January 2018: DAPpers, Dance Extension, and Dancing Legacy Rehearse Together

In January 2018, Dance Extension had a week long residency where Laura Bennett taught us the entirety of Ecce Etude.  At the culmination of this week, several Dancing Legacy company members and a number of the DAPpers joined us for a combined rehearsal.  This was the first time all three parts (spirit, horse, and woman) would be dancing in the space together, which was very exciting!  I, along with two other Dance Extension dancers and some Dancing Legacy dancers, was dancing the spirit part, most of Dance Extension and some of Dancing Legacy was dancing the woman part, and the DAPpers were the horses. 

It was truly incredible to see all three groups come together in the space and to watch the three parts interact.  Before this rehearsal, Dance Extension had mostly rehearsed the spirit and woman parts separately, so I had only a brief taste of how those two parts interacted before this, and we had never seen the horse part before.  It was great to get to connect the dots between different parts of the choreography and to understand how the horse choreography is influenced by the spirit's movement and how the horse and the woman interact throughout the piece. 

Despite the fact that each of these groups generally goes through a rather different coaching process, this rehearsal ran very smoothly.  In fact, the DAPpers had not even learned all of their choreography at this point, but were game to follow along with Rachel so we could all complete the whole Ecce Etude together.  Though we left this rehearsal knowing there was more work to be done, it was very clear that the dance was coming together and we could see the beauty of the final product emerging!

Here's a video from this rehearsal: