During the third performance of Champaign-Urbana Ballet's 2014 run of The Nutcracker, it was declared that this was the year of the dragon.
For the Tea section, a group of dancers control a Chinese dragon. It's adorable and quite impressive. Yet, that dragon had to fly by my calling table backstage every night, and the tail regularly had trouble walking straight.
Performance one, that meant I got hip-checked by the dragon and was chuckling as I called the light cues.
Performance two, however, the dragon listed to the right and my maestro monitor and com base station tried to go onstage with them. Thankfully, the dancers were fine and I managed to grab both items before they hit the ground, but it definitely changed out backstage patterns.
From that night forward, my events SM (usually only in charge of front of house communication and performer calls), guarded me from the dragon. He stood next to my table, held on to the monitor and base station while I held on to my front of house monitor (which also tried to tip during the dragon attack) and we braced ourselves. The volunteers backstage (many of whom were added as extra guides to the dragon after performance 2) told us we were hilarious to watch as we hunkered down for the dragon attack each night.
As the crew was deciding which element of the show they would take their photo with this year, there was really only one choice they could have made.
For the Tea section, a group of dancers control a Chinese dragon. It's adorable and quite impressive. Yet, that dragon had to fly by my calling table backstage every night, and the tail regularly had trouble walking straight.
Performance one, that meant I got hip-checked by the dragon and was chuckling as I called the light cues.
Performance two, however, the dragon listed to the right and my maestro monitor and com base station tried to go onstage with them. Thankfully, the dancers were fine and I managed to grab both items before they hit the ground, but it definitely changed out backstage patterns.
From that night forward, my events SM (usually only in charge of front of house communication and performer calls), guarded me from the dragon. He stood next to my table, held on to the monitor and base station while I held on to my front of house monitor (which also tried to tip during the dragon attack) and we braced ourselves. The volunteers backstage (many of whom were added as extra guides to the dragon after performance 2) told us we were hilarious to watch as we hunkered down for the dragon attack each night.
As the crew was deciding which element of the show they would take their photo with this year, there was really only one choice they could have made.
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