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raked stages - adapting choreography


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I do not know if this is the correct place to post this, so moderators, please move it if unproperly placed.

I make guest appearances about once a month, in different cities in my country. Last Saturday I had to dance in a VERY RAKED STAGE, and I had trouble with the pirouettes of 2 of the 4 variations I danced.

One of these variations (Corsaire) has a manege of chasse-pique en dehors finished in a developpe a la seconde. When I went downstage I started to lose control and feel as if I was going to fall off stage!!. My questions are:

1) is it acceptable to adapt chorography to stage conditions?

2) how would you change the choreography of a manege such as that?

thanks!!!

silvy

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Silvy, I think, if I have the time to rehearse on the stage, that I would possibly adjust the direction of the turns a bit, and also just really hold the weight back further than normal on each turn and développé. Try taking the turns across the stage instead of on the downstage diagonal, or, start really far back and do a shallow diagonal instead of a steep one, so you don't end up so far downstage :D

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thank you Ms Leigh!!! What I tried to do (which worked on the rehearsal) was to take the manege more upstage than normal, and to hold my weight back, but I did take a developpe in a short diagonal before "plunging" into the final diagonal - and this is what caused disaster!!! :D

I am glad that people applauded instead of booing!!! :)

silvy

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I remember another thing: the stage was not only raked, but wooden and slippery. What point shoes wud be most suitable for these type of stages? I mean, I cud not do it with the Grishkos and switched to Sanshas (and TONS of rosin), but maybe there are better options.

thanks for your help!!!! :D

silvy

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You know, we used to scatter ordinary powdered laundry detergent on the stage if rosin wasn't enough, particularly those that were finished with a thick coat of varnish. That was tacky enough to act as a good anti-slip remedy, and the stage crew could just wash it off after. It made its own suds, and the people who owned the places got a cleaner floor than they had before we came.

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silvy, if you do a search here, for another VERY recent thread about raked stages, you will find that, amazingly, a book has recently been published on just this topic (apparently). it's available at amazon.com, i believe, so you could also just click on the banner, at the top of ballet talk, and do a search over there.

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