Harmonic Hope

Harmonic, Hope and Passion: these three words will define Cast A’s tour and who we will strive to be in the coming months, years and decades.

It’s been yet another whirlwind of a week as we race towards our first performance Friday. It’s hard to believe that in five days is opening night. We’ve been in Denver for three weeks and already we’re scrambling from song to song and dance to dance. While the performing arts workshops have dominated our days it’s been the various cultural education and leadership workshops that have had more of an impact and showcased the type of people that are on this tour. Yesterday we had our first cast meeting and we designed our cast flag. Before we could work on a cast flag we had to come up with personal flags. Here’s my basic design:

After we created our personal flags we got together in our home teams—(in case I haven’t already told you-- our home teams are made up of 10 or so students whom we’ll meet up with periodically throughout the semester to vent and provide support for one another—a mini family). We came up with a list of words to we wanted to represent. We then boiled them all down to their core to three words we nominated.

Here’s our list; Selfless, profound, loyal, fruitful, growth, serve, diverse, hope, help, movement, love, progress, inspiration, calm, flexible, patient, miracles, ripple, steadfast, enduring, compromise, understanding, legacy.

And here are the three words we thought were at the core of the list and nominated to the cast; Selfless, Legendary and Harmonic.

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s pretty cool that the words we spent an hour discussing had such integrity. (Yet another word we’d all like to embody). Some images from of our flag creating day!

This is Toño from Mexico-- he's our tech/band leader. He's not crazy. He's just crazy!

My hand's the green one... the yellow is Alanda Joy's from Canada-- we made a heart :-)

Unfinished... but you get the idea. :-)

And now… on with the not so random events of our week! I spent most of Monday contorting my body into strange positions at high-speed intervals as I reviewed the Gypsy dance. On Tuesday I worked on a number of short musical numbers I may be singing as well as a short scene—the only real theatrical speaking scene in the show. It’s pretty cheesy. Basically it’s a two min scene cracking jokes about interesting world facts: fun, but silly. Wednesday we had an interesting leadership seminar designed to help us discover what types of leaders we are and who we may want to be. Thursday I tied my brain in knots as I started to learn the lyrics to Jai Ho!

Here’s a taste of what I have to memorize... Aaja Aaja Jind Shamiyane Ke Tale, Aaja Jariwale Nile Aasman Ke Tale

Luckily that evening we had a break from all the crazy mind numbing events and focused on enjoying some local cuisine while befriending a bear!

 

This is Pascal. He is Swiss.

Pascal befriends wild animals...

Like his roommate Walker from China! (Walker is our class clown)

Friday I had to do the Jai Ho dance while we were staging. This dance not only ties your brain into knots but your fingers and feet. The best part was that there were still 45 seconds or so of the song I hadn’t been taught how to do. Thus my flailing was especially frenetic. (On Saturday we reviewed and learned the rest of the dance.)

Today is Sunday—our host family day! Naohiro and I thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in after a week of chasing down busses at 5 am and the continual fun yet exhausting experience of learning new choreography. It was a lovely lazy lounging morning followed by a frantic feverish bouncing afternoon. We went to an indoor facility called Jumpstreet. Imagine a massive gym with a floor of trampolines surrounded by walls set at a 45-degree angle that are also made of trampolines. Now add a score or so of twisting, tilting, flipping and flying children and you have jumpstreet. To top off our evening Nao and I join Michele and her host mom—Pam—to see the film Black Swan. Not exactly the joyous ending to the afternoon I’d hoped for (not sure why I expected that) but a well put together film nonetheless.

(Quick film recommendation; check out “The Way Back.” It’s the story of three men’s escape from a soviet prison camp in Siberia during World War II.  They traveled over 4,000 miles on foot with next to no food. They traversed Siberia, Mongolia, China, Tibet and the Himalaya mountains to reach safety in India. Amazing story and film. Wonderful cinematography.)

As always there are more stories to tell! But for now I must sign off—sending you all my love and hopefully a video or two from rehearsals this week-- ~danny

A few video clips...

For all lovers of horses... this is really cool.

Here's a clip from the culture jam. My roommate is the one in yellow. They're performing the So-ranbush.

Dance Dance, Sing and do it all again...

