It's Sunday and I anticipate going to the train station and the bus station at 8am to pick up two of my fellow dancers - I'll probably get some cool video shots of them arriving for use in PUSH's documentary about the summer internship.

After picking up Isaac and Andrea from the bus and train stations, we attended NewSong Church services. Afterwards, we arrived at Roberts - met my roommates, Justin and Isaac (same Isaac), and settled in.  In the evening, we all went over to Darren and Heather's house for dinner and an opening orientation session. I was happy Nina could attend that.

First day of classes!  We stretched and got ready for the day.  I learned about what muscles still work, and what muscles need to be worked on.  We did some conditioning... we found our 2 centers - in the hips and then the chest - and lead with those alternating.  It feels different to lead that way. After lunch, we learned about stage blocking and the power of certain locations on stage.  This will help in choreography of movement and stage direction in the future.  Well, we ended early today, as planned, to be able to go shopping for our rooms - I need to get food for breakfast tomorrow!  I also attended the optional PUSH Pins performance in the evening - Heather Stevenson is very good with children.

Oh, my gosh!  I am aching so much this morning - this is a good thing, though, and I can't wait to see what we will learn today.  More later...

The day went by so fast!  I was challenged to mime an animal I knew a lot about - so I chose my kittens!  I had to mimic their emotions while eating and drinking and playing.  Then I had to act as if my chosen animal was slowly becoming human and was aware of a bigger world than its own needs.  It was challenging.  Finally, we had to be the animal but in a work environment and as a full human representation of that animal.  After that, I was a fire extinguisher, and when we worked in a group, I was part of an elaborate tree that grew from a seed.

Last night we got together with the Dance Mosaic group and learned rhythms from Ed Keegan and Matt Avery of Rhythm Connect.  It was a great drum circle - there are some photos in the picture pages.  This morning I ache worse than yesterday.  Who said it will get easier before it gets harder... hmmm, I must have heard that backwards!

Topher started us out with Tae Bo and Pilates exercises.  Later we learned some signature PUSH balancing.  During mime class we learned about Object Identification, and the Eight Steps to Create an Illusion.  I have illusion homework to do for next week Monday.  I have to create an environment by use of the illusion techniques I have learned.  We learned: the wall (with jumping), rope, "shell-claw-daisy", door, eating fruit, picking flower, lifting a cup, leaning and identification of the feather.

This evening we got the first part of a three part series of Darren's lecture at the NewSong office with Dance Mosaic.  Darren said that NewSong has CDs of it that can be ordered, so I'll post a link to where you can get the CDs from.  I have heard it once before at NewSong, and also last year for the first time during Dance Mosaic, but it was insightful this time around since I was not videotaping and could pay attention to the content and take notes.

Well, it's Friday and I made it through the first week.  Today was the best day so far in that we combined with Dance Mosaic and Julie Riling taught us improvisation,  We had stations in the dance studio where we would either pose, travel in a line, travel across the floor, or perform an emotion from a card.  Later on we partnered up to do some weight-sharing and across-the-floor non-verbal communication exercises.  Andrea and I did a couple cool things I want to remember for use in any future homework.  I also posted more pictures at the photo page - check them out.  They are a little out of order, but there are now 6 pages!

It's Saturday, and the only thing on the calendar today in the second part of the three part series of Darren's lecture.  He came to our townhouses and the "guys" hosted the lecture room at 10am.  The rest of the day has been sleeping, working on illusions homework, and rejuvenating our muscles for next week.

We started out the day at The Father's House church watching the PUSH company perform for an 8:30am service. It was great! We then all went to NewSong Church to watch Dance Mosaic perform at the end of their 11 day intensive program. They did 2 pieces (look for some photos in the link for photos at the top). Later on that day, some of us went to the Chili Fireman's Carnival and danced to Nik and the Nice Guys playing and watched fireworks. After getting home, I had to still perfect my Illusions Homework assignment due Monday.

Monday morning - back to the dance floor. Topher got us all going with some singing and poetry (almost rap-like) then we went into warm-ups. In the afternoon we all performed our Illusions assignement. Mine was about a guy going shopping in one of those scooter-things in the store. At night some of went to Phillips European for.... do I dare say it.... dessert! I had a slice of the Austrian Chocolate Torte. Mmmmmm...... more to work off tomorrow.

We started out Tuesday morning with a lecture from Pastor Don Riling from NewSong Church. He talked about how truth is discovered among other topics. Later during class, we started to develop the emotion behind the characters we'll be portraying on the tour. Very intense battle scenes... can't say much more as I don't want to spoil anything. Look for some photos that show some statues of groups of us in 3 different poses.

Heather Stevenson started us out with a tiny rubber duckie she brought - and an analogy to the duckie. Then we had a full hour yoga class with her!

