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!