MY MALAGA JOURNAL ENTRIES PART 2

Monday, 26 June 2006
Dear Diary,
OHMIGOD, I am so tired and I don’t think I will be able to walk ever again (figuratively speaking that is!). If you want to know why, then just let me begin from the start of the day.

Yesterday, I said how sick I was and how I hoped to be better in time for Malaga and yes, when I got up this morning I was feeling so much better and ready to sing. I took extra precautions before I left home and took some medicine with me. I had a bottle of Lemsip and a bottle of plain water. Next to that, I had four tablets of Tylenol just in case my allergies decide to show up and wreck my day (which didn’t happen of course).

By the time I arrived at the USP gym, I was feeling so much better! I sat with some of the girls and we chatted until it was time to assemble. For the first half of the day, we had to work by ourselves because Igelese and Ian were busy elsewhere (I think that they were at the Civic Centre). So we did our warm-ups with Sammy and Rodney.

Rodney then led us through a couple of songs, namely We Leave Our Islands, E Homau Otua and Te Waa Ni Kaborerei. After that, they handed the time over to Engara to work with the guys on their actions for Tuku Anga. While Engara worked with the guys, I was appointed to look after the girls and help them with their actions. We kept working on Tuku Anga until Allan and Igelese came in.

Allan was happy to see us working on the song and congratulated us on that. Today, we had to continue on from our Island hopping journey to the OVERCOMING sequence of the production. This sequence is completely made up of dances and speaking of dances, guess who was asked to join the 12 people dancing in that sequence? Yes, it’s me. This is the reason I feel so crappy after the practice today.

The dance that the 12 of us have to do is contemporary almost pacific with some ballet and other stuff mixed in. It’s a beautiful piece and it’s an honour for me to be chosen to dance in the sequence. The last song before OVERCOMING is Te Malaga, the Tuvaluan song, the girls have to slide in their lines and as they do this we, the twelve, have to move out and stand two lines at the right hand side of the stage.
When we get to centre stage, we do four different phases and repeat those phases over and over. Pretty simple (in theory) but to do it is a real back breaker! We stretch our bodies to their limits and move from slow sweeping steps to quick turns and mini gallops.

One thing I forgot to add is that before we do our piece, the dancers from Oceania will perform a sort of sacrifice and they leave on the left hand side of the stage. In essence, what we’re doing to do is bring the sacrificed girl back to life with our dance.

After that sequence, we have the MONTAGE. In this sequence, we have two songs: Still, I Must Sail and Viti. This happens before the CELEBRATION. Constance will sing Still, I Must Sail and before she is done, we (i.e. the twelve) will file back in to the choir in time to sing Viti.

After the MONTAGE, as I said before is the CELEBRATION. The songs we sing here are People of the Sea, Fa’afetai/Tacake Mai and the People of the Sea reprise. After we complete all that, we’re done! It doesn’t sound like much but believe me when I say that it’s long and tiring.

I’m going to tone down my singing and save my voice for performance. At the same time, I have to work out my movements for the resurrection dance. It will be tiring work but I will do my best! I’m still overdosing myself with medication and hopefully, by this weekend, I’ll be rid of this flu (fingers crossed!).

So like I always say, I’ll continue this tomorrow and until then: BYE!!



Tuesday, 27 June 2006
Dear Diary,
Today we had our first rehearsal at the venue of the Malaga Production: The Suva Civic Auditorium. Now, I have to say now that when we were rehearsing yesterday, we assumed that the reason why Ian Gaskell wasn’t in attendance was because he would be at the auditorium supervising the fixtures of the lighting. But, apparently that didn’t happen.

When we walked in today, the stage was empty and the lights haven’t even gone up yet. So we were stuck with practicing from the back balcony of the auditorium facing the stage. We were hoping to start work on the stage today, but it wasn’t meant to be. I hoped that it wouldn’t affect our timetable. Ian and Allan (Igelese too) wanted us to run through the whole production from beginning to the end but it couldn’t happen with the stage looking like it is (EMPTY).

Now the interesting thing for us today was the amount of warm-ups we had to do this morning. First, Igelese gave the mike to Elizabeth to lead the warm-ups. We did the usual and sang We Leave Our Islands, to ‘awaken’ our voices. After that, Elizabeth handed the mike to Sammy, who led us into more stretches and vocal exercises, including a round of Samoan clap cheers. Then, Sammy handed the mike back to Igelese, who led us in more exercises and massages.

When we were done with all our exercises, we worked through our songs that required us to dance, and that too was exercise too for us. We did the Blackstone Poem then we moved to Agi Mai, after that we did Tuku Anga. Now, I was guessing that Igelese was trying to get us to be alert in our singing and dancing. Coordination was a major factor (especially in Agi Mai) for us and we had to run through most of the songs several times over.

