Reflections

In the sessions we started off with learning what songs we were doing for the Cabaret and who was in our trio and our trio number. My trio song was ‘Good Morning’ from the musical ‘Singing In The Rain’. In the ensemble number ‘Six’ I was Cathrine Howard. In the ensemble number ‘Opening Up’ I was a waitress. Also in the ensemble number ‘Totally Fucked’ I was an angry anxty teen. After we learned what parts we were playing we then learned the lyrics of all of the songs we are in and all the ensemble harmonies. Then we had a one to one session with Carly about our trios learning the pitching and the staging/choreography for the piece. With my trio Carly staged a bit of my trio which I loved because it was really me which is very over the top, quite cute characters. The staging was quite non dancy so we were able to sing and dance without losing breath. Then there was a dance break which was choreographed by me and the other people in my trio. We decided to do a tap dance break because in the musical the song was a tap number. We also decided to use umbrellas in our choreography as well since umbrellas were used in the song in the actual musical too. Then with the ensemble songs we learned the harmonies of our songs and then learned our dances that were choreographed by Carly and Ryan. The specific skills we learned during these sessions of rehearsal was our stamina as we had to keep our harmonies in key while doing a dance routine which was quite hard but very fun to do and I really enjoyed learning the dances because all of the numbers just had so much energy and life. Another specific thing I learnt was singing on my own for quite a bit and trying to be comfortable with my own voice because when it comes to singing I’m very under confident and don’t like singing on my own as I don’t like the way I sound. However when I did this trio I had to sing the majority of the song by myself which was scary but it also made me feel comfortable even though I struggled at first I think I was able to do a good job when it came to performing the cabaret with an audience. With the ensemble numbers specifically six I learned to be more confident when singing my solo bit as before when we went over the lyrics and the other girls did their solo bits and in my head I was comparing myself to all the other girls because I thought they were better then me and I could never measure up to them but I over the course of rehearsals I felt i built up the confidence and learned they are better then me but comparing myself to them isn’t going to do me any favours. I feel my strengths of my trio was my characterisation and the beginning of the song in terms of dance/staging bit. I feel in the ensemble numbers I had good characterisation and I think I managed to keep up with everyone in terms of dancing hopefully. I feel my areas of development in the sessions was definitely the tap in my trio because I’m not a dancer so I did struggle with keeping up with the choreography but in the end I think I did pretty ok. Another area of improvement in my trio I feel would be my under confidence at first because I didn’t believe in myself then so I feel like it impacted my performance because I always thought I was letting everyone down by how rubbish I was. But I tried really hard to overcome my under confidence and hopefully did okay in the show. In the ensemble pieces specifically in the opening up dance I feel like my technique could’ve been better when we did the heel toe heel toe bit with our hands up and write back to the lyrics “learning to love what’s on the inside” I always did that so badly. In the ensemble pieces during rehearsals it was just little techniques I got wrong like spinning the wrong way or putting the wrong hand up but I soon learned from them and I don’t think I made those mistakes in the show. I feel the effectiveness of my peers in the cabaret was amazing in the ensemble numbers and my trio they all are so so talented and amazing and are just a fun amazing group of people to be around and create something with. The only thing I would say specifically in my trio is me and one of the people in my trio arranged a rehearsal the other person in our trio said he’d be there however he wouldn’t and there were a lot of times where we had to go through it just the two of us because he wouldn’t turn up which was quite a hard obstacle to overcome however when he did show up to practise he did go full out and did learn the choreography that the other person in my trio and I had created so I will give him snaps. Overall I had a really fun time doing rehearsing for the cabaret and enjoyed performing it and I am so excited for our FMP!