This was the plan… to update you on the long weekend Monday night. It’s now Thursday. (And now as I post and actually finish everything that’s happend it’s Sunday…) Somehow I thought there would be time. I was wrong. The only reason I have time now is because of a minor miracle transportation wise; we discovered the express bus! Now instead of an hour and a half ride home it’s only an hour! Woohoo! Annnd back to the various events of the week…

Sunday! Oh wait… rewind a little bit more some thing I forgot to add in the last post… Saturday morning I woke up early to bake the ole’ secret hoffman coffee cake for the host family. A little word to the wise… when you bake at elevation you have to make a few minor adjustments. One; add extra flower. Two; subtract from the amount of baking powder or other natural rising agent you may use. (And in this case for me… Three; Make sure you don’t use a specialty flower that is self-rising.) Otherwise when you put the baked item in the oven it will cascade over the sides like lava flowing out of a small volcano. Lots of noise and smoke! I created a massive, gooey, sticky, tasty, not so coffeecake mess!  Ah well, live and learn.

Sunday was a day to relax. Unlike most New England sports fan I was not glued to the TV for the disappointing performance of our hometown football team. I was watching as Eric, CJ (a friend of his) Mark and Naohiro absorb the sights and sounds of the national stock show. An earthy aroma intertwines with smoky BBQ, fried Twinkies and the occasional waft of manure to undercut the murmur and hubbub-- clashing voices, the bells of laughter and the questions of children and adults alike. Have you ever stopped to watch the people around you as they watch and absorb new things or a movie or theatre production or music? It is truly magical—light dances in dozens or hundreds of faces, eyes twinkling and faces caught in new universes of delight and awe and occasionally fear. There is something pure about those moments when a group is engrossed in these things they lose all sense of self-conciseness or doubt

A few favorite images and discoveries at the stock show; Massive, beautiful, lumbering cows being prettified by men in oil-stained cut off jeans and flannel shirts.  These Cowboys fluff their prize cows with vacuum cleaners. Golden plumage intermingles with pearly white feathers as monsieur rooster struts for the thousands of on lookers crib. Of course as soon as I whip out the camera he gets all-coy… And then there are the boys eagerly awaiting the start of the rodeo—fingers grasping pudgy fried Twinkies, faces aglow in anticipation of the bucking broncos and occasional rampaging bull.

Monday was MLK day. Nao, Michelle and I met up with the rest of the cast at City Park to join 30,000 to march from City Park to the capitol building. This day exemplifies our journey—it’s bigger than the individual. We were in the midst of a sea of ideas; High school sports teams and students, church members, families, political supporters and reformers… each walking with a purpose and to remind ourselves of how far this country has come and how far we have to go.

 After our march we spent the afternoon bonding and then had rehearsal in the Denver Post’s auditorium. The rest of the week has been pretty much a blur… I learned a number of crazy dances. They’re fun but I have to learn how to contort my body in unusual ways very quickly. I’ll be able to do them… but it’s hard to wrap my mind around the number of things I’m supposed to do in each three second span. Here are the list of dances I’m working on; Tuesday; a Gypsy dance, African Gumboot, Wednesday; Jai Ho (An Indian dance, the song is in Slumdog Millionaire) Friday, Love Medley (At the Hop—swing dancing with lifts and Footloose) Saturday; More Love Medley (it’s about 10 min); (What a Wonderful World—slow partner dance with lifts, I’ve had the time of my life—and a number of other short bits.) Of course in the midst of all this dancing we’re also learning songs and doing various cultural workshops. Then there are a number of songs I learned last week that we have to keep up with. Nao and Michelle are also in three more specialty dances— it’s hard to believe that in two weeks we’ll have this show put together.

As always there are more stories to tell but for now I’m signing off. Lots of love all around! —I’ll post some images and short videos later in the week from the various events!

1 down, 21 to go! (That's weeks...)

Tightly packed doesn’t do justice to our schedules with UWP, but it’s a start.

But first things first—names I left out of my last post. The game you should all play is “The Settlers of Catan.”

Host Family Names I may have left out… Paige is 15, sweet and an intense swimmer. Quick update on her quest to reach states—at this weekends’ meet she missed the state qualifying time for the 100 butterfly by three one hundredths of a second; .03 seconds. That’s a fingernail, literally. There are three events she would like to qualify for— combine her times for all three events and she’s .79 seconds away from states. Absurd.  Also the little brother… Mark is 8 and more often than not his sandy brown hair has a slight cowlick. He also has a wicked cool three-pronged toothbrush. Apparently these days when you get braces you gain access to a secret cash of cavity fighting weapons.

The first week; day one: The simmering pink dawn saw Naohiro, Michelle and I bouncing up, down and across Broadway St a dozen or so times on two buses while en route to the Pinnacle Center. The center is where we’ll be spending the next three weeks cramming in the music, dances and other tidbits of required information for UWP’s 2011 tour, “A Song for the World”. We spent day one listening more than singing—and while I know they have to lay down the ground rules and expectations it was a slight disappointment. The main music man has a minor attitude and loves the sound of his own voice—but he knows what he’s doing and I’m sure there’s a great big warm fuzzy heart behind his puckered, slightly condescending mouth.