Following that, we sang Viti and Le Atua e. I have to add that whilst singing Viti, I experienced the most splitting headache ever. It just hit me and I practically had tears in my eyes, lucky for me I had some Tylenol in my bag. I quickly took some and after few minutes, the headache and the pain went away. Talk about short-term migraine.

When we were done with those two songs, we moved on to Vaka. We sang Vaka several times to get our actions right and moving together in the same direction. Actually, the tenors and basses did most of the work coz they had to move the most in the song.

From there, we had a chance to meet with our Stage Manager, who we only know as Cynthia. She ran by us some of the ground rules of the backstage area. She’s pretty thorough and we didn’t have any doubts about what to do when we were on performance day. Larry, the Co-director of Malaga re-emphasized what she said and added too that what happens on Stage is her responsibility and they (Larry, Ian, Allan and Igelese) have no say in what happens there.

There was one thing that Larry said that still scares me. He was talking about the Matinees that we were doing for the school kids. He said that because they were school children, they would be noisy and quite rowdy. It would be the perfect test for us (GULP!). He reminded us to stay calm keep singing and not worry about the audience. I’m just worried about me dancing the resurrection dance and they are laughing at me. But I can and will do it. I won’t back out of this chance to do something fun for once.

After that meeting, we broke at 1.00pm for lunch. We were excited when we saw what was in our lunch packs today: HOT DOGS and a BOTTLE of MANGO FRUBU! I felt like I was in heaven. But that didn’t stop some of the other choir members from going to Joji’s to order some Chinese food. Lunch was fun and I had a chance to run through our dance sequence with some of the girls.

We assembled back in the auditorium at 2.00pm ready to start another session. Once again, we did more warm-ups and vocal exercises, this time with Rodney. After that, we had to break up into our sectionals (Sops, Alts, Tens & Basses) with our tutors to work on our dances. The sopranos went with Engara, the Altos came with Elizabeth and I, and the tenors and basses went with Rodney and Sammy. When we broke up, the sops went to practice on the balcony, the altos took the lawn in front of the Civic Centre and the tenors & basses worked in the Auditorium foyer.

In the altos section, we worked through the songs in their order of the programme. First was Vaka. Elizabeth and I helped the girls work on their stance and coordination for the chorus and verses. We ran through the song and then we moved on. The next song on the list was Agi Mai. This song took more time but we soon got the movements right. After that, we did a short take on Te Waa Ni Kaborerei. We just had to run through the hands-up-hands-down sequence and the last part of the song where we do a really cool Kiribati move. I’ll leave it at that coz it’s difficult to explain what we do, even though the move is relatively easy.

When we were done with that, we moved to Tuku Anga. Now throughout the whole practice, I was just assisting Elizabeth with corrections, in Tuku Anga, I had to run through it by myself. It took awhile but we also got it right at the end. We only had thirty minutes allocated for sectional practice. After we were done, we had to report back to Igelese for a final briefing.

We didn’t have to do any singing when we went back in. Igelese just briefed us on what’s to come in the following days, and, he reiterated his warnings about us taking care of our voices and not straining it. From there, we were done for the day. Only the soloists had to stay behind to work through their songs. I stayed back to help the tenors and basses with their practice on Tuku Anga. Besides all that, today was very fruitful and I can’t wait to start again tomorrow.

I forgot to add that as we were practicing, the set was slowly being put together. I also bet that Ian was quite pissed with the technicians that he had to work with coz I could hear him shouting at the top of his voice above the sounds of the choir singing. It was a very enlightening experience for me and I won’t forget it ever. That’s probably why I added it in here ^_^.

That’s it for today; join me tomorrow for more gossip on my day in Malaga rehearsals.



Wednesday, 28 June 2006
Dear Diary,
You cannot even begin to imagine just how much pain my body is in. Today, we had one of the longest rehearsals ever and to top it off I was completely dehydrated! Here, let me start from the beginning.

Last night, we were told on the news that our area would face water cuts for the night and today. I was in a bind trying to figure out where to have my shower and there was no way that I could refill my empty bottles of water. I quickly solved my first dilemma by having a shower in the bathroom next to my Dad’s office. The second problem, however, stayed with me for the whole day.

I reached the auditorium quite early and just sat around with the others chatting. Apparently, as of this morning, all the $10- tickets for both Wednesday and Thursday nights are sold out and there were only thirty $5- ticket seats left. By lunch I heard that all the tickets were sold out and we’ve got full houses for all our shows.

I forgot to mention that the set was done and we could begin work on it today. We did some warm-ups with Elizabeth, first were some stretches, then massages and lastly vocal exercises. She got us to sing We Leave Our Islands as a final warm-up for our voices. Igelese got us to break up again into our sections for more work on our movements and dances for half an hour before we started working on the run through the programme with Ian, Allan and Larry. Today was Allan’s birthday.

