Gathering

Rest
Stage manager FB posted a beginners' call for Amalgamate but I was enjoying a delicious seven-dollar steak at the Captain Cook Hotel. By the time the dancers were painting up for Rites I had my right leg up, watching crap re-runs on Foxtel. It's a hard life.

Ice
I guess you could say that my dance career is temporarily on hold for now. Frozen. Like the back of my right calf, thanks to the ice pack that I have wrapped around my leg. No matter. JPB is making sure that I'm well looked after. My only gripe is that he now refers to me as "The Cripple". Or, sometimes, "Hoppy". Luckily I have a sense of humour.

Compression
It was a bit tight for a moment, though. After hobbling off at the end of Amalgamate on Wednesday night I was shephered into the Bangarra Ladies' changeroom where YB offered to give my right calf a bit of a massage. I was still clinging onto the hope that I was just suffering from a massive cramp and just needed it to release. But the more she massaged it the more it hurt. Not good. Meanwhile, the directors and stage management were running around backstage trying to find me. It was obvious in the curtain call, when poor little Jhuny limped on, that something was wrong though no-one had any idea that I was hurting quite early on in the piece. But it was clear then that I couldn't go on for Rites so an emergency mid-interval rehearsal was called to try to fill in the gaps that I left behind. Meanwhile, poor Jhuny started to get quietly emotional but realised that there was still the job of properly rehabilitating myself; I may not have been going on that night but possibly I could get back on stage by the weekend?

Elevation
Not bloody likely. For me it's foot up for at least the next couple of weeks, will complete rehabilitation after six weeks of limited dancing and maximum injury management. One moment, RR was perfectly balanced on my right shoulder and I was about pass her on to NF, as I've done for the past two months in rehearsals and in performance. The next moment I felt a sudden "twang!" in my right calf. There was still half an hour of the dance to go and only one stage exit, which wasn't for at least another twenty minutes or so. No one seemed to notice, though, the show went on. Luckily for me, most of the choreography was quite grounded and though I could only walk around with my legs bent and my body leaning slightly forward, that's pretty much the Bangarra style so I didn't look at all out-of-place. Most of the time...

Anyway, the next day I had my injury diagnosed the next day: a torn calf muscle. And, apparently, a really doozy of a tear. It's going to take the full six weeks to be properly rehabilitated. Great. Six weeks takes me right up to Alice Springs for the up-coming Clan program.

At the very least, it seems like a not-so-uncommon injury. AB director DM made sure my injury was taken care of, and he did a pretty good job too because he had personal experience of it. In the next twenty-four hours other AB dancers spoke to me of their own experiences of torn calf muscles. Every one of those incidents were the same: it came from out of the blue, it would feel like it was completely recovered after a couple of weeks but that was exactly the time when it was prone to re-injury, it would take a good six weeks for a complete recovery. The best of the AB have had it so at the very least I was in good company.

But I'd rather be up and about, running around onstage...

Tags: Dance, Bangarra, The Australian Ballet, Gathering, injury, muscle tear, RICE.

Previous: Another Gathering Moment

I'm backstage preparing for the last section of Rites. This involves having to be covered head-to-toe in clay and, having just gotten off stage from the fire section, usually there's not that much time to do it. I'm also conscious that SS has even less time to prepare since he has to have a shower to clean off all the red paint that's put on him in the previous section so I try to get "ochred up" as quick as I can to get out of his way...

... though it would be preferable if I put on my costume first...

... picture one dancer, the odd one out, running around in only a jockstrap. Pretty...

Tags: Dance, Bangarra, The Australian Ballet, Gathering.

Update: the Ground Force moment continued to be re-lived throughout the day, much to the chagrin of the protagonist.

Over the past three weeks the company has been working with the Australian Ballet. Maybe you've seen the posters, no? Anyway, it's been a pretty exhilarating experience so far, not least because, with a company of about seventy, I still feel like I'm meeting new people every day. I'm a bit envious of the fact that AB can chuck on a completely different cast of dancers, especially when the Melburnian thermometer is hitting thirty-three, we had a first and second cast run-through of Rites and I don't have an assigned understudy, though I was allowed to take it easy the second time around, it would have been preferable to sit it out and not sweat out litres of perspiration.

And then I had to run off and understudy one of the other Bangarra dancers in the new work!

I guess having too much to do is more preferable to not having anything at all.

But certainly the highlight AB experience is Wednesday night bowling, a regular event for a group of the ballet dancers. It's especially good when you win as well, albeit less from having a sizeable amount of bowling ability and more from everyone else having a few bevvies and losing a bit of concentration for the second round (or whatever you call ten bowling frames).

I'm loving spending so much time in Melbourne. I really do love the place, it just seems to be easier to do things here (except going out, the idea of cabbing it there and back to Commercial Road just puts me off having big nights out). Not to mention getting stuck in an apartment with a view over the port, that gets regularly serviced and is just down the road from work. Hard life.

Indidentally, I'm blogging this from Sydney, visiting JPB for the weekend. The fact that it's Mardi Gras weekend is a mere coincidence...

Tags: Dance, Bangarra, Australian Ballet, Melbourne.