Well, one person in, one person out, unfortunately.  I did the right choreography yesterday and Keiichi still can jump higher than humanly possible.  So Keiichi is back but Zdenek Konvalina is out.  We can’t always fit our sprung floor in smaller theaters.  Nanaimo is one of those theatres and Zdenek danced Albrecht there.  The result is a pretty swollen foot and no Zdenek for the shows in Vancouver.  What this means for me is that I have to learn the Waltz part in Polyphonia.  I already do 2 parts in Polyphonia so it will be a little complicated.  On the last day of tour too, fingers crossed…

It could be another good day today. Keiichi rehearsed the Pas de Quatre in Giselle this afternoon and got the go ahead for tonight. So 7 months after the traumatic (for everybody) injury during the Bruhn competition, Keiichi will be back onstage dancing. He has been doing a lot in class and rehearsals but it’s different onstage. Everybody is pretty excited. In fact, I have a bet with Keiichi that in our duet (I am the other guy in the Pas de Quatre tonight), I could do totally different choreography and nobody would notice since they are all excited about him jumping again. I’ll try it out… Maybe a lyrical piece in the back… I’ll hope for inspiration.

I have been trying to add up how long we have been on tour but I can’t figure out what the date is so I’m giving up. It gets blurry on tour, gotta say… The shows are on random days and there are no weekdays or week-ends, so you get kind of lost. Let’s just call today “spouse day”, since a lot of them are meeting up with us here in Victoria. It’s been 2 weeks or so, and the reunions make for a happy day. Ava (Xiao Nan Yu’s young daughter) really encapsulates the mood; she is hysterically screaming; “I teach monkey!” which nobody can explain but she is so happy about it that it quickly becomes the company motto. Coming soon to an NBOC t-shirt near you!

(Photo: Xiao Nan Yu and daughter)

Ah the glorious theatre life! Visiting cities you only get to see every two years, budgeting underwear so you don’t have to track down a Laundromat until the last possible moment, and sleeping on strange and wonderfully uncomfortable beds! But what I’m focused on right now is food. Not the fact that on tour you get unbelievably sick of eating out, but theatre food.

Firstly, I have to tell you a little about the theatres. Unlike Toronto, where the theatre is right downtown, steps away from a ton of restaurants, the theatres on tour are generally nowhere near to downtown. In Calgary and Edmonton, we are bussed from the hotel to the theatre before class and are pretty much stranded unless you start spending your dwindling per diem on taxis. Which is sort of beside the point because the last thing a dancer wants to do is spend the 3 hrs. between the end of rehearsal and half-hour traipsing over hill and dale just to get food. No, we want to relax in some unenergetic way.

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Leaving the hotel and there are a number of Saskatchewan Roughriders football fans all gathered for a photo in front.  Think I’ll squeeze myself into the picture. Another Giselle tonight that I’m really looking forward to.  I hear the house is full and I have a close friend coming to the performance. Very excited. After this, I’ll get a few days rest and anxiously await the coast…. Victoria and Vancouver are definite highlights of the tour.

I’m right now on a dreaded eight-hour bus ride to Calgary. I am happy to be heading to “Cowtown”, though, as the tour really picks up as we head west. Principal Dancer Heather Ogden and I have decided to speak only French to each other throughout the tour (our French is limited) in an effort to learn the language and be bilingual. Not good so far…..I don’t predict this will last long.

(Photo: Greta Hodgkinson, Rebekah Rimsay, Stacey Shiori Minagawa)