We had an amazing time in Salt Lake City performing Human Nature.
Here are a few of my favorite pictures of the show, courtesy of Owen Donnelly and Sandy Lee.
(The team! …courtesy of Anna-Marie and a screenshot I took of her flickr stream)
More pictures to come!
This trip so far is such a success! Let me recap the events…
- Wednesday night: Get to Salt Lake
Justin Zipcared me to SFO (so nice!) for my evening flight to Salt Lake. Unlike many of our trips together, things went really smoothly (flight on time, no fuel leaks, no extreme weather, no turbulence, even landed a bit early). A free shuttle brought me to the hotel and I slept from 1:30am to 11:30am…needed it!
- Thursday… all day rehearsals
- Had an awesome brunch at the Oasis cafe in Salt Lake City.
- Went to meet the Rose Wagner theater at 2pm. It’s such a beautiful venue and the staff was exceptional!
We had a tech rehearsal until 6:30pm, which involves lots of standing around on stage, adjusting placements and going through notes. We did a few pieces full out to actually know where we need to go for the pieces, but not the whole thing.
- 6:30-7:30p dinner…too much of it, at the brewery across the street.
- 7:30-11pm… notes and full dress rehearsal. It was the first time we ran the whole show without stopping, in our costumes, on stage with lights. It went pretty well, but we all ate too much.
- Friday…
- Awesome brunch at the Oasis Cafe again… yum!
- 2-5pm Marking (not danced full out) dress rehearsal again. We were so beat we couldn’t dance right and we were trying to save some energy for our show at night!!!!
- 5-6:30pm I squeezed a little hot tub time, woo! Perfect to relax the body and get it ready for some awesomeness in a few hours. Also snacked a little.
- Night: SHOW! Butterflies in stomach, pretending it’s just a dress rehearsal, just with more people watching. It turned out to be great! Apart some some little glitches that only us would notice, the whole show went really well. The Salt Lake audience was much more silent than what we’re used to, but they ended up loving it and standing up at the end. And yes, tears were dropping down my cheeks during our bow. It’s such an accomplishment!!!
- Post show: Hot tub session #2 and we got to see the DVD of the show we just performed (because our videographer was that awesome!) And of all surprises, we all thought we ROCKED! Result: dreams about the show and the video all-night-long-non-stop.
- Saturday… 2nd round
- Lovely lunch downtown Salt Lake (I can’t remember what the name of the grill was).
- Checked in the new room, where Justin and I would spend the night.
- Move my stuff from old room to new room.
- Grab the shuttle to the airport and meet Justin for his arrival. Happy moment!
- We look out the airport windows, and it snows. Yes, it SNOWED!!!! It was -2 degrees Celsius (don’t ask me how much that was in Fahrenheit) which is COLD and unexpected!… but pretty ra.
- We rented our spankin’ shinny blue Mustang and drove back to the hotel and then to the theater a bit after.
- Oh my goodness… at that point I thought I forgot the whole show and that I would screw up everything. So, I went through the entire choreography to keep it fresh in my mind…
- …turns out it went just fine. Our energy was great, we had lots more glitches, but the audience was much more lively this time, yey! :)
- Post show… some beer bang drinking and lots of pizza and nachos. Just what a dancer needs after such long stress and effort.
- Today (Sunday): prepping for the adventures
- Slept in…oh yeah!
- Ventured to REI for last minute camping stuff (like a little stove, some pots,…) and got on the road direction Moab, baby!
- It took us about 4 hours (or a bit less) to get there, driving through some seriously beautiful landscapes and experienced the sun setting on those red rocks. Beautiful!
- By the way, we drove through Provo, the city where I was born. Not much there, didn’t even bother going to the hospital where it all happened, but it was cool to finally feel like I’ve seen what the surroundings of where I was brought to life were like. It also occurred to me that my parents, at the same age, pretty much, were on the same roads as us, and went to Moab and all. Interesting!
- We get to Moab, with no hotel reservation and cruised around the town to figure out what our sleeping options are. It turns out there is a skydiving festival, event and all the hotels seem to be booked. Yikes! We attempt Motel 6, hoping for vacancy. No one’s at the front desk and 2 couples are waiting, and on the phone with local hotels to find a room. Right when one of the couple leaves, the clerk comes out and announces he’s got only 2 rooms left!!! Yipee, we grabbed the LAST room available, which had wi-fi (but is a smoking room, aka stinks,…we got a scented candle). We high-fived many times after that and butted our chests like college best buds :) So much fun!
So here we are in Moab, planning to visit and camp in the Arches National Park tomorrow. I’m so excited, as it’s such a titanesque work of geology and it’s so grandiose.
I don’t know how much internet connection we’ll get in the next few days, so updates may be rare. But know that we are having lots of fun and packing in life at our fullest.
Hurray for Loose Change giving us a reason to be out here, and hurray for vacation!
I realized that prepping for this Salt Lake trip has started the day that I knew Loose Change was auditioning…that’s 4 months ago.
This last month was especially strenuous. We went from 3 rehearsals a week to 4 and 5 last week. As a matter of fact last Saturday was when I hit energy rock bottom. My body did NOT want to move anymore and my mind sort of gave out. But on Sunday, after good sleep, Justin’s sweetness, some personal time and a Naked energy drink, all went fine for our 3.5 hrs rehearsal. (BTW, it didn’t wire like it wired Justin!)
I surprised myself packing before hand (never before-seen in Stephanie’s packing habits), so all is left for me to get in the suitcase is my toothbrush. Nice!
So, right now, I feel excited, exhausted, inspired, numb, calm with butterflies in my stomach. Quite a weird mix to handle. But I’m just letting things go through me at this point.
Deep breath.
Here we go!
Wow, this is brilliant! It’s an herbal shelf where you can grow your seasonal herbs on your wall!
I really love the idea that you can grow something you can then eat off of a decorative frame in your living room or kitchen. Great alternative to just having a plant in a corner!
The only challenge (for us) is to find a piece of wall getting enough sun throughout the day.
I also couldn’t quite figure out how much it costs.
This picture is an old picture I took on my cell phone of the dryer we use at the laundromat around the corner (I finally found out how to get my cell pics onto my computer!).
Do you see that red rectangular thing in the middle? Yep, that’s fire! The dryer heat is apparently created by a fire chamber in the back and controlled by a little vent that opens and closes depending on how much heat is needed… When the door opens, we can see the flames!!! When Justin and I saw that, we were in shock!
Is it just me, or does look like a 19th century dryer mechanism? I wonder if somebody’s in the back with a shovel feeding the
Sunday, we took a walk to San Francisco’s ferry building and surroundings. We took it waaayy easy, had some lunch and an ice cream. It felt so good, after the fundraiser craziness.
It turned out to be a beautiful day and benches looked really pretty that day.
