A Master Class and Two Performances - Giselle

Me and Loughlan Prior

Ballet Diaries - Giselle
By Salem

A Master Class and Two Performances in One Day
10th November 2012

We had to get up very early in the morning and had to catch the 7am train into Wellington.
I had a Master Class with the Royal New Zealand Ballet at their studios at the St James at 8.30am.
It was a real rush to get there in time but we did it!!!!!
Loughlan Prior, one of the RNZB dancers took the Senior class which I was in.
It was a real fun class and we did some exercises and lots of combinations.
He was a really good teacher.

After that, me and Mum stayed in the green room for a while and had a cuppa and a biscuit to eat.
It had been quite a while since we had breakfast.
Then we went for a walk to upper Cuba Street to have brunch at Arthur's Cafe and to meet up with a photographer to have some photos taken of us for a newspaper story.

Visiting Jonte in his dressing room

A bit later we had to go back to the St James and up to my dressing room and Mum put on my make-up as usual and I got into my costume.  We were doing a matinee show this afternoon.
I went back downstairs and visited Jonte (Sir Jon Trimmer) in his dressing room.  He let me choose one of his costume rings for me to have.  I chose a big green one.  Thank you Jonte, I love it.

I went and got some more autographs in my Giselle program.  I just knocked on the dressing room doors.
All the dancers are lovely and signed my program.  I think they are used to me doing this now, except for the new dancers though.

Knocking on the dressing room door to get more
autographs.

I went back up to my dressing room and Mum went into the St James as she was watching the show in the audience again.
Me, Paris and Jaida mucked around until we were called to go down to backstage.
Our performance went well and I got some souvenirs, some of the leaves from the trees had fallen off so I picked some up and put them in my pants until I got up to the dressing room.
As usual, I quickly got changed and went downstairs to chat to Lindsay until Mum picked me up at intermission to take me into the theatre so I could watch Act Two.
I got to watch Lucy Green as Giselle and Kohei Iwamoto as Albrecht.
They did really well and everyone danced brilliantly, but Antonia Hewitt and Andrew Bowan are my favourite Giselle and Albrecht.
Giselle is such a great ballet!!!!!

Me and Bronte Kelly

Between the shows we had a pot of tea at The Jimmy and then went and hung out in my dressing room and relaxed.
But on the way up to the dressing room, Ethan Stiefel came and waited to go up in the lift as well.  I needed his autograph so I ran up the stairs (the lift takes too long) to get my program for him to sign while Mum chatted to him while he waited for me to come back down.  Yay, I finally have his autograph.

I also finished getting all my autographs, Maree White's was the last one I needed and I finally tracked her down.

On our way down to backstage.

Later, I got back into my costume for the last time and Mum did a quick fix-up of my make-up.
Then I took Paris and Jaida downstairs to the dressing rooms to get autographs in their programs.
We had heaps of fun doing that.
Back up in our dressing rooms, we were feeling a bit sad as this was to be our last performance.

The Peasant Men

Our performance went very well as usual but it was sad.
I wanted to stay on stage as usual with my "family".

Back up in the dressing room, we all got changed and said our goodbyes.
Paris and Jaida gave me a little present of lollies for being a good "brother".
We gave each other hugs and then it was time to go.
We will all see each other again at future master classes and competitions.
It will be nice to see my friends again.

I was a very tired and sad boy and needed to get home to bed.
Jonte was on the train with us again and both of us caught some zzzzzzzzzzzz's on the ride home.

My Last Cinderella Performance

Salem with Brendon Bradshaw

I'm finally getting to type this out.  We have been so busy with rehearsals for my dance school's (Kapiti Dance Centre) show.  The last two rehearsals have been up at Southwards Theatre.  It is a full dress rehearsal this afternoon and evening.  Then it is two shows tomorrow, one at 2pm and the second at 7pm.
It has been very tiring, especially when you have to wait around a lot.  Should be fun tomorrow though!!!

Ballet Diaries - Cinderella
by Salem
My Last Cinderella Performance  11th August 2012
It was quite sad waking up today thinking that this is the last time that I will be performing in Cinderella.
But I was excited as well as today I will be actually watching the whole show in the audience before my performance.

Bronte Kelly and Abigail Boyle

It was very interesting watching the other casts' page boys at the matinee.  I could see how I would look to the audience, but I smile more :-)
I thought the show was really good, Bronte Kelly was Cinderella this time and she looked lovely and the Prince was Brendon Bradshaw, he was a great Prince.
It was great to see everything come together after just seeing bits in rehearsals and from the side of the stage.

Lucy Green in Cinderella's lovely tutu

Some of my favourite bits were watching Cinderella in here beautiful tutu, it really did twinkle like thousands of fairy lights, seeing Jonte play the Royal Shoemaker with all the other shoemakers working hard to make a copy of Cinderella's shoe, the Silly Sister and her very silly dance, she showed her knickers and was very funny.  And to top it all off was when all the rose petals fell down on Cinderella and the Prince at the end.  There were so many bits that I liked!!!!!

At the Wellington Botanic Gardens

After the show, we had a bit of time on our hands so we went for a walk through the Wellington Botanic Gardens.  It was nice to have some fresh air and look at the flowers.  We also walked through the old graveyard, it was full of beautiful and very perfumed spring flowers.

In the loading bay looking into the moving trucks

It was back to the theatre and the big trucks were there to load all the ballet sets, props, costumes etc in after the show.  I wondered if I could stow away in the back of one of the trucks so I could go on tour.

Next to the huge moving truck

Wow, my last performance, I felt a bit sad again that it will be all over for me after this performance.  I bumped into Joseph and Helio when I was in the dressing room so I had my photo taken with them.  They were about to change costumes.  They are in my dressing room too, but on the other side of the partition wall.

With  Joseph Skelton and Helio Lima

I had to play around with Daniel's make-up again.  I got rid of some streaks in his foundation.  We played cards again to occupy ourselves, then we went downstairs to backstage.  Me and Jonte sat together again.
Then it was my last time on stage.  It all went well as usual.  I didn't really want to go off stage.
It was back up to the dressing room, I took off my costume and put everything in to the washing basket and put away my hat and shoes tidily.

Saying good-bye to Lindsay

We had a chat with Lindsay on the way out and had a big hug.  Then it was off to the railway station, caught the train home and flopped into bed.  I was tired, happy and a little sad.  Until the next time.............