"VACUUM": RESURRECTED (Patreon)

Salve, Patrons!

(Yeah, that's right, I'm going back to the Grade 10 Latin class watering hole I referenced in yesterday's update)

I just received some of the gorgeous images of VACUUM that event photographer Teri Georgiou snapped at my Saturday performance and had to share them with you all here before they eventually slowly make their way out into the world, be it social media, or that update to my artist website that's been on my to-do list for 8 months, or ... you get the idea.

The venue for this performance was the Opera House concert hall in downtown Toronto. Don't be misled by the name: it's not an actual opera house. But it is an historic/heritage building in the city! It's been around since 1909, and was originally an Edwardian vaudevillian venue. Like most other heritage buildings in the city, it has worn many hats in the interim decades, but in its current era it serves as a venue for musicians and bands from all over the world. It's one of the few remaining mid-sized music venues in Toronto's dwindling roster of live event spaces.

Fun *personal* historic sidebar: I went to some of my first punk shows EVER at the Opera House all the way back in 2009. I've been trampled in many a mosh-pit where the crowd stood last Saturday, watching me perform on stage. I even played that stage once before, in another lifetime, in a punk band of my own (on my 18th birthday, as I recall).

Back to VACUUM:

We had a small window of time available to get VACUUM back up and running for the show that happened this past Saturday. My technician (essentially my duo partner for this act!) Miranda Tempest and I were running this act in my living room the whole week leading up to the performance, and so my apartment smelled like the inside of a kids birthday balloon the whole week that the vacuum tower was set up in a corner of my living room.
Odd home decor choice ;)

While I hadn't forgotten that this act is intensely demanding in a variety of ways, it's one thing to remember that it's really overwhelming to willingly put yourself in a tiny box that slowly squeezes in on you from all directions and eventually becomes devoid of oxygen ... and another thing entirely to re-subject yourself to that, physically. Repeatedly.

On the technical/physical side of things, my flexibility, contortion tricks, and handstand skills were all sitting in a happy, healthy place for this show. It's always a more pleasant experience to prepare for something when you're not working around an injury! However, re-acclimating to the hostile environment of the vacuum tower was daunting. We structured our rehearsals in a way where we tapered back slowly into "full suction" holds instead of just trying to jump right back in to running the act full-out ('full suction' as in, sucking every last sip of air out of the volume, creating the most amount of pressure on my body).

I was hitting roadblocks on the mental side of this act, too:
We hadn't run or performed this act since the awful performing experience last summer on Das Supertalent in Germany. There was a not-small part of me that didn't want to do this act again at all. I was resistant to re-mounting it, and the memory of that Germany experience weighed heavy on my mind.

This isn't an entertaining act; no one is going to want to watch this; it's too slow, people think it's boring; it's so hard and scary to do, is it even worth it if people don't appreciate it ...

... the negative monologue was strong at the start of the week of rehearsals.

But as we slowly got back into the meat of the act, I began remembering all the beautiful moments, challenging moments, surprising moments that hide within the choreography.

I began to remember what I liked about it.

I began to remember that this piece is genuinely really cool, even though it's simultaneously the best AND worst idea I've had thus far in my career ('best' on the novelty/shock front; 'worst' on the 'why do I do this to myself' front).

We studied video from the original premier of the act in February 2020, and the rehearsal footage from the preparations we made last summer to perform the act on the Das Supertalent TV show: the choreography had been developed from the original premier choreography into a tighter, shorter act for the TV program in August 2020 and we had choices to make about what we wanted to present on stage this time. We married pieces from the original that we loved but had to be left out for the TV program, with the sequencing, transitions, and character work we'd developed for Germany.

The end result was something even better than I remember doing last year. The end result was something that I was actually excited to perform on stage again for people. A novel feeling, after the roller-coaster of the last 2 years.

The show went off fantastically, without a single mistake. I was happy, relieved, proud of what we'd shared on the weekend.

The only negative?

Turns out my stage-time was 1 in the morning.
***NOTE TO SELF: Ask the promoter what time they're scheduling you to perform before you accept the contract next time, so you can at least plan some naps better!***

Didn't get home from the venue after cooling down and tearing down the tower and packing it away in my car again until about 4:30am.

I'm still trying to re-set my sleep schedule from this ungodly hour – 
My body doesn't want to fall asleep before midnight, but it also insists on waking up no later than 7:30am, so I've been a bit of a zombie.

At least it's the right season to be a zombie. ;)

Stay strange & wonderful – 

Ess