Last night I spent an hour with the choreographer and my scene partner working on a dance sequence, which is testing the triple part of the job: dancing, singing and acting at one and the same time. It’s an exercise in discipline … motivate, move, breathe and all in strict tempo and on pitch. I was reminded of some of the training work I did years ago in beijing opera (jingju) where the freedom often afforded and treasured by modern western acting style is conditioned and honed by a strict adherence to the performance traditions of the Chinese form. Demanding is not the word when it comes to prepping for jingju or for that matter a lot of traditional theatre forms. Shaping up to the insistence of tradition is good for the modern performer’s soul and feet! And it’s also good for me, a trainer of actors to get back into the saddle and to try to ride as well as I ask them to.
PS: I had the first tingles in the fingers a couple of nights back. This is my signal that the performance is just round the corner … as is that first run on Sunday.
