[28] Tournelle du Soleil • MONTRÉAL • May 17 (Patreon)

The third day passes in a blur. There's no costume fittings, but there's a makeup test, a process-sharing with the director for the Tower act, and choreography sessions for other elements of the show that I don't know much about yet. I can feel tension and anxiety in the air in the different departments; there’s little things changing every hour with the project. It feels like a film set. 

I warm up my back. Someone has replaced the muscles with wet, coarse sand. There's a spot on the lower left side that's sore in a more concerning way. The kind of sore that tells me it's going to be sore for weeks after this contract is done. That I'm going to have to carefully manage for the next little while.  Damn it.

It's a short walk from the gym to the studio and I'm swallowing my heart repeatedly trying to stay calm about the process-sharing with the director that's about to happen. What you have to show is what you have to show. They know this isn't your apparatus. Just...show him what you've done and go from there.

Matthew, the director, watches me carefully from the other side of the plexiglas. Arms crossed, hips shifted to one side. His brows furrow. His mouth is a carefully considering line. We pick apart the moments of my sequences that make his eyes wider, uncross his arms. Amplify them. Smooth out the entrances and exits. Increase the technical difficulty of a moment here, a transition there.

"Good start," he says. "Back at it again tomorrow," and then he's gone. Whisked away to another meeting.

Okay. He didn't say it was bad, I think to myself. Willing myself not to read into his facial expressions and comments more than I already have.

I've scarcely cooled down my back when Karine appears and marches me to a makeup test. I'm doused in holographic powders in a rainbow of colours until my face is a lustrous masterpiece. A small avalanche of setting powder is applied on top of that, and I'm sent back out into the hallway to find some lunch. I'm to report back at the end of the day. They want to see how the makeup lives through the afternoon's rehearsals.

I forget that I have it on until I run into the production coordinator, Émilie, in the hallway on the way to the cafeteria for lunch.

She gushes about the makeup, shakes my hand. "THANK YOU for doing this!"

I'm a bit shocked. "Uh–" I hope it's not showing on my face. "Thank you for not terminating my contract after the vacuum tower had to go," I said, filterless. Well, it's honest.

"No, no," she says, shaking her head. "We know how difficult this is. It's unideal. Thank you for being on board." With a warm smile, she's gone.

I slow my pace for the rest of my walk to the lunch room. If people think that I'm doing something good, then should I accept that at face value? I have no idea if what I'm doing is good or not. It feels risky to lean into the idea that it might be: how embarassing would that be if it wasn't? It feels risky to resist leaning into this idea: confidence matters.

I try to hold onto this all through the afternoon session, where it turns out that there's plenty of other choreography I need to learn as the main character for this twenty minute show:

There's an opening sequence involving a fan, a silk scarf, a blind hood, and dance lifts. I'm to be be carried to and locked inside the Tower, with another dance sequence before it's covered with a large black drape.

I'm to squeeze out the tiny gap in the back of the Tower after one of the tramp wall artists unlocks the door, dash backstage, change into my contortion costume, dash back and sneak back inside the Tower, and run my act.

After that, I'll have exactly three minutes to get out of the Tower, dash backstage again, and do one more quick-change into a flying harness and the finale costume while Ron Oppenheimer does his flying pole act.

Then, it's a final choreography sequence (in gigantic 8" lucite heels), I'm clipped into the lines and fly up into the sky.

Good god.

"Great!" I say aloud instead. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Your next instalment of Tournelle du Soleil arrives Monday at 7am EST / 1pm CEST!

Until then, stay strange and wonderful - XO, ess