dancing for the queen
I still think of myself as a musician more than a dancer. But, regardless of how I got into it, dancing has been a bigger part of my life for the last five years. There's one exception to that these days: the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the massive bagpipe festival. For this event, I'm going to Scotland for a month to play fife with my old fife & drum group, MCV. I have a show every day in August, two on Sundays.
But guess what? I just found out that I get to dance, too!
At the beginning of the event, each night, the organisers are putting together tableaus of military music & history. And here's what they want us for:
"As the Duke of Wellington harried Napoleon's French forces across Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, military bands had become even more versatile and on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 they played at the Duchess of Richmond's famous ball at Brussels. Visual is dancers on the esplanade -- Highland dancers dressed for a society/Regimental Ball/ MCV "men" in 1815 dress."
So, apparently, I get to dance for the Queen. Vintage ballroom dance. Only about 45 seconds, I'm told. Who knows how much dancing we'll actually do, vs just standing and looking like dancers.
My only concern is that they'll decide I don't look convincingly masculine in our 1812 summer uniform. Well, my other concern is that I don't actually have an 1812 uniform, since we thought we'd only need our full dress uniform (1776) for this event, but I'm sure our seamstress is up to the task. Those of us who're staying for the whole month were asked to do this extra role, so that we don't need a new group of people to learn it halfway through, so I can probably just borrow a summer uniform from someone who's only there for half of it.
More generally: I should be flipping out about this whole event, because I hardly know any of the street music yet and I haven't looked through the drill in ages. It's so easy to put it off, thinking "I'm good at memorizing music", but the street music is hard enough that I can't just memorize it without playing it out loud, like the drill music. I should set up a practice schedule or something.
But guess what? I just found out that I get to dance, too!
At the beginning of the event, each night, the organisers are putting together tableaus of military music & history. And here's what they want us for:
"As the Duke of Wellington harried Napoleon's French forces across Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, military bands had become even more versatile and on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 they played at the Duchess of Richmond's famous ball at Brussels. Visual is dancers on the esplanade -- Highland dancers dressed for a society/Regimental Ball/ MCV "men" in 1815 dress."
So, apparently, I get to dance for the Queen. Vintage ballroom dance. Only about 45 seconds, I'm told. Who knows how much dancing we'll actually do, vs just standing and looking like dancers.
My only concern is that they'll decide I don't look convincingly masculine in our 1812 summer uniform. Well, my other concern is that I don't actually have an 1812 uniform, since we thought we'd only need our full dress uniform (1776) for this event, but I'm sure our seamstress is up to the task. Those of us who're staying for the whole month were asked to do this extra role, so that we don't need a new group of people to learn it halfway through, so I can probably just borrow a summer uniform from someone who's only there for half of it.
More generally: I should be flipping out about this whole event, because I hardly know any of the street music yet and I haven't looked through the drill in ages. It's so easy to put it off, thinking "I'm good at memorizing music", but the street music is hard enough that I can't just memorize it without playing it out loud, like the drill music. I should set up a practice schedule or something.