Dancing in Nanaimo
I guess it's Tuesday and high time for this entry (and considering I haven't written in my journal since well december...)! On Saturday, les "jeunes" Cornouillers went down to Nanaimo for the annual Maple Sugar Festival. Joe and I had choreographed this cool 1/2 hour show that we would have to perform twice! Plus no old people dancing, just us youngins doing the entire thing. We'd put in many hour and had lots of extra practices. On top of everything my friend Jason, fiddler extraordinaire (aka Vikram the busker), played much of our music (sweet! live music!). We were a little stressed when we arrived in Nanaimo but everything was fine. I even got to try on a racoon hat (rabbit and racoon road kills with proceeds going to a human society), in which I looked absolutely ridiculous! Anyways we all found each other, got our backstage passes (with lanyards) and our free food tickets. We unloaded the props and got changed. Our first show was on the main stage in this old barn. Everything went really well (including my intro) until... trio. Once our violoneux finally gives up, we're suppose to take his fiddle and bow and put them down, however the fiddle had a pick up which happened to be plugged into a plug on the stage. We put the fiddle in its case (on a speaker). Someone accidentally tripped over the cord and the fiddle fell down. Uh Oh. But not to worry, too much, the fiddle was alright, only the bridge had fallen out. Anyways, to make a long story a little shorter, the bridge broke when we tried putting it back on the fiddle without loosening the strings... whoops. So this really nice guy, Doug, the best fiddler and viola-fiddler you'll ever meet, lend Jason his fiddle so that the show could go on and it did. Flawlessly I might add. And thanks to Suzi for killing time, in both official languages, while with dealt with the fiddle problem. Then we got everything off the stage and went backstage, where Chel and Suzi gave Joe and I dance survival kits as a thank you for all our hard work. By then it was about 1:10 and we got changed and went to wait for lunch. We had a yummy traditional french-canadian lunch with lots of maple sirop. It was a beautiful day so we ate outside, saw the sites and played with Zizou. Then it was already 2:45 and time to go backstage and get ready for our second concert. This time we were in the entertainment tent, so people were actually paying attention. yay! And on top of that there were lots of people! Jason borrowed Doug's fiddle again (this time with his pocket pick-up). The show went beautifullly, one minor hitch was the gigue JAD music starting randomly during the gigue assise, but oh well. We got a major standing O and we had tons of fun. And we got our first interview/media coverage with the Mind's Eye a youth related newspaper in Nanaimo. It's a step in the right direction and anyways a little publicity is better than no publicity at all. My dad videotaped both shows, plus Joe and I did some ambiance, backstage stuff. So our next project is to make a killer DVD with what we've got. Another project (spring break) is creating a good website for les Cornouillers (publicity!). And eventually recruting youngish people who can speak french (preferably that we at least sort of know) and who can, hopefully, dance, as we're potentially losing 4 members (grade 12s) and who knows who else. That's about it for now. I should do some more homework and practice my cello.
Ciao.
Ciao.