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1

Stage Management: Other / Ballet Blocking

« on: Jan 08, 2019, 11:51 am »

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking for some advice on ballet - I'm likely going to be covering rehearsals for a national ballet company in the UK as DSM & I've previously mostly done opera & drama with a tiny bit of modern dance thrown in.

Is there any difference in doing blocking for ballet - will have to learn dance notation or anything? With the modern dance I just made actual notes on the moves, but obviously ballet is far more formal. What's mostly concerning me is that I'm covering rehearsals for 6 weeks, but will then have to hand the book over to the house DSM to call the show from, so I don't want to mess things up for her!

Any advice on blocking, or any other aspect of DSMing ballet would be most welcome!

2

Introductions / British DSM checking in!

« on: Feb 15, 2016, 04:10 am »

Hi Everyone,

I'm  a stage manager from England, mostly specialising in DSMing. It seems to be mostly American SMs here so if anyone wants a rundown on British designations drop me a PM!

I mostly work on  drama with a smattering of musicals & some new writing thrown in. I also do a bunch of corporate charity balls & outdoor events & suchlike, as well as a yearly panto.

The guidance for intro threads tell me to tell you a story so I'll just leave this here.... this year on panto one of my dwarfs broke his leg 10 minutes in to Act I (in the dressing room, not on stage luckily!) so I had a 6' dwarf for 3 performances. I have seriously not laughed so much during a show for a long time, especially when Snow White changed her lines to say.

"And I must know your names. You must be Brainy, you are Moody, you are Goopy, and you must be Understudy!"

I came here looking for some opinion on prompt books and have so far discovered that US prompt copies are very different from the UK kind. I will definitely be stealing a lot of your ideas!

Thanks everyone, and see you around