Three Days and Counting

Three days until the grand opening of the first ever Vision School in Namibia, and things are all coming together!

This weekend, we rehearsed for many hours for a large dance that will be the focal performance from the school during the inauguration ceremony, in front of the President of Namibia, as well as a multitude of dignitaries, ministers and other really important people.  On Monday, the principal informed us that we needed to make the dance over 10 minutes long (doubling the time of the performance).  Ms. Mupiri, Mr. Kapisi and I stayed up late coming up with new choreography, and we were super worried, because the choreography we had done had taken the learners a week to learn.  But the next day, we added two solid minutes of choreography (they call the electric slide moves "dance de familia" here, and that takes up a lot of time! Thank you high school gym class!), a train into an RVS formation, and a specialty dance group.  Boom--these kids are all awesome! We doubled the length of the dance in less than three hours of rehearsal.  And tonight, we showed all of the staff, and everyone was very, very pleased and impressed, and I am still just glowing with pride, 4 hours later.  AND the kids are starting to understand what it means to be timely--they were all in their positions for the beginning of the dance before the teachers had all arrived.  Seriously baller, dedicated, talented kids, I'm telling you.

I have learned so much about myself and what adaptability means in the past week.  I have always struggled with asking for help and clarification, and I continue to work on that every  day.  I didn't really realize how much theatre practice from the US was ingrained in the way I expect things to run.  Scheduling here is much more flexible (especially when it comes to ending times for events/rehearsals/meetings etc), and the structure of a rehearsal is as well.  There is not so much of a director who makes executive decisions, but rather a discussion.  That aspect of Namibian even preparation was the hardest for me to adjust to, because moments, comments, adjustments and changes felt like challenges to my ability, worth and experience, and I got super defensive.  But on Monday, after a long rehearsal with a lot of these discussion-based rehearsals and hot tempers (mostly mine), we cooled down and discussed the cultural differences and where we could meet each other in the middle. It frustrates me that things will take longer here, but the result is still a polished, high-quality dance, so that's what matters.  How we get there can be different, but different is not always bad or wrong.  I think a lot people are learning that this week, myself most of all.

I've also decided that I'm going to try saying "Yes, And" every time that I would say "No, But."  I think that little bits of positivity throughout the day will help me.  Monday was a really, really rough day, and with a lot of positive effort, I feel as though I've really become more culturally adapted to this school, this job and this role.

**obviously, a video of this dance will come VERY SOON, but I don't want anyone reading my blog from Windhoek/elsewhere in Namibia to see it before these kids debut for the Pres!**