Burlesque On Ice Rehearsals - Week One!

So, the first week of Burlesque On Ice intensive rehearsals is over - and it lived up to expectations: intensive!!

I kept this diary during the week - and will be doing the same for the whole run of the rehearsals and show, so enjoy!

Monday
Bloody hell, I ache!! This morning Glorian Gray, Taz Zebrowski and I woke up at the crack of dawn to journey to the wild North... Archway, where the Burlesque On Ice team has relocated for the next couple of weeks. We arrived early in order to assist with the get-in of the synthetic ice, and had a productive morning drinking tea as multiple panels of what looked suspiciously like styrofoam were brought into the room.

 

Once everyone else arrived, we had a lesson with Alexei, the Russian ice coach who is a specialist in synthetic ice skating. And you know what... it's flippin' difficult! 

After about 45 minutes we had a break for coffee and biscuits, and Ruby Deshabille finally got her Secret Santa present (I ordered it online and it took aaaages to arrive!)

Ruby 'Cheshire Cat' Deshabille

Bonnie Fleur and I took the opportunity to pimp out one of our show sponsors as well - Burlesque On Ice is sponsored by Vivian of Holloway and we posed for a couple of pictures in some of their gorgeous dresses:

It's bloody difficult skating in a wiggle dress!

Finally home and aching, but have a glass of wine while waiting for the bath to run. Tired and happy!

Tuesday

Such a lovely day! I was lucky enough to join the gorgeous Gwendoline Lamour for a Burlesque lesson! Along with Ruby Deshabille, Trixie Kixx and Bonnie Fleur we took over a dance studio for the afternoon and went through four elements of classic burlesque striptease from Femme Fatale to cheeky Pin-Up; the aim was to introduce our Burlesque Virgin, Hollie Deller (who had pretty much *just* got off the worlds longest flight from America and come straight to the studio - bloody trooper!) about the different styles within classic striptease, and we had such fun mincing, strutting, shimmying and sashaying around the room.

It was such an honour to work with Gwen, who is a complete legend of the burlesque world as well as being the most brilliantly bonkers individual, and I learned so much from her in one afternoon.

Forgot to take any pictures so here's one of my favourite images of the gorgeous Gwendoline!

Wednesday

Back at the rehearsal room today with Hollie on the ice. We were re-blocking an existing routine to fit the show outline, and spent a couple of hours reworking the steps; fabulous fun especially as we we got to throw Joe Morose around and generally be a bit saucy!

I'm starting to ache now and can really feel the difference between normal ice and the plastic ice; it's much, much harder to get momentum and glide on the synthetic ice, and while I feel much more stable, it's more difficult to perform some of the moves that rely on gliding into them! Tell you what; by the end of this I'll be able to crack walnuts with my butt cheeks!

Oh - and guess what?! We got tube posters up too!! They'll be appearing at stations all across the tube network which is super exciting!

Burlesque On Ice tube posters!!

Thursday

Another hard day, but a fun one nonetheless - Hollie choreographed and began setting the Finale act and it's going to be awesome!

It's starting to really hurt my feet: when I got home I felt like I was walking on stones - because the boots are such thick leather, feet heat up quicker and expand; add to that the heat on the blade from the friction caused by the synthetic ice, which doesn't cool the blade in the way that regular ice would do, and it contributes to very hot, achy feet!! However I wouldn't change it for the world, as much as I want to milk the sympathy from having achy footsies!

Oh - and there is a competition on the Burlesque On Ice Facebook page: can you take a bonkers picture in front of one of our tube posters? Prizes to be won!

Sarah Christou in front of our poster at Hammersmith!

Friday

We had Jasz Vegas back with us today!! We spent the day going over the choreography for the opening of Act Three and the Finale, and polishing and cleaning the whole thing - we've done so much in a week I'm amazed and the group routines are already looking fabulous!

Still achy but able to work through it now - I've not danced this much since I left college!

Oh: and Trixie Kixx brought along a new addition to the cast!!

Trixie and Darcey!

And that's that - in one week we have choreographed, learned, set and begun to clean the two big group routines in the show; it's super exciting to see everything coming together and I'm so proud to be part of such a wonderful group of people who are all working so hard to make this show amazing!

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