Michelle, Naohiro and I are bonding in the un-Colorado, Maine like cold. Naohiro has never felt the sharp jabs of colds knife in his toes before.  While Michelle and I are both from Maine we aren’t ones to stand around in sub-freezing, sub-teen cold waiting for busses in sneakers. Luckily the rest of our tour is primarily in the tropics. (And there will be some post remarking on sweat.)

Day two: Running amuck downtown! We were shipped out in teams of 10 to explore the city we’ll be traversing daily. Basic run down—scavenger hunt requiring requisitioning random locals about their town. We also toured the US Mint and the state house. We even met the new Governor. I have to say—I think Colorado’s governors have some of the best names… check out this list: Vanderhoof, Love, Lamm, and the most recent Hickenlooper!! (He’s a keeper—he stopped and chatted with us. Check him out.)

Had a nice evening with the host family—hung out with the pets and played another game of “The Settleers of Catan.” Fun fact—they have two dogs. One loves me. The other is a Chihuahua who is blind as a bat and forgets me every time I change. Yap, Yap, Yap! Yapyapyap! Naohiro has managed to befriend the entire household of pets. Paige calls him the pet whisperer, tamer of all pets. They are great at transcending language and easing culture shock. Gotta love ‘em.

Day three (Wednesday): Modules—finally some serious singing and dancing right? …Not quite. Modules are basically an introduction to some basic theatre and people person skills—such as stage presence, shaking hands, communicating vocally and learning some basic dance steps. It also serves as mini auditions so the staff can get an idea of where we’ll fit in.

I think someone switched the intensity circuits of choreographer and music director. They are both behaving contrary to my relatively brief experiences in both fields. The dance instructors are warm and encouraging while the vocal director is… hmm… think Russian Ballet instructor, loud, sharp and a dry humor.

Day four (Thursday); we got a ride to rehearsal which meant we got to sleep in an extra hour!! Which is good because today was an extra long evening. We didn’t leave the facility until 8:30. We did finally start to learn the actual movement and sink our teeth into the music. Not much to say there other than we move fast… very very fast. Luckily most of it’s not super complicated—at least the large cast movement. In the evening we had an interesting historical lecture about the founding of UWP.

In a nutshell; “Up With People” came out of the Moral Re-Armament movement. The most common date associated with UWP is 1965 but the first youth conference that helped spawned the idea was a few years earlier. Moral Re-Armament was a Christian-democracy based ideology. It wasn’t until 1968 that UWP broke away from Moral Re-Armament and forged ahead on its own to promote a broader themed message of peace. Since then they’ve performed at several super bowls, a few different Olympics and for various royalty. They shut down operations in 2000 because it cost too much and in 2004 they restarted operations at a much smaller level; 1 cast at a time rather than 5, 100 students and staff vs 150.

Annnd the rest of the week in three short sentences. Basically; Sing, sing, dance, stereotype workshop, dance, dance, sing. Friday we also spent an hour standing around trying to capture a decent cast photo. Saturday we had a late start and I was called into do two dance workshops. Workshops happen during the larger cast rehearsals but they teach small groups specific dances/songs that are separate from the large group. Both workshops on Saturday were for two dances. (Ok, there were 4 sentences… my bad!)

As always there are more stories to tell but for now I’m signing off. Lots of love all around! Check back soon for more stories and video from the National Stock Show—pictures in the previous post!

A Few Photo's from Week One

I have a post... it's just not quite done yet. It's been a busy week and I spent most of yesterday when I was supposed to write my blog post working on a "me-page" for the Show-- it's basically a 8 by 10 page that will go into a book for the public/sponsors/host famlies to look at before the UWP show. It's like a program in book form with an entire page for each actor. I'll post it here when I'm done with it later in the week. For now... a few shots from the past week...

Naohiro, Michelle and I on our first full day exploring the city with Joel

The trio after Hubel 3D in IMAX!

The Walk Home...

It was a cold, cold cold wait for the bus home...

State house...

A few of the UWP kiddo's!

 

The First Day... plus one.

It was 6:15 on Friday evening and it was time for my plane to embark and to start the first phase of my physical journey with Up With People. (The psychological and imaginary journey had begun about a month earlier when the prospect of the tour still merely a fleeting dream.) The intercom crackles, “ladies and gentlemen, here’s the plan…” the gentle murmuring of passengers preparing for flight ceased. “It appears as though there’s some sort of electrical issue on our wing—something we can’t fly without.” The cabin filled with a hundred odd souls collectively wincing—a gentle breeze of sighs intermingled with the sharp intake of air-- all waiting to hear the words delay or canceled. “We’re going to steal the next plane that comes in and with a little luck we’ll be on the road in a hour or two.” Well… we ended up leaving about an hour later and somehow were only twenty minutes late landing. Love Southwest.

