Dress Try On video! (Patreon)

Good morning, everyone!

Something a little different today – I made a quick 3 minute video of me TRYING ON THE DRESSSSS for the first time after I brought it home from the road trip adventure on Friday!

I also had the opportunity to run the act a couple times in Birdhaus yesterday and took some test photos so that Tig could see what they were working with in terms of natural light in the space, vs. what kind of lights we might want to set up so  I'm nicely lit when I'm doing tricks that have me lower to the ground.

Here's some more eye candy!

Here's what I found about the dress in my first chance to run rehearsals with it yesterday: 

• I LOVE that the backlit dress makes it so that you can see the silhouette of my legs! I'll be honest, dear patrons – I wasn't sure if I was going to love this more desconstructed design that Michael put forward as a reasonable affordable version of Barbette's $40,000 ostrich feather extravaganza. But I DO. It's simple, it calls back to the original, it holds its own space, and it works fantastically in terms of creating a stunning first impression.
  
• The hat is a wee bit snug with the wig beneath it, but Michael, the designer, wisely left the back lightly tacked with only a few stitches in case this exact scenario came up. The main band of the hat is actually a super wide elastic! I'll let out the back and stitch it back together wider later this week.
  
• The extra, longer feathers that I ordered over the weekend haven't landed yet, so the fans you see in these photos (and in the video above) are a lot smaller than what I've been working with. While they're easy to work with and beautiful in their own right, I found that in my rehearsal runs today I was rushing, moving less slowly and gracefully, without the extra sensory feedback of a BIG fan pushing air around and offering resistance. I've made a mental note of this and will be course-correcting my movement in rehearsals later this morning.
  
• The snaps at each shoulder on the body come apart very easily, which is great for the choreo.
  
• The skirt itself – as I said in the video – is heavy.  The snaps that hold it up are heavy duty.. As such, the moment of transition in the act where I lower the hoop skirt to the ground and emerge in all my latexy glory didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd hoped yesterday. With the fans being smaller, I also discovered that I can't HIDE the entire lower half of my body as I sneakily take the skirt off (which is what I was imagining in rehearsals in previous weeks). In this morning's rehearsals I'm going to try out a couple different plans of attack to smooth out this moment.
  
• GOOD NEWS: once the skirt is successfully lowered to the ground, it's easy enough to step over and out of. I've been having terrible visions of me stepping on all that expensive fabric with my spiky little heels and tearing all of Michael and Marianne's beautiful work. Happily, I don't think that's going to be an issue, in practice.

* * * * *

There you have it!

Later this afternoon / after rehearsal, I'm driving out to the East Beaches neighborhood in Toronto one last time for a final fitting with Marika for all the latex bits and pieces – tomorrow's writing will be all about that!

On Wednesday, you'll get some notes from my rehearsals today, because I'll be running the act in practice latex pieces I've begged off Marika. I have practice pants, practice sleeves, a practice bodice, and a practice cone bra. The latter is the one I'm most worried about -- it needs to look at least halfway believably natural and not slide around all over my body as I do contortion tricks and we're really at the 11th hour here ...!

(Please cross all your fingers and toes for me that none of the latex practice garments I have cause any issues with the choreo or my movement -- because there's NO TIME TO FIX IT WHEEEEE!)

(I'm not anxious, YOU'RE anxious!)

(Who's dumb idea was this anyways! Jeez!)

* * * * [ to be continued]