Amazing leading by Topher - we started out in the "Viewpoint" exercise (the grid walking) and then we went into picking up objects from around the room to use as instruments - then we circled around to worship with beats and words. We learned the "pressure walk" some more and need to practice it as homework. We started official work on rehearsals for the tour. Topher also held an evening lecture.

Found out we will be performing in the Clinton Theatre in Utica, NY for one of the performances. Look to the main calendar page for all the listings as I get them. We started out with reflecting on where we are so far and where we are going. I contributed that I am having a great time, and that even though I am exhausted, I'm learning a daily discipline to my body. I'm looking forward to the tour. We continued with formal rehearsals for the tour. We created pathways for Tom to walk over us all! Along with the "pressure walk" homework, we also have "ladder" homework to perfect that movement.

Well, it's Saturday again! We had a morning lecture with Darren, then I went to see Nina and my cats.

Attended NewSong Church service - they played 3 minutes of PUSH as a promo to the congregation announcing we will be there on August 7, 2005 at 10:30am. Later today, I was home visiting my cats and Tigger had a seizure! :-( We don't know what is wrong with him, but he is 16 years old. He was taken into the emergency vet for observation.

Started out with Yoga from Heather again! Topher told us his "J-E-S" story, and then we did the "Viewpoint" exercise again, but this time in the dark with one-inch glow sticks lighting ourselves.  We rehearsed in the afternoon.  Tonight we had a lecture by Elisabeth Brown.  She was enlightening.

Later, we all went to the Murphy's (who are hosting Drea and Lauren) and went swimming, played volleyball, canoeing, and used a zip-line across the pond.  Sadly, Isaac fell from the zip-line and had to go to the Emergency Room for tests.  His feet are swollen and his heels are damaged, but not too badly.  Darren said he would decide what to do by Thursday.  :-(

The plane ride was great!  I posted photos of it.  Afterwards, we left Michigan via convoy, and when passing through Canada we stopped at IKEA.  I bought some items for the house including a cheese grater and a photo display that looks like a movie film strip.  I also found a couple of those weird rubber ice cube trays.  It was nice for me to be back in Rochester.

Later, I went to Cohoes with Darren, Justin and Isaac and then to hang out at Marketplace Mall.  Tonight is Daniel Stevenson's soccer birthday party at Brighton Town Hall, and then the aforementioned guys and the Stevenson kids are going to see "Batman Begins" at the IMAX theatre!!!  (Note: it was pretty good...)

Later, we drove to the Utica area.  Clinton, NY to be exact.  We needed to drive today to be able to be ready for tomorrow's workshop in the morning.

Darren decided to hold a special rehearsal this evening in Clinton for just the few members that are affected by him taking over for Isaac's role.  We saw what an AMAZING stage they have.  This theatre is really the best venue yet!  Our stage manager, Becca, was jazzed to be able to use a Palm Pilot to control the lighting presets on stage - it was all very technical but also very inviting a place to both be on stage and in the audience.  

We had the official tech rehearsal in the afternoon - it went fine.  This is really a very nice theatre!  The performance was a blast!  We all agreed that it is our best performance of all the locations we've been to.  They videotaped it and promised to send us copies.  

I asked Darren if it would be okay for me to drive home back to Rochester tonight to prepare for tomorrow's Sunday service at NewSong at MCC.  We are on this crazy schedule where we had to perform at MCC yesterday, then in Clinton, NY today, but have to go back to Rochester tomorrow morning for NewSong at MCC and then BACK to Clinton tomorrow afternoon.  Since NewSong is the Stevenson's home church (and mine) I thought it best that I go back tonight and be ready for any videotaping I would be doing tomorrow along with performing.

I got in very late and got to sleep on my couch.

It started out with setting up video cameras at NewSong church in the early morning.  Lance overslept so I ended up setting up Multimedia as well (no offense to Lance, as he does a great job with Multimedia - I'm just going for a 'wow factor' by the end of this day).  The rest of the gang arrived from Clinton by about 9:30am.  They had left around 7am as planned.  We rehearsed a little on stage - remember we had just been here Friday for the MCC camp, so at least we were familiar with it.  The show itself ran smoothly.

We left for Clinton to prepare for what would be the second evening performance at their place.  It ran with some bumps as Isaac reclaimed his Uriah role and hadn't really had time to rehearse enough.  Some placements were forgotten in Legion.  Also, sadly, the guys war dance was not done in the light at the start.  We moved ourselves slowly into place over the course of the dance.  It was a little sad since just the day prior on this same stage we had our very best performance of the whole run.  Well, we figured we are just getting tired from the traveling and dancing so many shows consecutively.  If we include tomorrow's last performance (in Suffern, NY), we'll have done 6 shows in just 4 days!  I'm tired just thinking about it.

Suffern was great!  We are at the Salvation Army headquarters (or something like that).  We had a very good show.  It's sad it is the last one, and we are all about to say goodbye and do a video goodbye as well.