[47] TOURNELLE DU SOLEIL • VENUE • SHOWTIME [i] (Patreon)

The day passes in parched gulps: I’m in the makeup chair again; and then photos are needed for wardrobe; and then makeup needs to do touches, and then, and then, and then–

It’s time.

Our pack of artists and creatives and technicians has been condensed to just the front room; the secondary room –the one with the couches, the bank vault– has been commandeered by the equally numerous and equally tense team of staff associated with the client for the event. We each keep to our spaces.

I change into my base layers of costume, add warm-up layers on top, and put my headphones in. I find something loud. Energetic. Something to drown out the organized chaos and thickening energy swirling through the basement space. Ron silently joins me, tucking bluetooth earpieces beneath his curls. We begin rolling and stretching, preparing our bodies for the movements we’re about to demand of them upstairs.

A glance around the room tells me that each of us artists handle our warm-ups differently. Suren and Karyna are napping. The tramp wall team is seated at a table, drinking coffees and laughing. I’ve lost track of Fiona; maybe she’s in a last-minute fitting with the costumers. The dancers are having long ponytail extensions tied into their hair over in the makeup area.

I carefully avoid pressing or dragging my glowing, powdered face against my shins or arms or the floor or the walls as I move systematically, efficiently, through my warm-up. I’ve taken Advil again. I know I shouldn’t, not before a show. That’s what’s happening, though.

Nerves. Hips (ow). Hamstrings (ow). Breathe. Shoulders. Upper back. Neck. Lower back. Breathe. Composite stretches. Wrists. Forearms. Balances. Breathe.

FIFTEEN MINUTES TO SHOW. EVERYBODY UPSTAIRS.

A chorus of thank you fifteens. We flock up the spiral stairs, a murmuration of tensing muscles, rolling shoulders, smiles bound tightly with professional reserve, teeth biting back the electricity coiling up in our throats.

TEN MINUTES TO SHOW. EVERYONE IN WARDROBE.

Thank you ‘ten’! I pad, barefoot, into the sideroom where my quickchange practices were yesterday. Mindy and Antoine are there waiting with the first dress, the length of bloody-red silk, the glossy headpiece. A collage of hands tugging and zipping and pressing and I emerge, heart beating against a breastplate of vinyl and horsehair tubes. My world starts to narrow, mind locking in on the set, prescribed movements this body has moved through over the past days. The noise of the adjacent backstage rooms drop away. The buzz of the crowd beyond the stairs leading to the stage, the massive LED screen, take on a muted quality.

FIVE MINUTES TO SHOW.

Thank you ‘five’! I step to the side, finding a tiny open corner in the moshpit of bodies packed into the limited backstage space. Tip my chin up to the lofty painted ceilings, send my spine backwards, vertebrae by vertebrae, until my fingers graze the chilled marble floor. Keeping my back warm. Running my cues through my head, over and over. I feel myself distilling. Narrowing.

TWO MINUTES.

I run the silk through my hands, over and over. I’m in my place at the base of the flight of twelve steps leading up to the stage. The other artists blur and bound around me, finding their own spots crouched down on the steps, out of sight beneath the shadow of the LED screen towering overhead.

My thumping heartbeat fades away. Flesh and blood and physical sensation superceded by a liquid mercury quality. No more me. Only an unnameable kind of focus, rushing out from my centre through my eyes in the alchemical wash that takes over as the lights dim, the crowd hushes, the moment looms.

Showtime.

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

Until then, stay strange and wonderful - XO, ess