When we were done with our sectionals, Igelese got us to learn the final chorus of Still, I Must Sail. The altos carry the melody of the song (which I think is great).

When we were done with that, we moved onto the set and Allan got us to go through the whole programme from the very beginning. If you remember the beginning, it starts with the Tagaloa creation sequence and from there, we sing E Homau Otua. The whole time this is happening, the choir is wearing Kipuka’s to hide their costumes. Those come off after we finish E Homau Otua and move on into Vaka.

Following the building of the Vaka and the Vaka song, we go into the farewell scene, where Ana and Constance, do their solos. The songs are E Tagi Lo’u Loto and Le Atua e. There’s no dancing here, only the Oceania dancers are doing a sort of candle dance thing for Le Atua e. I won’t bother explaining what happens in those songs coz you already know, so here’s to me moving onward.

The Journey sequence was next and after that is the Overcoming sequence with the two dances; one by Oceania and the other by the 12 choir members picked to dance. We started off with twelve but now we’re down to about nine. Allan dropped two of the girls because of the way they were dancing and the other one volunteered to drop out because of a knee injury. I’m still dancing! Don’t think for a minute that something’s going to stop me from dancing.

After that is the montage and after the montage the celebration and that’s the end of the show! It sounds simple but it took us ages to work through it. The other dancers and I had to meet with our Choreographer (I can’t figure out how to spell her name so don’t bother asking me what it is) to run over our dance piece.

We did two runs of the programme and added to that was the photography sessions we had for the program handouts on the performance nights. The photographer still took pictures of us as we did a second run through of the sequences. Today, we officially finished all the necessary choreography for the whole production.

After rehearsals, the dancers stayed behind to do more run throughs off the dance. At the end of it all, I was so drained, dehydrated and very much in great need of rest.

Just thinking about today’s rehearsals makes me cringe at what we’ll have to do tomorrow. But I will tackle that problem when it comes. ^_^



Thursday 29 June 2006
Dear Diary,
Well, it’s another tiring day for the whole Malaga Cast (i.e. choir and dancers). Started off the day feeling a little sick, but by the time we were done with warm-ups, I was feeling a lot better. Igelese got all the tutors to take us out to the foyer to do our warm-ups. Sammy led us in the stretches and Rodney got us going with the vocal exercises.

After that they got us to run through our actions for the songs with our dances. First off was Vaka. The tenors and basses had to do a lot of work on getting their movements coordinated for the chorus. After that, the girls got to work on their actions for the verses. From there, we moved to Agi Mai. This was easy coz everyone was familiar with it. After Agi Mai, we did a short run of Te Waa Ni Kaborerei, and last but not the least, Tuku Anga.

Now that was the song that took the longest to run through. First we decided to run it together as a group and then we split into guys and girls. The guys took the first run while the girls watched. It took them ages to get their actions and words flowing together, but they soon got it right (especially with Engara’s help). The girls had to make comments on the guys’ movements; I certainly had a lot to say. Next, it was the girls’ turn.

Some of the girls wanted to sit on the floor and some didn’t so I had to make it LOUD and CLEAR that those who wanted to sit on the floor should move forward and those standing will move behind them. It wasn’t that difficult for the Sops and Alts to run through their actions. We gave the guys a chance to have their say and then we all moved back into the auditorium.

Now, Igelese had asked for a soloist to come from New Zealand to come and understudy Ana and Constance in their solo pieces. Her name is Elisha and she’s Samoan. She comes to us from Auckland University of Technology but she’s originally from Palmerston North. She’s Ana’s understudy for Le Atua e; for Constance, she’s singing Still, I Must Sail and Hina’s piece in E Tagi Lo’u Loto.


YOU MIGHT HAVE GUESSED THAT THE WAY THIS LAST ENTRY ENDED I NEVER GOT TO FINISH IT.... WITH GOOD REASON... FROM THE DAYS FOLLOWING THIS POST, WE GOT SO BUSY WITH OUT SCHEDULES AND PRODUCTION WEEK WAS VERY HECTIC AND TIRING FOR EVERYONE...

WE (I.E. THE WHOLE CHOIR) WAS BILLETED IN THE HALLS OF RESIDENCE ON CAMPUS AND WE HAD SO MUCH FUN THAT WEEK...

OUR SHOWS WERE AMAZING AND WE TRULY ENJOYED OURSELVES.... MUCH LOVE TO IGELESE, ALLAN, WALTER, MARGARET, CYNTHIA AND ALL THE EXECUTIVES OF THE MALAGA PRODUCTION!!!!

MWAH!