(Sorry the photos are blue! The cell phone didn’t take them the way I thought it would)
This particular practice that I went to had a fairly small group of people. It was really easy to follow along with the instructions, and it was a great day to be practicing! When Neeta, Jon, Drew, and I arrived at the AVAM, there were only about twenty people there at most. Laura and Josh were very inviting and extremely nice. They went over all of the intructions step by step very clearly.
It was such a long walk up the hill! When we got there, Josh went over Intersection, which is the first part of the performance. There wasn’t a whole lot going on that day, but it was easy enough to get the jist of it. The next part that we practiced was walking down the hill in a line, and then crab walking in different directions halfway down the hill (they made it look so easy). My pants got so stained!!! It was a lot of fun though.
Then came Circling with tangents up and down the hill. IF we chose to, we could run up or down the hill very quickly and then return to walking in a large oblong circle in the performance space. The next part was disappearing onto the side of the hill out of view. After that we crawled from the right side of the hill onto the front, and then laid down wherever we pleased. It was really nice except for the fact that the ground was a little damp. Afterwards we practiced Couching and then the Portrait. The rest from there was just lining up, bowing, and then backing away.
There were minor changes with the live performance, but nothing to drastic. It was so different when all of the performers were up in the cafe. There were sooo many people crunched up into that little space, and we were all just waiting to unleash out to the hill. Josh talked to everyone just like he was talking to a group of 20 people, but of course he was a lot louder. I think that he should have made it a bit more clear that everyone should stay for the second performance, but at the same time I think the second performance was more successful than the first. I think that after doing everything for the first time and getting the jitters out of the way really helped. Even though there were some really great things that came out of the first performance, the second one had some exciting unexpected changes with sound and more public interaction.
If I had to make one very minor criticism, it would be about the food. I was under the impression that there was going to be food for everyone up in the cafe, but there wasn’t : ( By the time I found out where the food was it was all gone! Other wise, I thought everything was wonderful. I had such a great time just playing around and experiencing all of this. This was an amazing opportunity, and I’m really glad that I could be a part of it.
