action and take note of what needs fixing. I've always thought these open studio rehearsals must be pretty neat for people to sit in on--- things are not quite as unpolished as the work we usually do at OBT Exposed, since we're further along in the rehearsal process, but we're definitely not putting on a show just yet, so there is plenty of stop-and-go, correct this and that, try steps over and over again. It must be curious for already-interested observers to see and hear how we arrive at the finished product they see on stage. Maybe when they go to performances they can even recall seeing certain sections being rehearsed, and compare how it looked then with how it looks on stage, in costume, with lights, sets, orchestra.