At the airport I wander round waiting for my bags. My heart pulsating with each new face—could they be with Up With People? Eventually I spot a sign and head over to a tall Dane—don’t ask me names quite yet—he grins and grabs my hand. “Got you’re bags? Let’s go!” We meet up with five or six kids from the Netherlands. Three boys and three girls all, except Joyce—a tall blond… wait… they all seem to be tall and blond... anyway Joyce is in the midst of her sophomore year at University—the others are taking a gap year—which makes them starry eyed 18 year old high school graduates. I feel almost old. I’m the same age as most of the core staff. Based on the folder I got before being we were shipped off to our host families the cast is made up of around 120 students/staff from 20-23 countries.

In the morning I met my delightful host family—a pair of physicians—Joel and Roxana with four kids—the oldest is off to school in New Jersey and I’m in his room in the attic. It’s a minor adventure scaling the ladder to his room. They have three other kids—two boys 7 and 11 and one girl whose 15. She’s an excellent swimmer and they’re all uber friendly. They also have two dogs and two cats. My memory is failing, its late and a dozen names are bouncing round my skull-- the only name I can remember is Eric—he’s 11. He taught Naohiro (my housemate— a 29 year old software engineer from Japan) and I to play a new board game—the name of course escapes me. However, I will post its name later (as well as the other two delightful kiddos) because it’s great fun and you should play it.

We spent Saturday exploring our neighborhood and the city. Joel led us (myself, Naohiro and Michelle-- another UWP student who is staying with a neighbor and is from Brewer Maine) around the downtown area. Before today Naohiro had never seen a wild squirrel. He was quite excited. In Japan they live in Zoos. It was wonderful seeing the city with Naohiro and Michelle. They were enthused about the little details from squirrels to the size and splendor of grand hotels and western hats. We then ventured over to a swim meet to see our host sister race the 500 freestyle. She missed the state qualifying time by .68 seconds— about half a forearm length. It was a thrilling race—three swimmers stroke for stroke—thrumming chants and cheers the lead changing on every turn—our girl grinning with each breath—reaching for the finish.

We spent Sunday relaxing as the winter winds gently dropped a warm white blanket around the city.  Naohiro, Michelle, Joel, Roxanna and the youngest boy trekked over to the natural history museum and watch the 3d IMAX Hubel film. See it if you can. It’s stunning. Space is haunting. 

Finally the evening arrives and we head over to the auditorium where we’ll being spending the next month working. The crew and the students who travelled last semester and will be joining Cast-A this semester gave us a rollicking preview of a few of the songs and dances we’ll be doing. This music is heart pumping and thought provoking.

Always more to say and stories to share but for now—sleep sweet and dream big. ~danny

PS. New Dates and places for the Itinerary. Below are the new locations and the date of for the Dress rehearsal!

Dress Rehearsal performance, Colorado Heights University: February 4 - 7:30pm 

Boca Raton, Florida: February 27 - March 6

 

Prague, Czech Republic: April 18 - 24

 

Weinfelden, Switzerland:  April 25 - May 1 

 

There are still two weeks in Europe, four in Mexico and one in Florida TBD.

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

My bags are packed. I’m ready to go. It’s 5:36 PM. I’m sitting at gate E1B and the butterflies in my stomach are bouncing around like Dizzy Gillespie’s fingers on one of his frenzied jazz trumpet solos. I have embarked upon a journey with an unknown destination. Sure, I know many of the physical destinations I’m flying /driving/walking toward. I know I’ll be singing and living with host families. I know my flight is landing at approximately 9:30 pm in Denver. Yet as in life, these adventures are not about the destination. It’s about the journey, the process and that is where the mystery lies. So-- as I race to finish this post before boarding-- I’ll leave you with my tentative itinerary and thoughts of love for you all.

DENVER, CO - ORIENTATION AND STAGING: January 7 - February 6

ORLANDO, FLORIDA: February 7 - 13

   

VERO BEACH, FLORIDA: February 14 - 19  

GRAND BAHAMA ISLAND (FREEPORT): February 20 - 26  

BOCA RATON, FLORIDA: February 27 - March 6

TBD, FLORIDA: March 7 - 13

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM: March 14 - 28 

WAASSENAAR, THE NETHERLANDS: March 28 - April 5

  

EUROPE TOUR CONTINUED (CITIES TBD): April 5 - May 1

MEXICO TOUR BEGINS (CITIES TBD): May 2 - 30

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO: May 30 - June 13

END OF TOUR/CAST DEPARTURE: June 14  (BIRTHDAY!)